No More Learning

I inquired at
a principal bookstore for books published in Montreal. They said that
there were none but school-books and the like; they got their books
from the States. From time to time we met a priest in the streets, for
they are distinguished by their dress, like the _civil_ police. Like
clergymen generally, with or without the gown, they made on us the
impression of effeminacy. We also met some Sisters of Charity, dressed
in black, with Shaker-shaped black bonnets and crosses, and cadaverous
faces, who looked as if they had almost cried their eyes out, their
complexions parboiled with scalding tears; insulting the daylight by
their presence, having taken an oath not to smile. By cadaverous I
mean that their faces were like the faces of those who have been dead
and buried for a year, and then untombed, with the life's grief upon
them, and yet, for some unaccountable reason, the process of decay
arrested.

"Truth never fails her servant, sir, nor leaves him
With the day's shame upon him. "

They waited demurely on the sidewalk while a truck laden with raisins
was driven in at the seminary of St. Sulpice, never once lifting their
eyes from the ground.

The soldier here, as everywhere in Canada, appeared to be put forward,
and by his best foot. They were in the proportion of the soldiers to
the laborers in an African ant-hill. The inhabitants evidently rely on
them in a great measure for music and entertainment. You would meet
with them pacing back and forth before some guard-house or
passage-way, guarding, regarding, and disregarding all kinds of law by
turns, apparently for the sake of the discipline to themselves, and
not because it was important to exclude anybody from entering that
way. They reminded me of the men who are paid for piling up bricks and
then throwing them down again. On every prominent ledge you could see
England's hands holding the Canadas, and I judged by the redness of
her knuckles that she would soon have to let go.
In the rear of such a
guard-house, in a large graveled square or parade ground, called the
Champ de Mars, we saw a large body of soldiers being drilled, we being
as yet the only spectators. But they did not appear to notice us any
more than the devotees in the church, but were seemingly as
indifferent to fewness of spectators as the phenomena of nature are,
whatever they might have been thinking under their helmets of the
Yankees that were to come. Each man wore white kid gloves. It was one
of the most interesting sights which I saw in Canada. The problem
appeared to be how to smooth down all individual protuberances or
idiosyncrasies, and make a thousand men move as one man, animated by
one central will; and there was some approach to success. They obeyed
the signals of a commander who stood at a great distance, wand in
hand; and the precision, and promptness, and harmony of their
movements could not easily have been matched. The harmony was far more
remarkable than that of any choir or band, and obtained, no doubt, at
a greater cost. They made on me the impression, not of many
individuals, but of one vast centipede of a man, good for all sorts of
pulling down; and why not then for some kinds of building up? If men
could combine thus earnestly, and patiently, and harmoniously to some
really worthy end, what might they not accomplish? They now put their
hands, and partially perchance their heads together, and the result is
that they are the imperfect tools of an imperfect and tyrannical
government. But if they could put their hands and heads and hearts and
all together, such a cooperation and harmony would be the very end and
success for which government now exists in vain,--a government, as it
were, not only with tools, but stock to trade with.

I was obliged to frame some sentences that sounded like French in
order to deal with the market-women, who, for the most part, cannot
speak English. According to the guidebook the relative population of
this city stands nearly thus: two fifths are French-Canadian; nearly
one fifth British-Canadian; one and a half fifths English, Irish, and
Scotch; somewhat less than one half fifth Germans, United States
people, and others. I saw nothing like pie for sale, and no good cake
to put in my bundle, such as you can easily find in our towns, but
plenty of fair-looking apples, for which Montreal Island is
celebrated, and also pears cheaper and I thought better than ours, and
peaches, which, though they were probably brought from the South, were
as cheap as they commonly are with us. So imperative is the law of
demand and supply that, as I have been told, the market of Montreal is
sometimes supplied with green apples from the State of New York some
weeks even before they are ripe in the latter place. I saw here the
spruce wax which the Canadians chew, done up in little silvered
papers, a penny a roll; also a small and shriveled fruit which they
called _cerises_, mixed with many little stems, somewhat like raisins,
but I soon returned what I had bought, finding them rather insipid,
only putting a sample in my pocket.