Whenever one turns in to these country yards, the geese, that are the watch-dogs of the habitant farm-yards, herald your approach; but the work of the day is not stopped, although M’sieu, Madame, the children, one and all welcome the visitor, taking it for granted that the life and industries connected with the running of these self-supporting farms should prove entertaining to anyone.
Thrift is the keynote everywhere, but the habitant apparently never hurries. Life has not changed much in the centuries, except that with the growth of the times the habitant farms have increased in wealth, represented in part by a larger stock. Cows, porkers and sheep are everywhere. But behind the split-rail fences are the same little pocket-handkerchief patches of growing tabac in cup-like shields of white birch bark as M’sieu’s father and grandfather planted.
The passage of Time makes no radical changes. M’sieu is as handy a craftsman as ever. Nor is there any appreciable line of demarcation as to who shall do this or that, but all members of the family work helpfully together. Madame goes into the fields with the children and helps her husband to get in the hay. And, in his spare moments, M’sieu picks over and lightens up the wool a-drying on the little balcony.
On Sundays the entire family gets into the roomy carry-all and drives to Mass at the church. The weather must be bad indeed, which causes the pious habitant to fail in his attendance at La Messe.
In keeping with his deep regard for the spiritual, one is not surprised in Quebec, in more or less every household, to find, in a corner of the living-room, on a neat, little handmade shelf, a large or smaller figure of Christ, Mary, or Bonne Sainte Anne, with a tiny lamp burning before it. The same figures give distinction to the little grocery-shops and boulangeries of the towns and villages, each figure lighted by its little candle or incandescent bulb, smiling down, as in sweet benediction, upon merchant and customer.
The demand for holy figures of this type creates a rare personality of the Quebec gallery of genre in the “Sculpteur”.
Strolling along some morning, one may chance to come upon the “sculpteur” at work, at the window of his little shop in the outskirts of some St. Lawrence town, the white figure of the Saviour with extended arms in his hand, and on the table row after row of smaller figures, in various stages of completion.
The use of the religious figure is not confined to the indoors of Quebec, but over the barn-doors of the farms throughout the Province, the carved figure of some guarding Saint sheds atmosphere upon the churn, the wooden shoulder-yoke for bringing water or pails of maple-sap in its season, or on milk-pails glistening in the sun, on the fence-posts.
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In travelling in Quebec, one cannot help but be struck by the harmony between artistry and toil. This, doubtless is a French trait, curiously and happily preserved through centuries of pioneer life. Seldom indeed, if ever, in Quebec, is the most trifling thing wrought that is not made in some simple way to have its own art-character. If Madame knits a sock she combines some little thread of colour to give it character. The rag mat, which the little daughter tresses in a long braid around the back of a chair, though it may be put to hardest wear eventually, is made a symphony in colour. It is the same when M’sieu chooses to paint the little maison, he has a way of painting the ends of the house one colour and the sides another, yet effecting by a combination of two harmonious shades a whole that is—charmant.