244   CANADIAN HISTORY F'OR BOYS AND GIRLS.

he turned afterwards to another kind of work, and soon all the English-speaking world was laughing over the odd sayings and doings of " Sam Slick," the Yankee clock-maker.

Religion During the fifty years of this period many and Morals. places of worship had been built in all the provinces, but the outlying settlements, as in the present day, were greatly in need of both ministers and churches.

All over the country there was much drunkenness, but great efforts were being made to check it, and many temperance societies were formed. In the early years of Toronto, or York, drunkards were punished by being made to dig up the stumps which disfigured the main street.

Punish-   The punishments of those days were often

ments. very severe. In 1826 a lad was hanged in New Brunswick for stealing a few pence. In 1834 Mackenzie put a man in the stocks at Toronto for being drunk and disorderly. This was the last time that they were used.

The prisons generally were badly managed. For in-stance, boys undergoing punishment for some trifling offence were often locked in with hardened criminals, who soon taught them to he as bad as themselves. The jail at Toronto was wretchedly dirty. cold, and damp. There was, indeed, no provision for warming it, even in the bitterest weather: yet lunatics as well as criminals were sometimes shut up in it.