tleman in the parish of St. Roch. As they came to a row of currant bushes he exclaimed, fervently, "Give it to the currant bushes; they're just full!" The whole parish was jubilant at the close of this ceremony in the unshakable conviction that the bugs of the morning were now absolutely destroyed. I asked M. Tremblay, "But have you looked at your vines to see?" "Oh no, sir; it isn't necessary to look; the bugs are all gone." Some days afterward I revived the subject. "Well, now, the bugs were not killed after all; here are thousands of them on your potato vines." "Yes, sir; but these are another lot that the Lord has sent." The priest of one of the Saguenay parishes made a visit to Quebec just after one of these processions for the bugs of the parish, and when I called to see him after his return he was enthusiastic over a purchase he had made; it was a quantity of Paris green, and a bellows for dusting it on his vines.

Harvest brought the women and children to the fields again; and I often went with them to see, not to dream, the scenes of that antique pastoral, Ruth and Boaz. There was a group of genuine peasants that belonged to the patriarchal ages in character and conditions; Ruth would not have been a stranger gleaning with those homespun women in short skirts and broad-brimmed hats. They reap with sickles, some moving along on their knees, others bending low; they lay the grain carefully out to dry; at the proper time they turn it over by handfuls; then the women gather it up in their arms, and lay it across a withe for the binder to bind it in sheaves. Every head is picked up. Here are no hand-rakes, no cradles, no reaping - machines, no "headers" devouring fields and delivering sacks of clean grain. Certainly a loaf of their dark coarse bread has a great deal of humanity kneaded into it. But they work moderately, and singing and joking blend with the hiss of the sickle and the rustle of the grain. When I went into the field of a neighbor one afternoon I found three generations working at the sickle; but this seemed not very surprising, considering the comfortable march of their lives. They all left their work and gathered in a picturesque group sitting with me along the fence; the men lit their pipes, and courteously entertained me for a whole hour, repeating the current traditions and su

perstitions of the Bay St. Paul. The harvest sometimes closes with a rustic festival, the fête of the Big Sheaf. The last sheaf, made large, is put on top of the last cart-load of grain as an emblem of abundance; the lads and lasses, decorated with heads of grain, walk on each side of the load, and sing some of their national songs on the way to the house.

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According to the usual ceremony (in old times), the master of the house sits in a large arm-chair at the head of the room, and awaits with a joyful and contented air the arrival of his people. These soon come trooping in, led by the eldest son, who carries in one hand a fine sheaf of wheat all decorated with ribbons, and in the other hand a decanter and a glass. He advances to the master of the house, gives him the sheaf, wishes him as good a harvest every year of his life, and pours him out a glass of brandy. The old gentleman thanks him, and drinks off the glass. Then the son goes around the room and serves the company; after which they pass to the next room for supper, composed of mutton, milk, and pancakes with maple sugar. After supper the decanter and glass go their rounds again, and then the young man who presented the sheaf asks his father to sing a song." Songs, dances, and other amusements close the festival.

As this pretty ceremony fell into disuse some years ago, the priest of one of the parishes on the south shore of the St. Lawrence took it under his own patronage, and made it a Church festival by tarrying the Big Sheaf into the choir of the church and saying mass over it. But even this duller rite is now seldom witnessed; the farmers pay the priest to say a mass as thanks for the harvest. Thus the grain does not grow without the touch of holy water; when harvested it is brought to the altar; the leaven rises under the invocation of Divine aid; and the loaf is not cut till the sign of the cross is made upon it by the devout habitant. The loaf is, indeed, an epitome of their life. The threshing is generally done with the flail, and the grain is winnowed with the antique fan-a large semicircular tray, with which a man throws the grain up and catches it again and again till the chaff is blown away. Thirty bushels may be cleaned in a day. Some of the farmers have a threshing-machine built in the barn; it is driven by an old-fashioned

windmill with two long arms at right angles. And yet nobody thinks of putting up a circular saw to cut the wood burned during the long winters. When the grain is finally cleaned, each habitant takes one-twenty-sixth of it to the priest as tithes.

