No More Learning

The road in this clayey-looking soil was exceedingly muddy in
consequence of the night's rain. We met an old woman directing her
dog, which was harnessed to a little cart, to the least muddy part of
it. It was a beggarly sight. But harnessed to the cart as he was, we
heard him barking after we had passed, though we looked anywhere but
to the cart to see where the dog was that barked. The houses commonly
fronted the south, whatever angle they might make with the road; and
frequently they had no door nor cheerful window on the road side. Half
the time they stood fifteen to forty rods from the road, and there was
no very obvious passage to them, so that you would suppose that there
must be another road running by them. They were of stone, rather
coarsely mortared, but neatly whitewashed, almost invariably one story
high and long in proportion to their height, with a shingled roof, the
shingles being pointed, for ornament, at the eaves, like the pickets
of a fence, and also one row halfway up the roof. The gables sometimes
projected a foot or two at the ridge-pole only. Yet they were very
humble and unpretending dwellings. They commonly had the date of their
erection on them. The windows opened in the middle, like blinds, and
were frequently provided with solid shutters. Sometimes, when we
walked along the back side of a house which stood near the road, we
observed stout stakes leaning against it, by which the shutters, now
pushed half open, were fastened at night; within, the houses were
neatly ceiled with wood not painted. The oven was commonly out of
doors, built of stone and mortar, frequently on a raised platform of
planks. The cellar was often on the opposite side of the road, in
front of or behind the houses, looking like an ice-house with us, with
a lattice door for summer. The very few mechanics whom we met had an
old-Bettyish look, in their aprons and _bonnets rouges_ like fools'
caps.
The men wore commonly the same _bonnet rouge_, or red woolen or
worsted cap, or sometimes blue or gray, looking to us as if they had
got up with their night-caps on, and, in fact, I afterwards found that
they had. Their clothes were of the cloth of the country, _etoffe du
pays_, gray or some other plain color. The women looked stout, with
gowns that stood out stiffly, also, for the most part, apparently of
some home-made stuff. We also saw some specimens of the more
characteristic winter dress of the Canadian, and I have since
frequently detected him in New England by his coarse gray homespun
capote and picturesque red sash, and his well-furred cap, made to
protect his ears against the severity of his climate.

It drizzled all day, so that the roads did not improve. We began now
to meet with wooden crosses frequently, by the roadside, about a dozen
feet high, often old and toppling down, sometimes standing in a square
wooden platform, sometimes in a pile of stones, with a little niche
containing a picture of the Virgin and Child, or of Christ alone,
sometimes with a string of beads, and covered with a piece of glass to
keep out the rain, with the words, _Pour la Vierge_, or INRI, on them.
Frequently, on the cross-bar, there would be quite a collection of
symbolical knickknacks, looking like an Italian's board; the
representation in wood of a hand, a hammer, spikes, pincers, a flask
of vinegar, a ladder, etc. , the whole, perchance, surmounted by a
weathercock; but I could not look at an honest weathercock in this
walk without mistrusting that there was some covert reference in it to
St. Peter. From time to time we passed a little one-story chapel-like
building, with a tin-roofed spire, a shrine, perhaps it would be
called, close to the path-side, with a lattice door, through which we
could see an altar, and pictures about the walls; equally open,
through rain and shine, though there was no getting into it. At these
places the inhabitants kneeled and perhaps breathed a short prayer. We
saw one schoolhouse in our walk, and listened to the sounds which
issued from it; but it appeared like a place where the process, not of
enlightening, but of obfuscating the mind was going on, and the pupils
received only so much light as could penetrate the shadow of the
Catholic Church. The churches were very picturesque, and their
interior much more showy than the dwelling-houses promised. They were
of stone, for it was ordered, in 1699, that that should be their
material. They had tinned spires, and quaint ornaments. That of Ange
Gardien had a dial on it, with the Middle Age Roman numerals on its
face, and some images in niches on the outside.