Down the St. Lawrence in a steamer, up the St. Lawrence on the maps, we
sail through another day full of eager interest. Everything is fresh,
new, novel. Is it because we are in high latitudes that the river and
the country look so high? I could fancy that we are on a plateau,
overlooking a continent. Now the water expands on all sides like an
ocean meeting the sky, and now we are sailing through hay-fields and
country orchards, as if the St. Lawrence had taken a turn into our
back-yard. We hug the Canada shore, and thick woods come down the banks
dipping their summer tresses in the cool Northern river,--broad
pasture-lands stretch away, away from river to sky,--brown, dubious
villages sail by at long intervals. On the distant southern shore
America has stationed her outposts, and unfrequent spires attest a
civilized, if remote life. In the sunny day all things are sunny, save
when a Claude Lorraine glass lends a dark, rich mystery to every hill
and cloud. The Claude Lorraine glass is a rara avus, and not only
gives new lights to the scenery, but brings out the human nature on
board in great force. The Anakim tells us of one man who asked him in
a confidential aside, if it was a show, whereat we all laugh. Even I
laugh at the man's ignorance,--I, a thief, an assassin, a traitor, who
six weeks ago had never heard of a Claude Lorraine glass; but nobody
can tell who has not tried it how much credit one gets for extensive
knowledge, if only he holds his tongue. In all my life I am afraid I
shall never learn as much as I have been inferred to know simply
because I kept still.
Down the St. Lawrence in an English steamer, where everything is not so
much English as John Bull-y. The servants at the table are thoroughly
and amusingly yellow-plush,--if that is the word I want, and if it is
not that, it is another; for I am quite sure of my idea, though not of
the name that belongs to it. The servants are smooth and sleek and
intense. They serve as if it was their business, and a weighty
business at that, demanding all the energies of a created being.
Accordingly they give their minds to it. The chieftain yonder, in
white choker and locks profusely oiled and brushed into a resplendent
expanse, bears Atlas on his shoulders. His lips are compressed, his
brow contracted, his eyes alert, his whole manner as absorbed as if it
were a nation, and not a plum-pudding, that he is engineering through a
crisis. Lord Palmerston is nothing to him, I venture to say. I know
the only way to accomplish anything is to devote yourself to it; still
I cannot conceive how anybody can give himself up so completely to a
dinner, even if it is his business and duty. However, I have nothing to
complain of in the results, for we are well served, only for a trifle
too much obviousness. Order and system are undoubtedly good things,
but I don't like to see an ado made about them. Our waiters stand
behind, at given stations, with prophetic dishes in uplifted hands,
and, at a certain signal from the arch-waiter, down they come like the
clash of fate. Now I suppose this is all very well, but for me I never
was fond of military life. Under my housekeeping we browse
indiscriminately. When we have nothing else to do, we have a meal. If
it is nearer noon than morning, we call it dinner. If it is nearer
night than noon, we call it supper, unless we have fashionable friends
with us, and then we call it dinner, and the other thing lunch; and ten
to one it is so scattered about that it has no name at all. At
breakfast you will be likely to find me on the door-step with a bowl of
bread and milk, while Halicarnassus sits on the bench opposite and
brandishes a chicken-bone with the cat mewing furiously for it at his
feet. A surreptitious doughnut is sweet and dyspeptic over the morning
paper, and gingerbread is always to be had by systematic and
intelligent foraging. Consequently this British drill and discipline
are thoroughly alarming to me, and I am surprised and grateful to find
that we are not individually regulated by a time-table. I expect a
drum-beat;--one, incision; two, mastication; three, deglutition;--but
what tyranny does one not expect to find under monarchical
institutions? Put that into your next volume, intelligent British
tourist.
Down the St. Lawrence with millionaires, and artists, and gay young
girls, and sallow-faced invalids, and weary clergymen and men of
business who do not know what to do with their unwonted leisure and
find pleasuring a most unmitigated bore, and mothers with sick
children, dear little unnatural pale faces and heavy eyes,--may your
angels bring you health, tiny ones!--and, most interesting of all to
me, a party of priests and nuns on their travels. They sit near me,
and I can see them without turning my head, and hear them without
marked listening. The priests are sleekheaded men, and such as sleep
o' nights, ruddy, rotund, robust, with black hair and white bands,
well-dressed, well-fed, well-to-do, jolly, gentlemanly, clique-y,
sensible, shrewd, au fait. The nuns--now I am vexed to look at them.
Are nuns expected to be any more dead to the world than priests? Then
I should like to know why they must make such frights of themselves,
while priests go about like Christians? Why shall a nun walk black,
and gaunt, and lank, with a white towel wrapped around her face, all
possible beauty and almost all attractiveness despoiled by her
hideously unbecoming dress, while priests wear their hair and their
hats and their coats and their collars like any other gentleman? Why
are the women to be set up as targets, while the men may pass unnoticed
and unknown? If the woman's head must be shorn and shaven, why not the
man's? It is not fair. I can think of no reason, pretext, or excuse,
unless it is to be found in the fact that women are more beautiful than
men, and need greater disfigurement to make them ugly. That is a fact
which I have long suspected, and observations made on this journey
confirm my suspicions,--intensify them into certainty. An ugly woman
is handsomer than a handsome man,--if you examine them closely. She is
finer-grained, more soft, more delicate. Men are animals more than
women. I do not now mean the generic sense in which we are all
animals, but specifically and superficially. Men look more like horses
and cows. See our brave soldiers returning from the wars--Heaven's
blessing rest upon them!--grand, but are they not gruff? A woman's
face may be browned, roughened, and reddened by exposure, yet her skin
is always skin; but often when a man's face has been sheltered from
storm and shine, his skin is hide. His mane is not generally so long
and flowing as a horse's, but there it is. Once, in a car, a man in
front of me put his arm on the back of his seat and fell asleep.
