Before the rigour of the winter began to relent, and the snow to slip away at the gentle coming of the spring, I had many opportunities of observing the character and disposition of the settlers among whom my lot was cast; and it was often the cause of heavy thoughts to me, in the meditations of my solitary walks, to see how the habits of orderliness, which many had brought with them, were daily slackening.

In Mr. Herbert, who was prospering in his school to the fullest extent of every reasonable expectation, we had obtained a great blessing; but the gracious influences of his calm and excellent methods reached not beyond the children: we still required a voice of authority among the parents; not that flagrant offences prevailed, but every one did too much according to the pleasure of his own will. The men were growing more coarse and familiar in their language than consisted with decorum; and the women took less heed, both of their appearance and apparel, than betokened a wholesome sense of propriety.

This falling off, so visible in the do-well-enough expedients of the slatternly days of winter, either was not visible, or had not been heeded, during the fine weather; but before the frost broke up, it was too plain that the corrosion which roughens the inhabitants of the backwoods was beginning to show itself amongst us.

For some time, I thought it was owing to the lack of magistrates, and stirred with the agent of the settlement to get a justice of the peace appointed; but a difficulty arose which I had not foreseen, never having, till this period, meddled in political matters. I had imagined, that by the help of a good recommendation and a fair character, no objection would be made, in such a needful case as ours, to an appointment of me, or some other sober character; but it turned out, that justices of the peace could only be made through the instrumentality of the supervisors of the towns, and judges of the county courts; so that at this time, no supervisor having been appointed for Babelmandel, and as the agent and the majority of the judges were pulling opposite ends of the political rope, in the presidential question, my stirring was of no avail.