Independent of the peculiar feelings by which I observed the intending emigrants so generally actuated, there were among my visitors several characters of the most interesting description, even without reference to their immediate circumstances. To have attended only to their tales, one might have thought they could show cause enough, apart from all pecuniary considerations, to seek another world. One of these was no less than a grandmother, upwards of sixty years of age, the mother of the landlady of the public- house where the stages stopped when we lived at Oakhill, and where I had sometimes noticed her, interested by the general neatness of her appearance, and a pensive cast of countenance, which may be described as the complexion of a beautiful old age.

One morning she called, attended by two of her grandsons, stout, good-looking striplings, older than boys and yet not old enough for men. I was astonished when she told me, that the object of her visit was to consult me about going to Canada. A little embarrassment in her air increased the interest which her explanation of the motive of her visit excited, and I perceived her look once or twice at the lads, as if she wished they had not been present; at last she told them to go to their brother in the street, and she would join them in a few minutes.