Our Little Quebec Cousin

by Mary S. Saxe

And after a week or so she boldly showed them how to improve their snow man by marking his face with lumps of charcoal for eyes, red flannel for lips, an old pipe stuck in his mouth, and a very battered old hat of her father's on his head, she became their strongest ally. In fact she received so much praise from the Dudley family that she became quite embarrassed. However, she learned to call them all by their baptismal names. Such good sturdy English names they were. The boy was George Howard Dudley, he being named for King George of England of course, and the elder girl was Alexandra May after the Dowager Queen and present queen of England, and the younger was called Victoria after her own grandmother, who, in her time, had been named after Queen Victoria, who reigned over the British Empire so many, many years. This younger little Dudley girl was always called "Queenie," which name Oisette thought was very beautiful indeed.

One day they were all out toboganning together on the hillside when a funeral procession passed along the road below. As the hearse appeared in sight little Oisette stopped in her play and crossed herself; the others, after a moment, stopped their shrill screaming too, and waited respectfully.

One of the children who was sliding on the hillside that morning was a little American cousin from Plattsburgh, New York; being a newcomer, she had never before seen a hearse just like this one.

It was white all over, runners and body and harness, and on the four corners of this hearse were figures made in white plaster; these figures represented kneeling angels, and they had gold tipped wings and were holding long gold trumpets to their lips. In the center of the top of this vehicle was an upright gilt cross and from it floated long streamers of white, these flapped in the chill wind.

Three sleigh loads of mourners followed, and though they had black crepe streamers tied to their fur caps, they did not appear mournful at all, for the men were smoking pipes and chatting together, and they all leaned out to look at the snow man which the children had constructed.

Among the well-to-do French Canadian families in the Province of Quebec, a white hearse and a white casket is always used for the burial of a child. If they cannot afford this, they simply hire "a rig" as they call it; and put as many of the family on the rear seat as the space will allow, and on the front seat sits the father and drives the horse, while in his lap he holds the tiny white coffin, and in it is the body of the little dead child. Many, many of these primitive funeral processions pass along the Cote-des-Neiges Road to the Roman Catholic Cemetery which lies behind the mountain—for the infant mortality in this particular province is very, very heavy.

On Saturdays, and on Sunday afternoons, too, this road takes a more cheerful aspect, when hundreds of boys and girls arrive on snow shoes, or come in long sleighs, dragging toboggans behind them, for these hills back of Mount Royal are a splendid winter playground. Almost every winter there is a ski-jumping contest, when some wonderful athletes come from Norway and other Northern countries to compete with these young Canadian athletes.

Then, too, there are young Frenchmen who love to race their horses, sometimes they practice the speed of a mare along these roads, and then some beautiful Sunday afternoon they take part in horse races along the river road.

In wintertime it is so very cold that the great St. Lawrence river is frozen solid, and all day long traffic is driven over this ice from shore to shore. From the top of Mount Royal one can distinctly see the road which leads from the city of Montreal to a good-sized town on the south shore known as Longueil. This road is marked by little evergreen trees which have been cut from the forest and placed along either side of the roadway, to mark the path when dusk draws on. It is a very picturesque sight to watch this river road on a busy morning, when one can see a procession of red or blue box sleighs, each one being driven by a Habitant farmer, who sits on his bags of potatoes and onions and pork, and jogs along very comfortably toward the great city.

Once every winter Monsieur Tremblent would drive his fine team of horses over from Montreal to Longueil by the river road to call on some of his political friends and that year he allowed little Oisette to go with him, and she begged to take the little Dudley girls with her, so they were all wrapped up with extra care and cuddled down among the robes on the rear seat, and when it was too late to send him back, it was discovered that Carleau had followed them when they left the island of Montreal and started out on the wide river's frozen surface. The little Dudleys were just a little nervous at first, but they saw so many teams in front of them going toward the opposite shore that at last they forgot about the great river which lay under the frozen road.