Presently his hand dropped over, and I looked at it,--a mass of broad,
brawny vitality, great pipes of veins, great crescents of nails, great
furrows at the joints, and you might cut a fine sirloin of beef off the
ball of the thumb; and this is a hand! _I_ call it an ox. A woman's
hand, by hard labor, spreads and cracks, and sprouts bunches at the
joints, and becomes tuberous at the ends of the fingers, but you can
see that it is a deformity and not nature. It tells a sad story of
neglect, of labor, perhaps of heartlessness, cruelty, suffering. But
this man's hand was born so. You would not think of pitying him any
more than you would pity an elephant for being an elephant instead of
an antelope. A woman's hair is silky and soft, and, if not always
smooth, susceptible of smoothness. A man's hair is shag. If he tries
to make it anything else, he does not mend the matter. Ceasing to be
shag, it does not become beauty, but foppishness, effeminacy, Miss
Nancy-ism. A man is a brute by the law of his nature. Let him ape a
woman, and he does not cease to be brutal, though he does become
ridiculous. The only thing for him to do is to be the best kind of a
brute.
In all of which remarks there is nothing derogatory to a man,--nothing
at which any one need take offence. I do not say that manhood is not a
very excellent kind of creation. Everything is good in its line. I
would just as soon have been a beetle as a woman, if I had never been a
woman, and did not know what it was. I don't suppose a horse is at all
crestfallen because he is a horse. On the contrary, if he is a
thorough-bred, blood horse, he is a proud and happy fellow, prancing,
spirited, magnificent. So a man may be so magnificently manly that one
shall say, Surely this is the monarch of the universe; and hide and
shag and mane shall be vitalized with a matchless glory. Let a man
make himself grand in his own sphere, and not sit down and moan because
he is only a connecting link between a horse and a woman.
I suppose Mother Church is fully cognizant of the true state of
affairs, and thinks men already sufficiently Satyric, but woman must be
ground down as much as possible, or the world will not be fended off.
And ground down they are in body and soul. O Mother Church! as I look
upon these nuns, I do not love you. You have done many wise and right
deeds. You have been the ark of the testimony, the refuge of the
weary, the dispenser of alms, the consoler of the sorrowful, the hope
of the dying, the blessing of the dead. You are convenient now, wieldy
in an election, effective when a gold ring is missing from the toilette
cushion, admirable in your machinery, and astonishing in your
persistency and power. But what have you done with these women? In
what secret place, in what dungeon of darkness and despair, in what
chains of torpidity and oblivion, have you hidden away their souls?
They are twenty-five and thirty years old, but they are not women. They
are nothing in the world but grown-up children. Their expression,
their observation, their interests, are infantile. There is no
character in their faces. There are marks of pettishness, but not of
passion. Nothing deep, tender, beneficent, maternal, is there. Time
has done his part, but life has left no marks. Their smiles and
laughter are the merriment of children, beautiful in children, but
painful here. Mother Church, you have dwarfed these women, helplessly,
hopelessly. You accomplish results, but you deteriorate humanity.
Down the St. Lawrence, the great, melancholy river, grand only in its
grandeur, solitary, unapproachable, cut off from the companionship, the
activities, and the interests of life by its rocks and rapids; yet calm
and conscious, working its work in silent state.
The rapids are bad for traffic, but charming for travellers; and what
is a little revenue more or less, to a sensation? There is not danger
enough to awaken terror, but there is enough to require vigilance; just
enough to exhilarate, to flush the cheek, to brighten the eye, to
quicken the breath; just enough for spice and sauce and salt; just
enough for you to play at storm and shipwreck, and heroism in danger.
The rocking and splashing of the early rapids is mere fun; but when you
get on, when the steamer slackens speed, and a skiff puts off from
shore, and an Indian pilot comes on board, and mounts to the
pilot-house, you begin to feel that matters are getting serious. But
the pilot is chatting carelessly with two or three bystanders, so it
cannot be much. Ah! this sudden cessation of something! This
unnatural quiet. The machinery has stopped. What! the boat is rushing
straight on to the banks. H-w-k! A whole shower of spray is dashed
into our faces. Little shrieks and laughter, and a sudden hopping up
from stools, and a sudden retreat from the railing to the centre of the
deck. Staggering, quivering, aghast, the boat reels and careens.
Seethe and plunge the angry waters, whirling, foaming, furious. Look
at the pilot. No chatting now, no bystanders, but fixed eyes and firm
lips, every muscle set, every nerve tense. Yes, it is serious.
Serious! close by us, seeming scarcely a yard away, frowns a black
rock. The maddened waves dash up its sullen back, the white,
passionate surf surges into its wrathful jaws. Here, there, before,
behind, black rocks and a wild uproar of waters, through all which
Providence and our pilot lead us safely into the still deep beyond, and
we look into each other's faces and smile.
And now the sunset reddens on the water, reddens on the bending sky and
the beautiful clouds, and men begin to come around with cards and
converse of the different hotels in the Montreal that is to be; one
tells us that the Prince of Wales beamed royal light upon the St.