I came upon another antique scene one day in October while walking along the mountain-top west of this valley. The sound of women's voices and of some unusual labor drew me from the road into a maple grove. I found a group of barearmed women under the trees swingling flax. Their children were playing on the ground; and a thin spiral of smoke rose through the gorgeous foliage into the sunlight. As I drew near they ceased their talking and quieted the dogs that announced me. They returned my salutation pleasantly, and bid me welcome. They had made an open fire-place by building two low walls projecting from the face of a ledge of rock; a few stones in front kept the coals together, and some maple saplings lay across from wall to wall. The women stood about the fire, each beside her swingle-staff. This instrument is like a wooden pocket-knife, about two feet long, with legs supporting it at the height of a table. The flax which had lain on the ground for a month to soften is spread over the poles above the fire; when it is heated enough to loosen the fibres from the pith, it is taken by handfuls and drawn across the swingle-staff, under the blade, while this is worked up and down to break the stalks and make them flexible as a bunch of tow. The flax is afterward hatchelled to remove the broken pith and arrange the fibres for spinning. The women soon broke out in merry banter at the fire-tender, for allowing her flax to heat just a little too much; it flamed and disappeared in an instant. I am somewhat surprised at my own reconciliation with industries so antiquated, laborious, and slow, for we generally be lieve that machinery should take the place of hands. But a spinner or a reaper here does not call for sympathy. And is sympathy of any value where it is not needed? At all events, these people possess one advantage over our more mechanical workmen; their relation to work is direct, intimate, satisfying. They produce directly the very objects they need, not the secondary distant value of money which slips away and leaves want; their work is therefore

an intimate part of their own lives, not an insignificant fraction of some other man's ambition; and their efforts satisfy them, because they do not go beyond their necessities. As I left the grove, resplendent with autumn colors and sunshine, it was musical with the merriment of those contented women. They were incapable of appreciating their happiness in a life of objective realities, but they beat that flax with a willing arm in thinking of the good white linen that was to go on to their own backs.

The household labors go on at all seasons. Indeed, the Canadian women seem to merit their reputation of being smarter than the men. Certainly their productions are at least as necessary as those of the men. The women of this house clothe the family by their spinning, weaving, knitting, and sewing. They spend comparatively little time in keeping in order their small bare houses, or in attending to social duties; they waste no time in making adornments, or in intellectual pursuits; their tables are soon cleared of the spoons and the one dish containing the food; their plain monotonous fare is soon cooked. Pea soup, milk, and sour bread are the diet of the average farmer, though a few use salt pork, perhaps a cup of tea on Sunday morning, a very few vegetables in summer, and fresh meats in winter. Thus the expenses of the farm and the family are very small. The man, his wife, and his children generally do all the work of all kinds. If help is hired, the wages are low: $20 to $25 per year for a woman, and $80 to $100 for a man. On the Ile aux Coudres in the bay, where life is still more patriarchal, wages in harvest time are twenty cents a day for women and twenty-five cents for men. The tools are very plain and cheap. All the teaming is done with one-horse carts. The common road cart-with wooden springs-costs $15; the fashionable buckboard, $40. In lounging about the wheelwright's shop in the upper part of the village I noticed that even his kit of tools ancient and clumsy-would scarcely satisfy one of our jacks-of-all-trades on a farm. And his work was rough and heavy. A merchant of the village told me that all the outlays of a prosperous farmer here may be estimated at $100 per year-for tithes, taxes, repairs, groceries, etc. A very few of them make a profit of $100 to $200 per year, which they often store away in a

DRESSING FLAX.

for the long winters. The horses are well kept, being the pride of the habitant; but the cattle, fed on straw alone, and kept in small, close stables never cleaned out, or cleaned but once a week, barely live through the winter, and very often are too feeble to get up in the spring without help. The little money circulating in the country comes mostly from the lumbering establishments, and many of the farmers work at the lumber camps in winter. The markets of Quebec offer a quaint study of the habitant's financial condition. I have often sauntered through them in summer and in winter, wondering all the time whether I had gone back again to my rambles in France. At the Porte Saint-Jean on a winter market-day the place is covered with small boxsleighs backed up to the walks. Here and there frozen carcasses of mutton and pork stand up against the sleighs, a row of codfish stand on their heads along the wall, and quarters of light beef lie about on the snow. But generally the provisions and goods are in much smaller quantities. The market is a quaint assemblage of odd bits of produce and manufactures that can be spared from the farmer's barn and house. A few vegetables, some butter, socks, homespun cloth, fowls, or game from the woods, are collected from time to time, and the wife, or sometimes the husband, drives off to Quebec with them. The whole cargo may not be worth more than three dollars, and the distance may be fifty or even one hundred miles. But the trip costs little, and there is a balance of profit.

