You have been so good to me, in purchasing, within a few weeks, five
hundred copies of a feuilleton, only intended for private circulation, I
should like to show my appreciation, by catering to your desire for
information regarding our dear old city, Quebec; but what can I do? My
learned friend, James Macpherson LeMoine, Esq., with his wonderful
knowledge of facts, so exhausted the subject in his excellent and
beautifully got up book, "Picturesque Quebec," I am utterly overwhelmed.
Until I began to study the matter I was quite ignorant that he had
written so fully on these matters, so I can only play Boswell to his
Johnson, and as without Boswell many of the sayings of the immortal
Johnson would have been lost, I too may have my use in recording crumbs
of information, interesting and instructive, though lacking the dignity
of history.
Yours truly,
CHARLOTTE HOLT GETHINGS MACPHERSON
*OLD MEMORIES:*
*AMUSING AND HISTORICAL.*
SEQUEL TO "REMINISCENCES OF OLD QUEBEC,"
BY MRS. DANIEL MACPHERSON.
My first recollection is that of being drawn in a child’s carriage by
old Germain, messenger of the Quebec Bank (where I was born), to the old
convent, formerly occupying the site of McCall, Shehyn & Co.’s store at
the foot of Mountain Hill in St. Peter Street, Quebec. This convent has
been non-existant for forty-seven years. Its community now reside in
St. Joseph Street, St. Roch’s. When this convent was there, there was
no St. Peter Street, there were no wharves, and an old sister told me
the batteau men often struck their sails against their convent. I
remember my father often called at the convent to take me out boating on
the St. Lawrence River that lapped its shores, for the lower town of
Quebec was then a delightful residence for Quebec people, only the
military then residing in the Upper Town. Applying for information
about this old convent to Ville Marie, the Mother House of this order, I
received the following letter from one of the ladies: