IF the writer forgets himself once in a while and uses words not familiar
to his boy readers, he hopes they will forgive him and put all such slips
down as the result of leaving boys' company once in a while and
associating with men. The reader knows that men dearly love big, ungainly
words and that just as soon as boys do something worth while the men get
busy hunting up some top-heavy name for it.
When one is talking of foreign things, however, it is well to give the
foreign names for those things, and, since the next house to be described
is not a real American one but a native of Canada, the Canadian names are
given for its parts. While in northern Quebec, making notes for the
Kanuck, the writer enlisted the interest of a fellow member of the
Camp-Fire Club of America, Doctor Alexander Lambert, and through him
secured the names of all parts of the Canadian shack.
The author is not a French-Canadian, and, although, like most of his
readers, he studied French at school, what he learned of that great
language is now securely locked up in one of the safe-deposit vaults of
his brain and the key lost.
He owns up to his ignorance because he is a scout and would not try to
deceive his readers, also because if the reader's knowledge of French
enables him to find some error, the writer can sidestep the mistake and
say, "'Tain't mine." But, joking aside, these names are the ones used in
the Province of Quebec and are here given not because they are good French
but because they are the names used by the builders among the natives
known by the Indians as _les habitants_