"Mlle. G, take a good look at me: I'm rather worse than I seem by candlelight, and I've nine small children, and not a great deal of land. Will you marry me?" She rubbed her eyes, still half asleep, looked him over a moment, and said, "Yes." "Then be ready next Tuesday." In another case, the day after the banns of marriage had been published here, the intended found his betrothed crying by the window. "What's the matter, Maria?" "Well, Baptist, my sister Louise wants very much to marry, because she's older, and it's her turn first. And it makes me sad to see her disappointed. Now if you would only marry her! Everything is ready, you know, and it would be such a relief." "Well, well, don't cry about that," said he with a moment's surprise. "I don't mind if I do. Go and tell her to get ready." The Church forbids the union of bloodrelations, but it sells for a moderate price permits for even first cousins to marry, so that consanguineous unions are very common in these old parishes, where families have kept increasing and settling near the old homestead till they form clans sometimes numbering several hundred of one name. Moreover, the priest permits such marriages sometimes in consideration of certain circumstances, such as the needs of a family for a step-mother or step-father, the lack of beauty reducing the chances of a woman to get another offer, or the advance of age, or the poverty of a woman. All these circumstances have been abused to such a serious detriment of the population that Rome has seen fit to recommend a more rigorous enforcement of the law. The Catholic Church takes especial pains to promote marriage, and makes it a mortal sin to restrict the legitimate increase of population. This powerful influence has had a marked effect on the growth of the nation, which has increased from 60,000 in 1760 to over a million and a half. The limit of marriages seems to be only the lack of unmarried men. I rarely meet with bachelors, and they are given scarcely a moment's peace, unless they enter the priesthood. Unmarried women of the better class are condemned to a life of unusual ennui. In this small nation neither industry, trade, letters, arts, nor professions offer a career, education and charity are monopolized by religious orders, labor is not regarded with favor by ladies or gentlemen, and public movements are not large enough even for safety-valves. Hence very many girls enter the religious orders to escape bondage to idleness. Marriage is practically regarded as the aim of life, to be realized as a duty, and somewhat independently of sentiment. The courtship is short, the marriage contract is long and financial; then they are ready for wedlock. The bride and groom drive to church early in the morning with the parents and invited guests. After the ceremony the string of calèches or of carioles winds along the parish roads, stopping at the houses of relatives and at other places, when the friends come out and invite them in for drinking their health. The day passes in these visits and a dinner and supper at the home of the bride and of the groom. The religious and austere tone of life here is shown sometimes by a wedding party in taking its way to the church again at sundown, where they pray, or even do penance in the chemin de la croix. At St. Augustin, near Quebec, some young couples, zealous in mortification of the flesh, got the permission of the priest to live together as celibates, and they finally made vows of chastity for life. In this, however, they followed not the national example, but those of Champlain and some other of the devout Catholics from whom this colony derived its spirit. The national gayety re-appears just as marked as ever at the marriage dance, beginning at six or seven o'clock, after supper. The event is the most convivial of the whole lifetime, yet an average marriage among the habitants costs in all but $20. Sometimes at supper an ancient custom is still practiced among the gentry. The groom, who is expected to look after the material well-being of the bride, is on the alert to shield her from tricks, for he can not always count on her decorum in these circumstances. Some one drops a fork and sinks from his seat to pick it up. The groom, however, sees that he returns to his chair at once. While this is going on, another man has slipped under the table, and is crawling on all fours toward the bride. When the guests all rise after supper the bride remains seated. "Why," they ask, 'does madame remain alone at the table? Is she in ill humor already?" 66 "No," she replies; "but some one has stolen my slipper, and I can not walk barefooted." They carry her in her chair to the head of the room, where she is placed in state to await farther proceedings. A loud knocking and disputing are heard at the door, and presently a ragged peddler forces an entrance into the company, calling out, "Any old boots and shoes?" The company welcome this opportune arrival, and conduct him to the bride. Here, kneeling before her, he hauls out of his great bag all sorts of old boots and shoes, and tries them on the bride's dainty foot, amid the laughter and banter of the assemblage, at the expense of the neglectful groom. At last the bride's slipper turns up, to be bought by the groom at a good round price; and the money is spent in treating the company. Sometimes even the bride is stolen, but the lover's instinct has never yet failed to find his mate. I had not been invited to a wedding; but this social and hospitable people provide regularly for such cases by receiving a stranger as a survenant, or after-comer. As we drove up to the little house of M. Lévèque a crowd of bare-headed men and boys came thronging out of the door into the moonlight. The host at once welcomed us cordially, sent the horse to the stable, took us into the house, and gave me a seat on his right hand at the head of the room. For a wedding party the scene was quite typical of this economical and simple life. The unpainted room was packed with people, the men standing in a crowd smoking and chatting at the farther end, and the women sitting on one another's knees, or on benches along the walls. Two small lamps lighted but faintly this throng of homespun peasants, dressed generally in black or dark gray; and the great shadows covering the ceiling between the beams, and the dimness of the whole scene, made it a sombre picture for the brightest moment in the lives of two young couples. For a long while I saw no brides or grooms; but finally they came out of the blackness of the adjoining room, and danced a cotillion in the small space inclosed by the crowd. The brides were distinguished from the other girls, dressed in dark linsey-woolsey, by only a little white lace about the neck. As the Church forbids round dances, they practice chiefly cotillions, quadrilles, reels, and jigs. Commonly no partners are chosen; they dance with whoever happens to stand opposite, and the movements are full of