Old Man Savarin, and Other Stories

C. W. COATES, Montreal, Que. S. F. HUESTIS, Halifax, N.S.
Entered, according to the Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year one thousand eight hundred and ninety-five, by William Briggs, Toronto, in the Office of the Minister of Agriculture, at Ottawa.
For liberty to issue these stories in present form the author has to thank The Youths' Companion, Boston; the proprietors of Two Tales, in which Old Man Savarin and Great Godfrey's Lament first appeared; and Harper's Weekly and Mr. S. S. McClure's syndicate of newspapers, which, respectively, first published The Privilege of the Limits and John Bedell .

Old Ma'ame Paradis had caught seventeen small doré, four suckers, and eleven channel-catfish before she used up all the worms in her tomato-can. Therefore she was in a cheerful and loquacious humor when I came along and offered her some of my bait.
Merci; non, M'sieu. Dat's 'nuff fishin' for me. I got too old now for fish too much. You like me make you present of six or seven doré? Yes? All right. Then you make me present of one quarter dollar.
When this transaction was completed, the old lady got out her short black clay pipe, and filled it with tabac blanc .
Ver' good smell for scare mosquitoes, said she. Sit down, M'sieu. For sure I like to be here, me, for see the river when she's like this.
Indeed the scene was more than picturesque. Her fishing-platform extended twenty feet from the rocky shore of the great Rataplan Rapid of the Ottawa, which, beginning to tumble a mile to the westward, poured a roaring torrent half a mile wide into the broader, calm brown reach below. Noble elms towered on the shores. Between their trunks we could see many whitewashed cabins, whose doors of blue or green or red scarcely disclosed their colors in that light.
The sinking sun, which already touched the river, seemed somehow the source of the vast stream that flowed radiantly from its blaze. Through the glamour of the evening mist and the maze of June flies we could see a dozen men scooping for fish from platforms like that of Ma'ame Paradis.