Read "The Settlers in Canada" by Frederick Marryat online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Christmas-day was indeed a change, as Emma had observed, from their former Christmas; but although the frost was more than usually severe, and the snow filled the air with its white flakes, and the north-east wind howled through the leafless trees as they rasped their long arms against each other, and the lake was one sheet of thick ice with a covering of snow which the wind had in different places blown up into hillocks, still they had a good roof over their heads, and a warm, blazing fire on the hearth: and they had no domestic miseries, the worst miseries of all to contend against, for they were a united family, loving and beloved; showing mutual acts of kindness and mutual acts of forbearance; proving how much better was "a dish of herbs where love is, than the stalled ox with hatred therewith."
Moreover they were all piously disposed; they were sensible that they owed a large debt of gratitude to Heaven for all its daily mercies in providing them with food and raiment, for warding off from them sickness and sorrow, and giving them humble and contented hearts; and on this day, they felt how little were all worldly considerations, compared with the hopes which were held out to them through the great sacrifice which the goodness and mercy of God had made for them and all the world. It was, therefore, with cheerful yet subdued looks that they greeted each other when they met previous to the morning prayers.