In "Our Little Canadian Cousin," my intention has been to tell, in a general way, although with a defined local setting, the story of Canadian home life. To Canadians, home life means not merely sitting at a huge fireplace, or brewing and baking in a wide country kitchen, or dancing of an evening, or teaching, or sewing; but it means the great outdoor life—sleighing, skating, snow-shoeing, hunting, canoeing, and, above all, "camping out"—the joys that belong to a vast, uncrowded country, where there is "room to play." This wide and beautiful Canadian Dominion possesses, of course, a great variety of climate and of scenery. To treat at all adequately of those things, or of the country's picturesque and romantic history, would require far more scope than is afforded by this one small story.
In "Our Little Canadian Cousin," my intention has been to tell, in a general way, although with a defined local setting, the story of Canadian home life. To Canadians, home life means not merely sitting at a huge fireplace, or brewing and baking in a wide country kitchen, or dancing of an evening, or teaching, or sewing; but it means the great outdoor life—sleighing, skating, snow-shoeing, hunting, canoeing, and, above all, "camping out"—the joys that belong to a vast, uncrowded country, where there is "room to play." This wide and beautiful Canadian Dominion possesses, of course, a great variety of climate and of scenery. To treat at all adequately of those things, or of the country's picturesque and romantic history, would require far more scope than is afforded by this one small story.