Lawrence Hall, and we immediately decide to make the balance true by
patronizing its rival Donegana, whereupon a man--a mere disinterested
spectator of course--informs us in confidence that the Donegana is
nothing but ruins; he should not think we would go there; burnt down a
few years ago,--a shabby place, kept by a grass widow; but when was
American ever scared off by the sound of a ruin? So Donegana it is,
the house with the softly flowing Italian name; and then we pass under
the arch of the famous Victoria Bridge, whose corner-stone, or
cap-stone, or whatever it is that bridges have, was laid by the Prince
of Wales. (And to this day I do not know how the flag-staff of our
boat cleared the arch. It was ten feet above it, I should think, and I
looked at it all the time, and yet it shrivelled under in the most
laughable yet baffling manner.) In the mild twilight we disembarked,
and were quickly omnibused to the relics of Donegana, which turned out
to be very well, very well indeed for ruins, with a smart stone front,
and I don't know but stone all the way through, with the usual
allowance of lace curtains, and carpets, and gilding in the parlors,
notwithstanding flames and conjugal desolation; also a hand welcomed us
in the gas-lit square adjoining, and we were hospitably entreated and
transmitted to the breakfast-table next morning in perfect sight-seeing
trim; only the Anakim was cross, and muttered that they had sent him
out in the village to sleep among the hens, and there was a cackling
and screaming and chopping off of heads all night long. But the
breakfast-table assured us that many a cackle must have been the
swan-song of death. Halicarnassus wondered if something might not be
invented to consume superfluous noise, as great factories consume their
own smoke, but the Anakim said there was no call for any new invention
in that line so long as Halicarnassus continued in his present
appetite,--with a significant glance at the plump chicken which the
latter was vigorously converting into mammalia, and which probably was
the very one that disturbed the Anakim's repose. And then we discussed
the day's plan of operations. Halicarnassus said he had been
diplomatizing for a carriage. The man in the office told him he could
have one for five dollars. He thought that was rather high. Man said
it was the regular price; couldn't get one for any less in the city.
Halicarnassus went out and saw one standing idle in the market-place.
Asked the price. Three dollars. For how long? Drive you all round the
city, Sir; see all the sights. Then he went back and told the man at
the office.
"Well," I said, after he had swallowed a wassail-bowl of coffee, and
showed no disposition to go on, "what did you do then?"
"Came in to breakfast."
"Didn't you tell the clerk you would not take his carriage?"
"No."
"Didn't you tell the other man you would take his?"
"No."
"What DID you do?"
"Let it work. Don't be in a hurry. Give a thing time to work."
"And suppose it should work you out of any carriage at all?"
"No danger." And to be sure, when we had finished breakfast, the
three-dollar hack was there awaiting our pleasure. Our pleasure was to
drive out into the British possessions, first around the mountain,
which is quite a mountain for a villa, though nothing to speak of as a
mountain, with several handsome residences on its sides, and a good
many not so handsome; but the mountain is a pet of Montreal, and, as I
said, quite the thing for a cockney mountain. Then we went to the
French Cathedral, which is, I believe, the great gun of ecclesiastical
North America, but it hung fire with me. It was large, but not great.
There was no unity. It was not impressive. It was running over with
frippery,--olla podrida cropping out everywhere. It confused you. It
distracted you. It wearied you. You sighed for somewhat simple,
quiet, restful. The pictures were pronounced poor. I don't know
whether they were or not. I never can tell a picture as a cook tells
her mince-pie meat, by tasting it. One picture is a revealer and one
is a daub; but they are alike to me at first glance. For a picture has
an individuality all its own. You must woo it with tender ardor, or it
will not yield up its heart. The chance look sees only color and
contour; but as you gaze the color glows, the contour throbs, the
hidden soul heaves the inert canvas with the solemn palpitations of
life. Art is dead no longer, but informed with divine vitality. There
is no picture but Hope crowned and radiant, or pale and patient Sorrow,
or the tender sanctity of Love. The landscape of the artist is neither
painting nor nature, but summer fields and rosy sunsets over-flooded
with his own inward light. Only from her Heaven-anointed monarch, man,
can Nature receive her knightly accolade. And shall one detect the
false or recognize the true by the minute-hand? I suppose so, since
some do. But I cannot. People who live among the divinities may know
the goddess, for all her Spartan arms, her naked knee, and knotted
robe; but I, earth-born among earth-born, must needs behold the auroral
blush, the gliding gait, the flowing vestment, and the divine odor of
her purple hair.
In the vestibule of the French Cathedral, I believe it is, you will
behold a heart-rending sight in a glass case, namely, a group of
children, babies in long clothes and upwards, in a dreadful state of
being devoured by cotton-flannel pigs. Their poor little white frocks
are stained with blood, and they are knocked about piteously in various
stages of mutilation. A label in front informs you that certain
innocents in certain localities are subject to this shocking treatment;
and you are earnestly conjured to drop your penny or your pound into
the box, to rescue them from a fate so terrible. You must be a
cannibal if you can withstand this appeal. Suffering that you only
hear of, you can forget, but suffering going on right under your eyes
is not so easily disposed of.
Leaving the pigs and papooses, we will go to--which of the nunneries?
The Gray? Yes. But when you come home, everybody will tell you that
you ought to have visited the Black Nunnery. The Gray is not to be
mentioned in the same year. Do not, however, flatter yourself that in
choosing the Black you will be any more enviable; there will not be
wanting myriads who will assure you, that, not having seen the Gray,
you might as well have seen nothing at all. To the Gray Nunnery went
we, and saw pictures and altars and saints and candlesticks, and little
dove-cot floors of galleries jutting out, where a few women crossed,
genuflected, and mumbled, and an old woman came out of a door above one
of them, and asked the people below not to talk so loud, because they
disturbed the worshippers; but the people kept talking, and presently
she came out again, and repeated her request, with a little of the
Inquisition in her tones and gestures,--no more than was justifiable
under the circumstances: but she looked straight at me; and O old
woman! it was not I that talked, nor my party. We were noiseless as
mice. It was that woman over there in a Gothic bonnet, with a bunch of
roses under the roof as big as a cabbage. Presently the great doors
opened, and a procession of nuns marched in chanting their gibberish.
