No More Learning

But an American--one who has made a tolerable use of his
opportunities--cares, comparatively, little about such things, and is
advantageously nearer to the primitive and the ultimate condition of
man in these respects. It is a government, that English one,--like
most other European ones,--that cannot afford to be forgotten, as you
would naturally forget it; under which one cannot be wholesomely
neglected, and grow up a man and not an Englishman merely,--cannot be
a poet even without danger of being made poet-laureate! Give me a
country where it is the most natural thing in the world for a
government that does not understand you to let you alone. One would
say that a true Englishman could speculate only within bounds. (It is
true the Americans have proved that they, in more than one sense, can
_speculate_ without bounds. ) He has to pay his respects to so many
things, that, before he knows it, he _may_ have paid away all he is
worth. What makes the United States government, on the whole, more
tolerable--I mean for us lucky white men--is the fact that there is so
much less of government with us. Here it is only once in a month or a
year that a man _needs_ remember that institution; and those who go to
Congress can play the game of the Kilkenny cats there without fatal
consequences to those who stay at home, their term is so short; but in
Canada you are reminded of the government every day. It parades itself
before you. It is not content to be the servant, but will be the
master; and every day it goes out to the Plains of Abraham or to the
Champ de Mars and exhibits itself and toots. Everywhere there appeared
an attempt to make and to preserve trivial and otherwise transient
distinctions. In the streets of Montreal and Quebec you met not only
with soldiers in red, and shuffling priests in unmistakable black and
white, with Sisters of Charity gone into mourning for their deceased
relative,--not to mention the nuns of various orders depending on the
fashion of a tear, of whom you heard,--but youths belonging to some
seminary or other, wearing coats edged with white, who looked as if
their expanding hearts were already repressed with a piece of tape. In
short, the inhabitants of Canada appeared to be suffering between two
fires,--the soldiery and the priesthood.




CHAPTER V

THE SCENERY OF QUEBEC; AND THE RIVER ST. LAWRENCE


About twelve o'clock this day, being in the Lower Town, I looked up at
the signal-gun by the flagstaff on Cape Diamond, and saw a soldier up
in the heavens there making preparations to fire it,--both he and the
gun in bold relief against the sky.
Soon after, being warned by the
boom of the gun to look up again, there was only the cannon in the
sky, the smoke just blowing away from it, as if the soldier, having
touched it off, had concealed himself for effect, leaving the sound to
echo grandly from shore to shore, and far up and down the river. This
answered the purpose of a dinner-horn.

There are no such restaurants in Quebec or Montreal as there are in
Boston. I hunted an hour or two in vain in this town to find one, till
I lost my appetite. In one house, called a restaurant, where lunches
were advertised, I found only tables covered with bottles and glasses
innumerable, containing apparently a sample of every liquid that has
been known since the earth dried up after the flood, but no scent of
solid food did I perceive gross enough to excite a hungry mouse. In
short, I saw nothing to tempt me there, but a large map of Canada
against the wall. In another place I once more got as far as the
bottles, and then asked for a bill of fare; was told to walk up
stairs; had no bill of fare, nothing but fare. "Have you any pies or
puddings? " I inquired, for I am obliged to keep my savageness in check
by a low diet. "No, sir; we've nice mutton-chop, roast beef,
beefsteak, cutlets," and so on. A burly Englishman, who was in the
midst of the siege of a piece of roast beef, and of whom I have never
had a front view to this day, turned half round, with his mouth half
full, and remarked, "You'll find no pies nor puddings in Quebec, sir;
they don't make any here. " I found that it was even so, and therefore
bought some musty cake and some fruit in the open market-place. This
market-place by the waterside, where the old women sat by their tables
in the open air, amid a dense crowd jabbering all languages, was the
best place in Quebec to observe the people; and the ferry-boats,
continually coming and going with their motley crews and cargoes,
added much to the entertainment. I also saw them getting water from
the river, for Quebec is supplied with water by cart and barrel. This
city impressed me as wholly foreign and French, for I scarcely heard
the sound of the English language in the streets. More than three
fifths of the inhabitants are of French origin; and if the traveler
did not visit the fortifications particularly, he might not be
reminded that the English have any foothold here; and, in any case, if
he looked no farther than Quebec, they would appear to have planted
themselves in Canada only as they have in Spain at Gibraltar; and he
who plants upon a rock cannot expect much increase.