It bred in the pioneers of our old provinces some of the highest qualities: courage, iron endurance, self-denial, homely and upright life, and, above all, for it includes all, true and ennobling patriotism.

The survival of such qualities has been manifest in multitudes of their sons, who, remembering the record, have borne themselves manfully wherever they have gone.
But modern conditions are breeding methods new and strange, and keen observers profess to discern in our swift development the decay of certain things essential to our welfare.

We seem, they think, to be borrowing from others--for they are not ours by inheritance--their boastful spirit, extravagance, and love of luxury, fatal to any State through the consequent decline of morality.

The picture is over-drawn.

True womanhood and clean life are still the keynotes of the great majority of Canadian homes.
Yet very striking is the contrast with the old days of household economies, the days of the ox-chain, the sickle, and the leach-tub.
All of these, some happily and some unhappily, have been swept away by the besom of Progress.