Of course they wore the disguise of those abominable caps, with gray,
uncouth dresses, the skirts taken up in front and pinned behind, after
the manner of washerwomen. Yet there were faces among them on which
the eye loved to linger,--some not too young for their years, some
furtive glances, some demure looks from the yet undeadened youth under
those ugly robes,--some faces of struggle and some of victory. O
Mother Church, here I do not believe in you! These natures are gnarled,
not nurtured. These elaborately reposeful faces are not natural.
These downcast eyes and droning voices are not natural. Not one thing
here is natural. Whisk off these clinging gray washing-gowns, put these
girls into crinoline and Gothic bonnets, and the innocent finery that
belongs to them, and send them out into the wholesome daylight to talk
and laugh and make merry,--the birthright of their young years. A
religion that deprives young girls or old girls of this boon is not the
religion of Jesus Christ. Don't tell me!
The nuns pass out, and we wander through the silent yard, cut off by
all the gloom of the medieval times from the din, activity, and good
cheer of the street beyond, and are conducted into the Old Men's
Department. The floors and furniture are faultlessly and fragrantly
clean. The kitchen is neat and susceptible of warmth and comfort, even
when the sun's short wooing is over. The beds are ranged along the
walls plump and nice; yet I hope that, when I am an old man, I shall
not have to sleep on blue calico pillow-cases. Here and there, within
and without, old men are basking in the rare sweet warmth of summer,
and with their canes and their sunshine seem very well bestowed. Now I
like you, Mother Church. You do better by your old men than you do by
your young women,--simply because you know more about them. How can
you, Papa and Messrs. Cardinals, be expected to understand what is good
for a girl? If only you would confine yourself to what you do
comprehend,--if only you would apply your admirable organizations to
legitimate purposes, and not run mad on machinery, you would do angels'
work.
From the old men's quarters we go upstairs where sewing and knitting
and all manner of fancy-work, especially in beads, are taught to long
and lank little girls by longer and lanker large girls, companioned by
a few old women, with commonplace knitting-work. Everything everywhere
is thoroughly neat and comfortable; but I have a desperate pang of
home-sickness; for if there is one condition of life more intolerable
than any other, it is a state of unvarying, hopeless comfort.
From the Gray Nunnery to the English Church, which I like much better
than the French Cathedral. There is a general tone of oakiness, solid,
substantial, sincere, like the England of tradition,--set off by a
brilliant memorial window and a memorial altar, and other memorial
things which I have forgotten, but which I make no doubt the people who
put them there have not forgotten. Here also we find, as all along in
Canada, vestiges of his Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales. We are
shown the Bible which he presented to the Church, and we gaze with
becoming reverence upon the august handwriting,--the pew in which he
worshipped; and the loyal beadle sees nothing but reverence in our
momentary occupation of that consecrated seat. Evidently there is but
a very faint line of demarcation in the old man's mind between his
heavenly and earthly king; but an old man may have a worse weakness
than this,--an unreasoning, blind, faithful fondness and reverence for
a blameless prince. God bless the young man, in that he is the son of
his father and mother. God help him, in that he is to be King of
England.
Chancel and window, altar, and arches and aisles and treasures,--is
there anything else? Yes, the apple that Eve ate, transfixed to
oak,--hard to understood, but seeing is believing. And then past
Nelson's monument, somewhat battered, like the hero whom it
commemorates; past the Champ de Mars, a fine parade-ground, hard and
smooth as a floor; past the barracks and the reservoir, to the new
Court-House, massive and plain. Then home to dinner and lounging; then
travelling-dresses, and the steamer, and a most lovely sunset on the
river; and then a night of tranquillity running to fog, and a morning
approach to the unique city of North America,--the first and the only
walled city _I_ ever saw, or you either, I dare say, if you would only
be willing to confess it. The aspect of the city, as one first
approaches it, is utterly strange and foreign,--a high promontory
jutting into the river, with a shelf of squalid, crowded, tall and
shaky, or low and squatty tenements at its base, almost standing on the
water and rising behind them, for the back of the shelf, a rough, steep
precipice abutted with the solid masonry of wall and citadel. A board
fastened somehow about half-way up the rocky cliff, inscribed with the
name of Montgomery, marks the spot where a hero, a patriot, a
gentleman, met his death. Disembarking, we wind along a stair of a
road, up steep ascents, and enter in through the gates into the
city,--the walled, upper city,--walls thick, impregnable, gates
ponderous, inert, burly. You did well enough in your day, old foes;
but with Armstrongs and iron-clads, and Ericsson still living, where
would you be?--answer me that. Quaint, odd, alien old city,--a faint
phantasmagoria of past conflicts and forgotten plans, a dingy fragment
of la belle France, a clinging reminiscence of England, a dim, stone
dream of Edinburgh, a little flutter of modern fashion, planted upon a
sturdy rampart of antiquity, a little cobweb of commerce and
enterprise, netting over a great deal of church and priest and king
with an immovable basis of stolid existence,--that is the Quebec I
inferred from the Quebec I saw. Nothing in it was so interesting to me
as itself. But passing by itself for the nonce, we prudently took
advantage of the fine morning, and drove out to the Falls of
Montmorency with staring eyes that wanted to take in all views, before,
behind, on this side and that, at once; and because we could not, the
joints of my neck at least became so dry with incessant action that
they almost creaked. Low stone cottages lined the road-sides, with
windows that opened like doors, with an inevitable big black stove
whenever your eye got far enough in, with a pleasant stoop in front,
with women perpetually washing the floors and the windows, with
beautiful and brilliant flowers blooming profusely in every window, and
often trailing and climbing about its whole area. Here, I take it, is
the home of a real peasantry, a contented class, comfortable and
looking for no higher lot. These houses seem durable and ultimate. The
roofs of both houses and piazzas are broken, projected, picturesque,
and often ornamented. They shelter, they protect, they brood, they
embrace. There are little trellises and cornices and fanciful
adornments. The solid homeliness is fringed with elegance. The people
and the houses do not own each other, but they are married. There is
love between them, and pride, and a hearty understanding. I can think
of a country where you see little brown or red clapboarded houses that
are neither solid nor elegant, that are both slight and
awkward,--angular and shingly and dismal. The roofs are intended just
to cover the houses, and are scanty at that. The sides are straight,
the windows inexorable; and for flowers you have a hollyhock or two,
and perhaps an uncomfortably tall sunflower, sovereign for hens. There
is no home-look and no home-atmosphere. I love that country better
than I like this; but, if you kill me for it, this drive is
picturesque. These dumpy little smooth, white, flounced and flowered
cottages look like wicker-gates to a happy valley,--born, not built.
