I write for my own amusement, at the risk of wearying the reader who may have the patience to go through this volume. But, as Nature has made me compassionate, I will give this dear reader a little good advice. He had better throw away the unlucky book without taking the trouble to criticise it, which would be making it much too important, and would be, moreover, but wasted labor for the serious critic; for, unlike that old Archbishop of Granada, so touchy on the subject of his sermons, of whom Gil Blas has told us, I am, for my part, blessed with an easy humor, and, instead of retorting to my critic, "I wish you good luck and very much better taste," I will frankly admit that my book has a thousand faults, of most of which I have a lively consciousness.
As for the unfriendly critic, his work will be all in vain, debarred as he will be from the privilege of dragging me into a controversy. Let me say beforehand that I grieve to deprive him of his gentle diversion, and to clip his claws so soon. I am old and indolently content, like Figaro of merry memory. Moreover, I have not enough self-conceit to engage in any defense of my literary productions. To record some incidents of a well-loved past, to chronicle some memories of a youth long flown—this is my whole ambition.
Many of the anecdotes, doubtless, will appear insignificant and childish to some readers. Let these lay the blame upon certain of our best men-of-letters, who besought me to leave out nothing which could illustrate the manners and customs of the early Canadians. "That which will appear insignificant and childish to the eyes of strangers," they urged, "in the records of a septuagenarian, born but twenty-eight years after the conquest of New France, will yet not fail to interest true Canadians."
This production of mine shall be neither very dull nor surpassingly brilliant. An author should assuredly have too much self-respect to make his appeal exclusively to the commonplace; and if I should make the work too fine, it would be appreciated by none but the beaux esprits. Under a constitutional government, a candidate must concern himself rather with the number than the quality of his votes.
This work will be Canadian through and through. It is hard for an old fellow of seventy to change his ancient coat for garb of modern pattern.
I must have also plenty of elbow-room. As for rule and precept—which, by the way, I am well enough acquainted with—I can not submit myself to them in a work like this. Let the purists, the past masters in the art of literature, shocked at my mistakes, dub my book romance, memoir, annals, miscellany, hotch-potch. It is all the same to me.
Having accomplished my preface, let me make a serious beginning with the following pretty bit of verse, hitherto unpublished, and doubtless now much surprised to find itself in such unworthy company:
QUEBEC, 1757.
An eagle city on her heights austere,
Taker of tribute from the chainless flood,
She watches wave above her in the clear
The whiteness of her banner purged with blood.