Complimenting me on my French, he said:
“I can’t speak like you; often I can’t even say or ask what I want.”
“Perhaps if you knew more, you would not be able to make your poems so quaint,” I replied.
“I believe you are right. I jot down the English or French words just as I use them, as the Habitants use them, and perhaps if I knew more I should not do that.”
He was so human, so lovable, and at that time so poor. Half a dozen years afterwards Fortune smiled. His books were selling well; his cobalt mines had begun to pay. Then he heard disease (smallpox I think it was) had broken out at the far-away mines.
“I must go,” he said. “I cannot take the money these men are bringing me, without going to their help.”
He went; but almost before he had had time to make his medical knowledge of value to them, he was himself stricken and died.
Poor Drummond, a lovable character, and a genial comrade. The following verses are a good specimen of his style. They are taken from “The Habitant’s Jubilee Ode,” written at the time of the celebration of the sixtieth year of Queen Victoria’s rule. Why, the Habitant is asking himself, are the “children of Queen Victoriaw comin’ from far away? For tole Madame w’at dey t’ink of her, an’ wishin’ her bonne santé.” The answer is good French-Canadian and good sense:
If de moder come dead w’en you’re small garçon, leavin’ you dere alone,
Wit’ nobody watchin’ for fear you fall, and hurt youse’f on de stone,