The cottages of the country, in my thoughts, yes, and in my heart, are
neither born nor built, but "put up,"--just for convenience, just to
lodge in while waiting for something better, or till the corn is grown.
Coming man, benefactor of our race, you who shall show us how to be
contented without being sluggish,--how to be restful, and yet
aspiring,--how to take the goods the gods provide us, without losing
out of manly hearts the sweet sense of providing,--how to plant happy
feet firmly on the present, and not miss from eager eyes the
inspiriting outlook of the future,--how to make a wife of today, and
not a mistress of tomorrow,--come quickly to a world that sorely needs
you, and bring a fresh evangel.
The current of our thoughts is broken in upon by a new and peculiar
institution. Every single child, and every group of children on the
road, leaves its play as we pass by, and all dart upon us on both sides
of the carriage, almost under the wheels, almost under the horses'
feet, with out-stretched blackened hands, and intense bright black
eyes, running, panting, shouting, "Un sou! un sou! un sou!" I do not
think I am quite in love with this as an institution, but it is very
lively as a spectacle; and the little fleet-footed, long-winded beggars
show a touching confidence in human nature. There is no servility in
their beggary; and when it is glossed over with a thin mercantile
veneering, by the brown little paws holding out to you a gorgeous
bouquet of one clover-blossom, two dandelions, and a quartette of
sorrel-leaves, why, it ceases to be beggarly, and becomes traffic
overlaid with grace, the acanthus capital surmounting the fluted shaft.
We meet also continual dog-carts, something like the nondescript which
"blind Carwell" used to drag. Did you never see it? Well, then, like
the cart in which the ark went up to Kirjath-jearim. Now you must know.
Stubborn two-wheeled vehicles, with the whole farm loaded into the
body, and the whole family on the seat. Here comes one drawn by a cow,
not unnatural. Unnatural! It is the key-note of the tune. Everything
is cow-y,--slow and sure, firm, but not fast, kindly, sunny, ruminant,
heavy, lumbering, basking, content. Calashes also we meet,--a
cumbrous, old-fashioned "one-hoss shay," with a yellow body, a
suspicion of springlessness, wheels with huge spokes and broad rims,
and the driver sitting on the dash-board. Now we are at the Falls of
Montmorency. If you would know how they look, go and see them. If you
have seen them, you don't need a description; and if you have not seen
them, a description would do no good. From the Falls, if you are
unsophisticated, you will resume your carriage and return to the city;
but if you are au fait, you will cross the high-road, cross the
pastures, and wind down a damp, mossy wood-path to the steps of
Montmorency,--a natural phenomenon, quite as interesting as, and more
remarkable than, the Falls,--especially if you go away without seeing
it. Any river can fall when it comes to a dam. In fact, there is
nothing for it to do but fall; but it is not every river that can carve
out in its rage such wonderful stairways as this,--seething and foaming
and roaring and leaping through its narrow and narrowing channel, with
all the turbulence of its fiery soul unquelled, though the grasp of
Time is on its throat, silent, mighty, irresistible.
Montmorency,--Montmorenci,--sweet and storied name! You, too, have
received the awful baptism. Blood has mingled with your sacrifices.
The song of your wild waves has been lost in the louder thunders of
artillery, and the breezes sweeping through these green woods have
soothed the agonies of dying men. Into one heart this ancient name,
heavy with a weight of disaster and fancied disgrace, sank down like
lead,--a burden which only death could cast off, only victory destroy;
and death came hand in hand with victory.
Driving home, we take more special note of what interested us
aggressively before,--Lord Elgin's residence,--the house occupied by
the Duke of Kent when a young man in the army here, long I suppose
before the throne of England placed itself at the end of his vista.
Did the Prince of Wales, I wonder, visit this place, and, sending away
his retinue, walk slowly alone under the shadows of these sombre trees,
striving to bring back that far-off past, and some vague outline of the
thoughts, the feelings, the fears and fancies of his grandfather, then,
like himself, a young man, but, not like himself, a fourth son, poor
and an exile, with no foresight probably of the exaltation that awaited
his line,--his only child to be not only the lady of his land, but our
lady of the world,--a warm-hearted woman worthily seated on the proud
throne of Britain,--a noble and great-souled woman, in whose sorrow
nations mourn, for whose happiness nations pray,--whose name is never
spoken in this far-off Western world but with a silent blessing.
