aliers riding down an avenue towards her. Then he
showed us some of the nuns' work in albums, painted and lettered in a
way to give me an idea of old missals. By and by he went into the
chapel with us, and it gave such a queer notion of his indoors life
to have him put on an overcoat and india-rubbers to go a few rods
through the open air to the chapel door: he had not been very well,
he said. When he got in, he took off his hat, and put on an octagonal
priest's cap, and showed us everything in the kindest way--and his
manners were exquisite. There were beautiful paintings sent out from
France at the time of the Revolution; and wood-carvings round the
high-altar, done by Quebec artists in the beginning of the last
century; for he said they had a school of arts then at St. Anne's,
twenty miles below the city. Then there was an ivory crucifix, so
life-like that you could scarcely bear to look at it. But what I most
cared for was the tiny twinkle of a votive lamp which he pointed out
to us in one corner of the nuns' chapel: it was lit a hundred and
fifty years ago by two of our French officers when their sister took
the veil, and has never been extinguished since, except during the
siege of 1759. Of course, I think a story might be written about
_this_; and the truth is, the possibilities of fiction in Quebec are
overpowering; I go about in a perfect haze of romances, and meet
people at every turn who have nothing to do but invite the passing
novelist into their houses, and have their likenesses done at once
for heroes and heroines. They needn't change a thing about them, but
sit just as they are; and if this is in the present, only think how
the whole past of Quebec must be crying out to be put into historical
romances!

I wish you could see the houses, and how substantial they are. I
can only think of Eriecreek as an assemblage of huts and bark-lodges
in contrast. Our boarding-house is comparatively slight, and has
stone walls only a foot and a half thick, but the average is two
feet and two and a half; and the other day Dick went through the
Laval University,--he goes everywhere and gets acquainted with
everybody,--and saw the foundation walls of the first building, which
have stood all the sieges and conflagrations since the seventeenth
century; and no wonder, for they are six feet