The writer therein alludes to that short-lived bell of Madame de la Peltrie, melted in the memorable fire of the 31st December, 1650, which the pious lady used to toll, to call "the Neophytes to the waters of baptism, or the newly made Christians to Holy Mass."
(See page 113.)
(From "Trifles from my Diary.")
"GENERAL WOLFE'S STATUE," CORNER PALACE STREET
BY THE AUTHOR OF "MAPLE LEAVES."
Olim truncus eram ficulnus, inutile lignum,
Cum faber, incertus scamnum faceretne Priapum
Maluit esse Deum.
Horace, Sat I. 8.
Henry Ward Beecher begins an amusing sketch of our city with the words, "Queer old Quebec,—of all the cities on the Continent of America, the quaintest." He concludes his humorous picture by expressing the wish that it may remain so without being disturbed by the new-fangled notions of the day. Some one has observed that its walls, streets, public places, churches and old monasteries, with the legends of three centuries clinging to them, give you, when you enter under its massive gates, hoary with age, [344] the idea of an "old curiosity shop," or, as the name Henry Ward Beecher well expresses it, "a picture book, turning over a new leaf at each street." It is not then surprising that the inhabitants should have resorted not only to the pen of the historian to preserve evergreen and fragrant the historical ivy which clings to its battlements, but even to that cheap process, in use in other countries, to immortalize heroes— signboards and statues—a process recommended by high authority. We read in that curiously interesting book, "History of Signboards—"
"The Greeks honored their great men and successful commanders by erecting statues to them; the Romans rewarded their popular favorites with triumphal entries and ovations; modern nations make the portraits of their celebrities serve as signs for public-houses:
Vernon, the Butcher Cumberland, Wolfe, Hawke,
Prince Ferdinand, Granby, Burgoyne, Keppel, Howe,
Evil and good have had their tithe of talk,
And filled their signpost then, like Wellesley now."
If Wolfe served as a signboard recently in Britain, he has filled the same office now close on a century in Canada, and still continues to do so. He has defied wind and weather ever since the day when the Cholette Brothers affixed to the house at the north-west corner of St. John and Palace streets a rough statue of the gallant young soldier in the year 1771, with one arm extended in the attitude of command, and pointing to the Falls of Montmorency.