Another low-roofed, many-roomed, rambling old house I stand up in the
carriage to gaze at lingeringly with longing, misty eyes,--the sometime
home of Field Marshal the Marquis de Montcalm. Writing now of this in
the felt darkness that pours up from abandoned Fredericksburg, fearing
not what the South may do in its exultation, but what the North may do
in its despondency, I understand, as I understood not then, nor ever
before, what comfort came to the dying hero in the certain thought, "I
shall not live to see the surrender of Quebec."
Now again we draw near the city whose thousands of silver (or perhaps
tin) roofs dazzle our eyes with their resplendence, and I have an
indistinct impression of having been several times packed out and in to
see sundry churches, of which I remember nothing except that I looked
in vain to see the trophies of captured colors that once hung there,
commemorating the exploits of the ancients,--and on the whole, I don't
think I care much about churches except on Sundays. Somewhere in
Canada--perhaps near Lorette--is some kind of a church, perhaps the
oldest, or the first Indian church in Canada,--or may be it was
interesting because it was burnt down just before we got there. That
is the only definite reminiscence I have of any church in Quebec and
its suburbs, and that is not so definite as it might be. I am sure I
inspected the church of St. Roque and the church of St. John, because I
have entered it in my "Diary"; but if they were all set down on the
table before me at this moment, I am sure I could not tell which was
which, or that they had not been transported each and all from Boston.
But we ascend the cliff, we enter the citadel, we walk upon the Plains
of Abraham, and they overpower you with the intensity of life. The
heart beats in labored and painful pulsations with the pressure of the
crowding past. Yonder shines the lovely isle of vines that gladdened
the eyes of treacherous Cartier, the evil requiter of hospitality.
Yonder from Point Levi the laden ships go gayly up the sparkling river,
a festive foe. Night drops her mantle, and silently the unsuspected
squadron floats down the stealthy waters, and debarks its fateful
freight. Silently in the darkness, the long line of armed men writhe
up the rugged path. The rising sun reveals a startling sight. The
impossible has been attained. Now, too late, the hurried summons
sounds. Too late the deadly fire pours in. Too late the thickets
flash with murderous rifles. Valor is no substitute for vigilance.
Short and sharp the grapple, and victor and vanquished alike lie down
in the arms of all-conquering death. Where this little tree ventures
forth its tender leaves, Wolfe felt the bullet speeding to his heart.
Where this monument stands, his soldier-soul fled, all anguish soothed
away by the exultant shout of victory,--fled from passion and pain,
from strife and madness, into the eternal calm.
Again and again has this rock under my feet echoed to the tramp of
marching men. Again and again has this green and pleasant plain been
drenched with blood, this blue, serene sky hung with the black pall of
death. This broad level of pasture-land, high up above the rushing
waters of the river, but coldly wooed by the faint northern sun, and
fiercely swept by the wrathful northern wind, has been the golden bough
to many an eager seeker. Against these pitiless cliffs full many a
hope has hurtled, full many a heart has broken. Oh the eyes that have
looked longingly hither from far Southern homes! Oh the thoughts that
have vaguely wandered over these bluffs, searching among the shouting
hosts, perhaps breathlessly among the silent sleepers, for household
gods! Oh the cold forms that have lain upon these unnoting rocks! Oh
the white cheeks that have pressed this springing turf! Oh the dead
faces mutely upturned to God!
Struggle, conflict, agony,--how many of earth's Meccas have received
their chrism of blood! Thrice and four times hopeless for humanity, if
battle is indeed only murder, violence, lust of blood, or power, or
revenge,--if in that wild storm of assault and defence and deathly hurt
only the fiend and the beast meet incarnate in man. But it cannot be.
Battle is the Devil's work, but God is there. When Montgomery cheered
his men up their toilsome ascent along this scarcely visible path over
the rough rocks, and the treacherous, rugged ice, was he not upborne by
an inward power, stronger than brute's, holier than fiend's, higher
than man's? When Arnold flung himself against this fortress, when he
led his forlorn hope up to these sullen, deadly walls, when, after
repulse and loss and bodily suffering and weakness, he could still
stand stanch against the foe and exclaim, "I am in the way of my duty,
and I know no fear!" was it not the glorious moment of that dishonored
life? Battle is of the Devil, but surely God is there. The
intoxication of excitement, the sordid thirst for fame and power, the
sordid fear of defeat, may have its place; but there, too, stand high
resolve, and stern determination,--pure love of country, the immortal
longing for glory, ideal aspiration, god-like self-sacrifice, loyalty
to soul, to man, to the Highest. The meanest passions of the brute may
raven on the battle-field, but the sublimest exaltations of man have
found there fit arena.
From the moment of our passing into the citadel enclosure, a young
soldier has accompanied us,--whether from caution or courtesy,--and
gives us various interesting, and sometimes startling information. He
assures us that these guns will fire a ball eight miles,--a long range,
but not so long as his bow, I fear. I perceive several gashes or slits
in the stone wall of the buildings, and I ask him what they are. "Them
are for the soldiers' wives hin the garrison," he replies promptly. I
say nothing, but I do not believe they are for the soldiers' wives. A
soldier's wife could not get through them. "How many soldiers in a
regiment are allowed to have wives?" asks Halicarnassus. "Heighty,
sir," is the ready response. I am a little horror-struck, when we
leave, to see Halicarnassus hold out his hand as if about to give money
to this brave and British soldier, and scarcely less so to see our
soldier receive it quietly. But I need not be, for my observation
should have taught me that small change--fees I believe it is
called--circulates universally in Canada. Out doors and in, it is all
one. Everybody takes a fee, and is not ashamed. You fee at the falls,
and you fee at the steps. You fee the church, and here we have feed
the army; and if we should call on the Governor-General, I suppose one
would drop a coin into his outstretched palm, and he would raise his
hat and say, "Thank you, sir." I do not know whether there is any
connection between this fact and another which I noticed; but if the
observation be superficial, and the connection imaginary, I shall be no
worse off than other voyageurs, so I will hazard the remark, that I saw
very few intellectual or elegant looking men and women in Quebec, or,
for that matter, in Canada. Everybody looked peasant-y or shoppy,
except the soldiers, and they were noticeably healthy, hale, robust,
well kept; yet I could not help thinking that it is a poor use to put
men to. These soldiers seem simply well-conditioned animals, fat and
full-fed; but not nervous, intellectual, sensitive, spiritual.
