Old Memories: Amusing and Historical

by Mrs. Daniel MacPherson

TO MY SUBSCRIBERS AND THE PUBLIC.

MY FRIENDS,

You have been so good to me, in purchasing, within a few weeks, five hundred copies of a feuilleton, only intended for private circulation, I should like to show my appreciation, by catering to your desire for information regarding our dear old city, Quebec; but what can I do? My learned friend, James Macpherson LeMoine, Esq., with his wonderful knowledge of facts, so exhausted the subject in his excellent and beautifully got up book, "Picturesque Quebec," I am utterly overwhelmed. Until I began to study the matter I was quite ignorant that he had written so fully on these matters, so I can only play Boswell to his Johnson, and as without Boswell many of the sayings of the immortal Johnson would have been lost, I too may have my use in recording crumbs of information, interesting and instructive, though lacking the dignity of history.

Yours truly,
CHARLOTTE HOLT GETHINGS MACPHERSON

OLD MEMORIES:

AMUSING AND HISTORICAL.

SEQUEL TO "REMINISCENCES OF OLD QUEBEC,"
BY MRS. DANIEL MACPHERSON.

My first recollection is that of being drawn in a child's carriage by old Germain, messenger of the Quebec Bank (where I was born), to the old convent, formerly occupying the site of McCall, Shehyn & Co.'s store at the foot of Mountain Hill in St. Peter Street, Quebec. This convent has been non-existant for forty-seven years. Its community now reside in St. Joseph Street, St. Roch's. When this convent was there, there was no St. Peter Street, there were no wharves, and an old sister told me the batteau men often struck their sails against their convent. I remember my father often called at the convent to take me out boating on the St. Lawrence River that lapped its shores, for the lower town of Quebec was then a delightful residence for Quebec people, only the military then residing in the Upper Town. Applying for information about this old convent to Ville Marie, the Mother House of this order, I received the following letter from one of the ladies:

CONGREGATION DE NOTRE DAME,

Montreal, October 10, 1890.