by visitors; and the catechism, after all, was clean enough to be sold for a sum that was important though small. In those times "the ancient habitants spent a sou with more reluctance than their descendants now spend a louis. Although they were generally rich, yet they ignored luxury; the productions of their farms supplied all their wants. A rich habitant, doing the generous for once, would buy for his daughter a trousseau consisting of a calico robe, a pair of cotton stockings, and a pair of shoes, all from a store; and this toilette often descended to the grandchildren of the bride." With such frugality it is not surprising that the Canadians are generally self-supporting and independent. But they have also the complement of this excessive virtue-a lack of enterprise that keeps them poor. Their very small farms, badly tilled, rarely produce more than subsistence enough

The date of my departure arrived only too soon, for I was sorry to leave the kind family who had extended their hospitality, beyond mere food and shelter, to include every pleasure and favor within their reach. They all came down to the beach, and as I paddled away wished me "bon voyage."

REZ.

of his wide leatherbordered trousers, he watched his comrades in their preparations for breakfast. One or two sleepy soldiers, yawning and stretching their limbs, the

alry reveille aroused me, and I sat up, rubbing my eyes and gathering my straggling wits. Again, right under my window, I heard the music, and being now thoroughly awakened, I I was in a room over the stables of a tavern in a small town in Normandy, where I had joined the troops the night before, with the intention of accompanying them during the autumn manœuvres, when the French army takes the field, each corps in territory assigned to it, there to prepare the troops by practice in the details of a campaign for the more serious business of real warfare.

sprang out of bed.

stables, or shambled off about some early duty, dragging their hobnailed boots over the stones, oblivious of an occasional puddle, while the stable guard stood under the archway, in relief against the wet road and gray trees of the orchard, where the smoke of some other early fires mingled with the mist of the falling rain.

Gradually the light increased, silvering the roof-tops and casting long reflections of the old buildings in the now bright surface of the pavement.

The day was just dawning in a wet gray sky as I dressed myself and looked from my window on the court of the tavern, a long square paved inclosure, bounded on three sides by irregular two-storied buildings of brick and stone, while on the fourth side a huge archway under an ancient tower permitted a glimpse across a street to an orchard beyond. In the lower stories were the tap-room, kitchen, stables, etc.; the sleeping-rooms were above, opening on wooden galleries, wet with the dripping of the rain from the overhanging eaves of the tiled and moss-grown roofs.

A smart sergeant clattered through the archway, and his authoritative voice was immediately heard, putting something like life into the sleepy soldiers, and evidently reminding the bugler that he had something else to do than to toast his toes at the fire, for, drawing his hands from his pockets and dropping his bit of straw, he assumed a wide-awake look, strode across the court, and disappeared through a doorway.

Under a shed in one corner of the yard some cavalry soldiers-chasseurs-à-cheval -who had been quartered here overnight, had already lighted a fire, and the bugler, lounging near them, his great-coat hanging from his shoulders in heavy folds, his bugle over his arm, and his shako pulled down over his eyes, listlessly chewed a bit of straw, as, hands buried in the pockets

The others also showed some alacrity, and began leading out their horses and grooming them, hissing at their work like so many serpents, and pausing occasionally to swallow a cup of hot coffee which, with an enormous piece of bread, was handed them by a comrade. The door of a bedroom opposite mine opened, and an officer in shirt sleeves and slippers, and wiping his hands on a towel, leaned over the railing of the gallery and called to his servant for his boots.

The horses were standing in long lines under the sheds, saddles and equipments were being put on, and sabres were clanking as the soldiers moved about, when I descended to the coffee-room, which I found already filled with officers of the staff. They were coming and going, or sitting at the tables drinking their coffee and smoking their morning cigarettes. All rose as the general, a handsome old soldier clad in the tasteful fatigue uniform of a general of division, entered the