LETTER LXXIX.79.
To Miss Fermor.
You are a provoking chit, and I will go with Rivers. Your father may attend Madame Villiers, who you know will naturally take it ill if she is not of our party. We can ask Mademoiselle Clairaut another time.
Adieu! Your
Emily Montague.
LETTER LXXX.80.
To Miss Rivers, Clarges Street.
Silleri, Feb. 25.
Those who have heard no more of a Canadian winter than what regards the intenseness of its cold, must suppose it a very joyless season: ’tis, I assure you, quite otherwise; there are indeed some days here of the severity of which those who were never out of England can form no conception; but those days seldom exceed a dozen in a whole winter, nor do they come in succession; but at intermediate periods, as the winds set in from the North-West; which, coming some hundred leagues, from frozen lakes and rivers, over woods and mountains covered with snow, would be insupportable, were it not for the furs with which the country abounds, in such variety and plenty as to be within the reach of all its inhabitants.
Thus defended, the British belles set the winter of Canada at defiance; and the season of which you seem to entertain such terrible ideas, is that of the utmost chearfulness and festivity.
But what particularly pleases me is, there is no place where women are of such importance: not one of the sex, who has the least share of attractions, is without a levee of beaux interceding for the honor of attending her on some party, of which every day produces three or four.