glowing all over with warmth,
and altogether the sensation is delightful.

This morning, Joseph Howarth, the talented American actor, breakfasted
with me and a few friends. Last night, I went to see him play in Steele
Mackaye's "Paul Kauvar." Canada has no actors worth mentioning, and the
people here depend on American artists for all their entertainments. It
is wonderful how the feeling of independence engenders and develops the
activity of the mind in a country. Art and literature want a home of
their own, and do not flourish in other people's houses. Canada has
produced nothing in literature: the only two poets she can boast are
French, Louis Frechette and Octave Cremazie. It is not because Canada
has no time for brain productions. America is just as busy as she is,
felling forests and reclaiming the land; but free America, only a
hundred years old as a nation, possesses already a list of historians,
novelists, poets, and essayists, that would do honor to any nation in
the world.

* * * * *

_February 4._

I had capital houses in the Queen's Hall last night and to-night.

The Canadian audiences are more demonstrative than the American ones,
and certainly quite as keen and appreciative. When you arrive on the
platform they are glad to see you, and they let you know it; a fact
which in America, in New England especially, you have to find out for
yourself.

Montreal possesses a very wealthy and fashionable community, and what
strikes me most, coming as I do from the United States, is the stylish
simplicity of the women. I am told that Canadian women in their tastes
and ways have always been far more English than American, and that the
fashions have grown more and more simple since Princess Louise gave the
example of always dressing quietly when occupying Rideau Hall in Ottawa.

* * * * *

_Ottawa, February 5._

One of the finest sights I have yet seen in this country was from the
bridge on my way from the station to the Russell this morning. On the
right the waterfalls, on the left, on the top of a high and almost
perpendicular rock, the Houses of Parliament, a grand pile of buildings
in gray stone, standing out clear against a cloudless, intense blue sky.
The Russell is one of those huge babylonian hotels so common on the
American continent, where unfortunately the cookery is not on a level
with the architectural pretensions; but most of