However, if the people of Canada are not intellectual, they are pious.
"Great on saints here," says Halicarnassus. "They call their streets
St. Genevieve, St. Jean, and so on; and when they have run through the
list, and are hard up, they club them and have a Street of All Saints."
Canada seemed to be a kind of Valley of Jehoshaphat for Secessionists.
We scented the aroma somewhat at Saratoga; nothing to speak of, nothing
to lay hold of; but you were conscious of a chill on your warm loyalty.
There were petty smirks and sneers and quips that you could feel, and
not see or hear. You SENSED, to use a rustic expression, the presence
of a class that was not palpably treasonable, but rather half cotton.
But at Canada it comes out all wool. The hot South opens like a double
rose, red and full. The English article is cooler and supercilious. I
say nothing, for my role is to see; but Halicarnassus and the Anakim
exchange views with the greatest nonchalance, in spite of pokes and
scowls and various subtabular hints.
"What is the news?" says one to the other, who is reading the morning
paper.
"Prospect of English intervention," says the other to one.
"Then we are just in season to see Canada for the last time as a
British province," says the first.
"And must hurry over to England, if we design to see St. George and the
dragon tutelizing Windsor Castle," says the second; whereupon a John
Bull yonder looks up from his 'am and heggs, and the very old dragon
himself steps down from the banner-folds, and glares out of those irate
eyes, and the ubiquitous British tourist, I have no doubt, took out his
notebook, and put on his glasses and wrote down for home consumption
another instance of the insufferable assurance of these Yankees.
"Where have you been?" I ask Halicarnassus, coming in late to breakfast.
"Only planning the invasion of Canada," says he, coolly, as if it were
a mere pre-prandial diversion, all of which was not only rude, but
quite gratuitous, since, apart from the fact that we might not be able
to get Canada, I am sure we don't want it. I am disappointed. I
suppose I had no right to be. Doubtless it was sheer ignorance, but I
had the idea that it was a great country, rich in promise if immature
in fact,--a nation to be added to a nation when the clock should strike
the hour,--a golden apple to fall into our hands when the fulness of
time should come. Such inspection as a few days' observation can give,
such inspection as British tourists find sufficient to settle the facts
and fate of nations, leads me to infer that it is not golden at all,
and not much of an apple; and I cannot think what we should want of it,
nor what we should do with it if we had it. The people are radically
different from ours. Fancy those dark-eyed beggars and those
calm-mouthed, cowy-men in this eager, self-involved republic. They
might be annexed to the United States a thousand times and never be
united, for I do not believe any process in the world would turn a
French peasant into a Yankee farmer. Besides, I cannot see that there
is anything of Canada except a broad strip along the St. Lawrence
River. It makes a great show on the map, but when you ferret it out,
it is nothing but show--and snow and ice and woods and barrenness; and
I, for one, hope we shall let Canada alone.
"I think we shall be obliged to leave Quebec tomorrow evening," says
Halicarnassus, coming into the hotel parlor on Saturday evening.
"Not at all," I exclaim, promptly laying an embargo on that iniquity.
"Otherwise we shall be compelled to remain till Monday afternoon at
four o'clock."
"Which we can very contentedly do."
"But lose a day."
"Keeping the Sabbath holy is never losing a day," replies his guide,
philosopher, and friend, sententiously and severely, partly because she
thinks so, and partly because she is well content to remain another day
in Quebec.
"But as we shall not start till five o'clock," he lamely pleads, "we
can go to church twice like saints."
"And begin at five and travel like sinners."
"It will only be clipping off the little end of Sunday."
Now that is a principle the beginning of which is as when one letteth
out water, and I will no tolerate it. Short weights are an abomination
to the Lord. I would rather steal outright than be mean. A highway
robber has some claims upon respect; but a petty, pilfering, tricky
Christian is a damning spot on our civilization. Lord Chesterfield
asserts that a man's reputation for generosity does not depend so much
on what he spends, as on his giving handsomely when it is proper to
give at all; and the gay lord builded higher and struck deeper than he
knew, or at least said. If a man thinks the Gospel does not require
the Sabbath to be strictly kept, I have nothing to say; but if he
pretends to keep it, let him keep the whole of it. It takes twenty-four
hours to make a day, whether it be the first or the last of the week.
I utterly reject the idea of setting off a little nucleus of Sunday,
just a few hours of sermon, and then evaporating into any common day.
