ry a six-barrel Colt's revolver in Canaday;
for "them French" never robbed mails.

He drove us to Amherstburgh, through a rich and beautiful grain
country, in four hours, eighteen miles, and we stopped an hour at
Samondon's, where nothing but French was spoken, and a long discourse
held upon the crops and the state of the country. As I had an orderly
with me, and as red coats had not been seen in that part of the world
since the rebellion, we caused some emotion and conversation on the
road. A very old, garrulous French Canadian, who was smoking his pipe
in the "kitchen and parlour and hall," came and sat by me, and, after
beating about the bush a long time with all the "_politesse
possible_," at length asked me who I was, and if the army was coming
back among them. I told him who I was, a lieutenant-colonel of
engineers; and the old Jean Jacques, after looking at me a minute or
so, got up and fetched a small glass of whiskey and water, and with
the best grace in the world presented it, with a cigar, taking another
of both himself, and, touching his glass to mine in true French style,
bowed and said, "_A votre sante, mon colonel_; you have got a devilish
good place of it!" The French Canadians on the Detroit river were all
loyal during the rebellion, and this old farmer was a sample of them.

When the horses were fed, and I had, as is customary, treated the
driver, we departed amidst the pleasing sounds of _Bien oblige, bon
voyage_. If they had cheated me, I should have been content, so much
is politeness worth; and the Canadian French peasant is a primitive
being, and as polite as a baron of the _ancien regime_. It was quite
refreshing in such hot weather to meet with a little civilization,
after being occasionally witness to the reverse from the newest people
in the world. _Il coute si peu._

How shocking, a sensitive _parvenu_ will say, to sit down in a common
kitchen, and drink a glass of whiskey and water with peasants! It puts
me in mind of a very fine young lady, whose grandfather had been a
butcher, and her father none of the richest; who, being met in the
streets with some threadpapers or small package of lace in her hand
early on a cold day, said, to a gentleman who stopped to ask her how
she did, "I am very well, I thank you; but this parcel makes my hand
so cold!" Or, for a still finer illustration, I knew a _nouvelle
riche_ who, not being addressed by a tradesman in a little town in his
bill by a factiti