When the horses were fed, and I had, as is customary, treated the driver, we departed amidst the pleasing sounds of _Bien obligé, 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 régime_. 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 factitious title, to which she imagined that she had a right, sent back his letter open to the post-office, with an intimation to the postmaster that letters so improperly addressed would not be received.
I have always perceived that a fuss about family and noble connections betrays either that the fuss-maker is naturally a vulgar soul, or that it is deemed necessary, from an excess of weakness, to support a position of an equivocal nature. A gentleman never derogates from his true position, let him be placed in whatever circumstances he may; and an over-fastidious traveller, or a pretender to great importance in a new country, is the most foolish of all foolish folks.
I remember travelling once in the wild Bush with a person, who, from long-established military habits of command, thought that he could order everything as he liked. We were benighted at a farm-house, where the old lady proprietress eked out her livelihood by receiving casual visitors, but disdained the thought of "keeping tavern," as it is called, in the backwoods of Canada West. He ordered, rather peremptorily, supper and beds for two--it would have been better that he had ordered pistols and coffee for the same number, for then the dame would have looked upon him as simply mad. No notice whatever was taken of his demands, but I saw her choler rising; fortunately, I knew her character. We were many miles from any habitation: and the horses jaded out as well as ourselves; so I took no notice either; but, observing the dame take her seat in the old-fashioned ample chimney, I took another opposite to her, and, observing her commence lighting her pipe, asked her for one, and we puffed out volumes of smoke--those were my smoking days--for a long time at each other in perfect silence. At last, I broke the ice.