The most unimaginative person could easily fancy himself in a foreign country in Quebec. The motley population--the long, black-robed priests, serving as a foil to the scarlet coats of the officers, and the white uniform worn by the band; the loose-trousered, rolling sailors; the Frenchy, peasant-looking country people, driving into market with their produce in the most ancient of lumbering-looking vehicles, with bright red raspberries, in shining little birch-bark baskets. The healthy-looking female Quebec-ites, with their fanciful dark straw hats, with a fall of black lace about their rosy faces, wonderfully enhancing the brightness of bright eyes, and making even dull ones, if any such there are, look coquettish under this pretty head-dress, so much more comfortable than our little minikin bonnets, and worn alike by mothers and daughters. Their dresses almost even with their ankles, and little or no crinoline, but such healthy, rosy faces, such luxuriant locks, and the universal little band of black velvet round the throat, of which the French women are so fond. I am sure I did not see an ugly woman in Quebec, nor one that, to my eye, was not sensibly and prettily habited, and such little fat loves of children, chattering French with their nurses. The people were as picturesque as the place, and nobody scrutinized you as they do in New York, fixing a stony stare upon you (I speak of the New York women), till they have found out everything you have on, how it is made and trimmed, and then comment upon the same to their next elbow neighbor. Every healthy and contented-looking female soul of them seemed to have business of their own, and to mind it. Now and then, to be sure, an officer or a private would take a look in passing, and sometimes we heard them say "Anglice," and that is where they did not hit it, at least with the ladies of the party, spite of light hair and eyes. A gentleman at the hotel where we stayed, said, "Those ladies are English," looking at myself and daughter. English! when we talked and laughed, ate and drank, got up and sat down, without ever once looking into a book of etiquette to see if it was "proper!"
A drive, which I shall long remember, we took to a little French village just out of Quebec. I had always thought--shade of Napoleon, forgive me--that the peasant French were an unthrifty, unneat people. My delight was unbounded at their rows of neat little white-washed cottages, standing sociably and cosily together, with long strips of farms extending back; not an unsightly object about them; clean, white-muslin window-curtains, with pretty pots of bright, flowering plants at the casements; rosy little children, with their bright red stockings--how I _like_ to see a little child in red stockings--and clean, white aprons, and shiny hair, sitting on the door-step with the family Towser, or running after the carriage, with bunches of flowers for "the English ladies," as they persisted in calling us, keeping up with our horses with a pertinacity which would have drawn out the pennies were we less favorably inclined; and gay little bouquets they gave us, too--roses just in bloom (for their summers are late and fleeting), and pretty pinks and geranium leaves. In the fields, women and girls were raking hay, with broad straw hats, which they pushed back from their brown faces, as they leaned on their rakes to look as we passed, quite unconscious how pretty they looked, helping their stout, healthy-looking brothers, who, with strong, white teeth, and curly hair, laughed merrily as they tossed the hay about. And yet this, like all pictures, had its shadow, for _I_ saw, though they did not, the pale procession of half-paid sewing girls coming up Nassau and Chatham streets, in New York, at that very moment, home to some stifled attic, or perhaps some more noisome place, of which those Canadians, in their pure country seclusion, could not even dream. How I wished they were all in those sweet hayfields, breathing that pure, untainted air!