I want the good of Sunday from beginning to end. I want nothing but
Sunday between Saturday and Monday. Week-days filtering in spoil the
whole. What is the use of having a Sabbath-day, a rest-day, if Mondays
and Tuesdays are to be making continual raids upon it? What good do
dinner-party Sundays and travelling Sundays and novel-reading Sundays
do? You want your Sunday for a rest,--a change,--a breakwater. It is
a day yielded to the poetry, to the aspirations, to the best and
highest and holiest part of man. I believe eminently in this world. I
have no kind of faith in a system that would push men on to heaven
without passing through a novitiate on earth. What may be for us in the
future is but vaguely revealed,--just enough to put hope at the bottom
of our Pandora's box; but our business is in this world. Right through
the thick and thin of this world our path lies. Our strength, our
worth, our happiness, our glory, are to be attained through the
occupations and advantages of this world. Yet through discipline, and
not happiness, is the main staple here, it is not the only product. Six
days we must labor and do all work, but the seventh is a holiday. Then
we may drop the absorbing now, and revel in anticipated joys,--lift
ourselves above the dusty duties, the common pleasures that weary and
ensoil, even while they ennoble us, and live for a little while in the
bright clear atmosphere of another life,--soothed, comforted,
stimulated by the sweetness of celestial harmonies.
"O day most calm, most bright,
The fruit of this, the next world's bud,
The indorsement of Supreme delight,
Writ by a Friend, and with his blood,--
The couch of time, care's balm and bay,--
The week were dark but for thy light,
Thy torch doth show the way."
He is no friend to man who would abate one jot or tittle of our
precious legacy.
Afloat in literature may be found much objurgation concerning the
enforced strictures of the old Puritan Sabbath. Perhaps there was a
mistake in that direction; but I was brought up on them, and they never
hurt me any. At least I was never conscious of any harm, certainly of
no suffering. As I look back, I see no awful prisons and chains and
gloom, but a pleasant jumble of best clothes,--I remember now their
smell when the drawer was opened,--and Sunday-school lessons, and baked
beans, and a big red Bible with the tower of Babel in it full of little
bells, and a walk to church two miles through the lane, over the bars,
through ten-acres, over another pair of bars, through a meadow, over
another pair of bars, by Lubber Hill, over a wall, through another
meadow, through the woods, over the ridge, by Black Pond, over a fence,
across a railroad, over another fence, through a pasture, through the
long woods, through a gate, through the low woods, through another
gate, out upon the high-road at last. And then there was the long
service, during which a child could think her own thoughts, generally
ranging no higher than the fine bonnets around her, but never tired,
never willing to stay at home; and then Sunday school, and
library-books, and gingerbread, and afternoon service, and the long
walk home or the longer drive, and catechism in the evening and the
never-failing Bible. O Puritan Sabbaths! doubtless you were sometimes
stormy without and stormy within; but looking back upon you from afar,
I see no clouds, no snow, but perpetual sunshine and blue sky, and ever
eager interest and delight,--wild roses blooming under the old stone
wall, wild bees humming among the blackberry-bushes, tremulous sweet
columbines skirting the vocal woods, wild geraniums startling their
shadowy depths; and I hear now the rustle of dry leaves, bravely
stirred by childish feet, just as they used to rustle in the October
afternoons of long ago. Sweet Puritan Sabbaths! breathe upon a restless
world your calm, still breath, and keep us from the evil!
Somewhat after this fashion I harangued Halicarnassus, who was shamed
into silence, but not turned from his purpose; but the next morning he
came up from below after breakfast, and informed me, with an air
mingled of the condescension of the monarch and the resignation of the
martyr, that, as I was so scrupulous about travelling on the Sabbath,
he had concluded not to go till Monday afternoon. No, I said, I did
not wish to assume the conduct of affairs. I had given my protest, and
satisfied my own conscience; but I was not head of the party, and did
not choose to assume the responsibility of its movements. I did not
think it right to travel on Sunday, but neither do I think it right for
one person to compel a whole party to change its plans out of deference
to his scruples. So I insisted that I would not cause detention. But
Halicarnassus insisted that he would not have my conscience forced.
Now it would seem natural that so tender and profound a regard for my
scruples would have moved me to a tender and profound gratitude; but
nobody understands Halicarnassus except myself. He is a dark lane,
full of crooks and turns,--a labyrinth which nobody can thread without
the clew. That clew I hold. I know him. I can walk right through him
in the darkest night without any lantern. He is fully aware of it. He
knows that it is utterly futile for him to attempt to deceive me, and
yet, with the infatuation of a lunatic, he is continually producing his
flimsy little fictions for me as continually to blow away. For
instance, when we were walking down the path to the steps of
Montmorency, Grande called out in delight at some new and beautiful
white flowers beside the path. What were they? I did not know. What
are they, Halicarnassus? "Ah! wax-flowers," says he, coming up, and
Grande passed on content, as would ninety-nine out of a hundred; but an
indescribable something in his air convinced me that he was not drawing
on his botany for his facts. I determined to get at the root of the
matter.
"Do you mean," I asked, "that the name of those flowers is wax-flowers?"
"Of course," he replied. "Why not?"
"Do you mean," I persisted, confirmed in my suspicions by his
remarkable question, "that you know that they are wax-flowers, or that
you do not know that they are not wax-flowers?"
"Why, look at 'em for yourself. Can't you see with your own eyes?" he
ejaculated, attempting to walk on.
I planted myself full in front of him. "Halicarnassus, one step
further except over my lifeless body you do not go, until you tell me
whether those are or are not wax-flowers?"
"Well," he said, brought to bay at last, and sheepishly enough whisking
off the heads of a dozen or two with his cane, "if they are not that,
they are something else." There!
So when he showed his delicate consideration for my conscience, I was
not grateful, but watchful. I detected under the glitter something
that was not gold. I made very indifferent and guarded
acknowledgments, and silently detached a corps of observation. In five
minutes it came out that no train left Quebec on Sunday!