Books with author William Duncan

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This book was digitized and reprinted from the collections of the University of California Libraries. It was produced from digital images created through the libraries’ mass digitization efforts. The digital images were cleaned and prepared for printing through automated processes. Despite the cleaning process, occasional flaws may still be present that were part of the original work itself, or introduced during digitization. This book and hundreds of thousands of others can be found online in the HathiTrust Digital Library at www.hathitrust.org.

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The favourable reception of a small work on this colony has emboldened me again to come before the public in the character of an author, and as it is fifteen years since I last obtruded myself in that capacity, I have at least to boast of the merit assumed to himself by the sailor in his prayer, during a hurricane, "Thou knowest it is seldom that I trouble thee," and I may hope on the same grounds to be listened to. It is now upwards of thirty-three years since I became acquainted with this country, of which I was eleven years absent. During that time I visited the other quarters of the globe. My design in this work is to shew the almost incredible improvement that has taken place during that period. Notwithstanding all that has been written by tourists, &c., very little indeed is known of the value and capabilities of Canada, as a colony, by the people of Great Britain. I have not arrived at anything like methodical arrangement further than stating in their chronological order, events and scenes of which I was a witness, with occasional anecdotes of parties therein concerned, so that those who do not approve of such a desultory mode of composition, need not, after this fore-warning, read any further. My intention, in fact, is not exclusively either to instruct or amuse, but, if I possibly can accomplish it, to do a little of both. I wish to give an account of the effect of the changes that have taken place in my day in the colony, on my own feelings, rather than to enter into any philosophical enquiry into their causes; and if in this attempt I should sometimes degenerate into what my late lamented friend, the Ettrick Shepherd, would have denominated havers, I hope you will remember that this is an infirmity to which even Homer (see Horace,) is liable; and if, like hereditary disease, it is a proof of paternity, every author in verse or prose who has written since his day, has ample grounds whereon to found its pretensions to a most ancient and honourable descent.

Killing with kindness is the commonest cause of death I am aware of, and it is very remiss in the faculty, that it has never yet found a place in the periodical mortuary reports which they publish in great cities in a tabular form—this ought to be amended. Au reste—I was very comfortable, for, while I remained under the hospitable roof of my friend old Cobus, I had an upper room for my sleeping apartment, and the show room of the establishment for my sitting parlor, an honour and preferment which nobody of less rank them an actual line officer of the "riglars" could have presumed to aspire to; to the rest of mankind it was shut and sealed, saving on high days and holidays. This sacred chamber was furnished and decorated in the purest and most classical style of Dutch taste, the whole woodwork, and that included floor, walls and ceiling, were sedulously washed once a week with hot water and soap, vigorously applied with a scrubbing brush. The floor was nicely sanded, and the walls decorated with a tapestry of innumerable home-spun petticoats, evidently never applied to any other (I won't say meaner) purpose, declaring at once the wealth and housewifery of the gude vrow. On the shelf that ran round the whole room, were exhibited the holiday crockery of the establishment, bright and shining, interspersed with pewter spoons, which were easily mistaken for silver from the excessive brightness of their polish. And to conclude the description of my comforts, I had for breakfast and dinner a variety and profusion of meat, fish, eggs, cakes and preserves, that might have satisfied the grenadier company of the Regiment.