our united thanks. The captain agreed it would be right, so, that
afternoon, all hands assembled, except Mr Snellgrove, who sat at the bow
pretending to read a book. The impression made on me, by the sight of
the sailors joining in the psalms and the children gathering round their
mothers' skirts in wonder, has survived these fifty-five years. The
master at the request of the captain, took charge. He read the story of
Paul's shipwreck and then prayed with a fervor that made me cry. To the
surprise of all, he asked Mr Kerr to improve the occasion. He began by
saying it was not for mortals to judge the ways of God, to complain of
visitations or to condemn acts that are inscrutable, but it was the
bounden duty of man, when good did befall him, to ascribe the praise to
God. They had a marvellous escape from a cruel death, and without
inquiring into the how or wherefore it was our part to acknowledge the
hand that saved us. After a good deal more in that strain of thought he
changed to the purpose of our voyage. We were crossing the ocean to
escape conditions in the Old Land that had become a burden to us,
hoping, in the New Land before us, there would be brighter surroundings.
To preserve that New Land from the mistakes and evils that blast the Old
was a duty. To try and reproduce another Scotland such as they had left
would be to reproduce what we were leaving it for. What we ought to try
is to create a new Great Britain in Canada, retaining all that is good
and dropping all that is undesirable. I want, he said, to see a land
where every man is free to secure a portion of God's footstool and to
enjoy the fruits he reaps from it, without an aristocracy taking toll of
what they did not earn, and a government levying taxes on labor to
support soldiers or to subsidize privileged classes of any kind whatever
their pretences.

How much more the speaker would have said I do not know, for Mr
Snellgrove, who had come forward on his beginning to speak, here shouted