the vigor and awkwardness of peasants. most interesting dances of the evening were the jigs by one of the brides and a burly uncombed farmer sixty-eight years old. He devoted himself seriously to the task in hand, thumping the floor, with en The livening regularity, with feet shod in moccasins. Once or twice he found time to smile on his young partner, but at once lowered his eyes again to the floor, while his twitching fingers beside his muscular thighs attested the nervous earnestness of his capering for her favor. The young lady, meanwhile, holding her trim fine figure erect, took her mincing steps with delicate poise and restrained agility; she watched his steps with downcast eyes, now and then rejecting him with a haughty turn of the head as she pirouetted and chasseyed at the changes of the tune; her slight quick steps sent ripples of shadowy folds down her skirts, and her youthful comeliness and coquettish ways were well set off by the sombre room, the rough crowd standing about her and her burly gray-haired partner. But the Canadian fiddler is the most striking feature of the dance. The one at this entertainment was a tall, powerful fellow in a red flannel shirt glowing beneath his black shaggy head. He is a national, historic character, having ac quired his artistic skill, his manner, his répertoire, from a long line of fiddlers. As a matter of fact, he is a stamping machine with a fiddle attachment. He generally holds the violin against his stomach, while he sits on the very edge of his chair, leans far back to keep his balance, and devotes his strength to stamping with both feet, which he raises clear of the floor from two to six inches. And all the while he keeps up an interesting pantomime; now he throws his head back and regards the ceiling, or droops his ear toward his distant instrument with a hopeless fondness. His fervor often contorts him into agonizing positions, when he turns his head toward a far-off ideal with a wonderfully yearning stretch of the neck. And all these affecting gestures reflect the movements of the artist's by no means invisible sole, for the musical phrases, having no connection therewith, are frequently drowned by those deafening crescendoes of leather. The fiddler's heels thus become the real centre of the entire performance. In one of the jigs a couple He who were engaged determined to monop- | secluded Canada joins the rest of the olize the dance for some time. But soon world for once in this season of rejoianother girl came on to the floor, and, cing. On Christmas - eve, however, the bowing off the first, took her place. At houses are so dark and still that you wonthe next change of figure another man der if the festival has been forgotten. dismissed the first in the same manner, In the convents the children are dreamand thus cleared the floor of the devoted ing of Bethlehem and the worship of the pair. But these returned in the same shepherds. They hear a chorus of angels manner at the next change, and so the chanting as they come near and nearer; contest went on for over an hour. The celestial light fills the world; when, sudcompany were now quite excited over the denly opening their eyes, they find the endurance of the first dancers, the mis- nuns lighting the lamps, and the choir chief of the meddlers, and, more than all, in the dormitory, chanting a Christmas over the efforts of the poor fiddler. carol to awaken them for the midnight stamped and stamped till the perspiration mass. All over the parish, throughout flowed, and the fiddle gave but feeble signs Canada, and indeed in every Catholic of life, while one contortion succeeded an- country, the people are issuing now from other with tragic force. But at last muscle their palaces or their cabins into the night, and nerve began to flag, he lost all sense and wending their way to the temples. of artistic contrast, and settled down to a The bells peal out at midnight, the arched monotonous hard pounding of the floor. windows glow, and soon the entire parish Then the by-standers came to the rescue is seen kneeling under the great dome. with eager encouragement. "Give it to 'em, Louis! Come, now, more nerve. That's it; just look at 'em-the lovers are at it again! Send 'em along, now. And his frantic feet leaped again as high as ever. At midnight the old women began to yawn rather pitifully; a crusty old fellow lying on the floor behind the stove had fewer jokes to send up at the girls as they passed. One of the grooms in his shirt sleeves settled in a chair tipped back in the doorway of the dark room, and played a Jew's-harp to the weakening per-side the manger statuettes of Mary and formance of the fiddler. Even the smoke and the laughter diminished in the farther shadowy end of the room. The carioles were soon brought to the door, and the company went off like bundles of robes down the road. As we drove away through the moonbeams, chatting in short sentences matching the crisp winter air, the night seemed remarkably clear after the dinginess of this peasants' feast. I looked from the hill-top across the dark currents and the glistening floes of the St. Lawrence, and beyond saw distinctly the fields and woods, even some lines of fences, at Les Éboulements, twenty-five miles away, on the Northern Mountains. Christmas and New-Year's are the culmination, though not the end, of Canadian winter life. Even the beggars are then most active and joyous in this charitable community. The housewives are busy for some days cooking meats and pastry and decorating their houses, and VOL. LXVIII.-No. 405.-25 In one of the lateral chapels a niche or grotto is made of spruce boughs, decorated with flowers, and brilliantly lighted with candles. The infant Jesus, dressed in a white robe, is here displayed in a manger filled with straw. The little Jesus of Tadousac is dressed in a rich silk costume of a courtier of Louis XIV., given to the chapel by a noble of that day. Here at Rivière Quelle a devout old servant of the parsonage used to make a dramatic scene of the event. She placed be Joseph, dressed as a priest and a nun, much smaller than their child, and a toy ass and bull. Aft The Infant remains on exhibition about two months, until after the fête of the Purification, and the people often say prayers before it. In the towns, at the fête of the Innocents, on the 28th December, the church is filled with little children led by their mothers or nurses. er the salut the priest takes the manger in his arms and shows it to the children passing by. The church resounds with their voices, some crying to kiss the image, others laughing with delight. After high mass, and the low mass that follows it immediately, each family returns to its home, where all sit down to a hearty Christmas supper, or at the very least to a lunch of doughnuts and liquor. In years gone by the hearty and convivial meal was more common than in these times of temperance reform. The holidays bring into the parishes here, as |