If some such measure had only been used in early days, how much richer in figures would Canada be. Many of her old-timers, some of them brought over from France by early pioneers have been completely lost through wind and weather.
Wealthy societies and churches with a taste for gold often have had Jobin completely overlay the entire figure with gold-leaf. Mr. Jobin’s nephew is the shop’s operator in laying on the leaf. This too is a most interesting process, and the little shop offers as it were “a double bill” on the mornings when in addition to Jobin carving, the nephew is also at work gilding a finished angel or saint.
Part of the charm of mornings in the Jobin shop is the almost constantly changing subjects on which he is at work. Sometimes he chisels away on a Saint Anne, sometimes on the face or flowing robes of the blessed Vierge; at other times a triumphant angel with a trumpet, or a petitioning angel with folded wings, humbly kneeling.
One morning we dropped in to find him at work on an heroic-sized Christ-figure on the Cross. It was like coming on the old carver at his devotions. An holy silence pervaded the little shop. We dropped into the chair and upon the horse as silently as into a pew in church. Jobin carved by inspiration. No model stood in sight. Further, this old man of three-score, carved as one who has seen the Master very close and feels no need of outward suggestion. So the Old Masters must have painted, one thinks.
After a while, Jobin, resting, talked a little, quite easily. Then he began to work again continuing to speak now and then. The chisel gouged lightly back and forth and then with one of his worn hands he brushed away the shavings and critically eyed his work on the Face, to see if it told in its lines, so far as wood, or paint or marble, can, its Love, its wonderful Patience and its Strength.
As we sat watching in the quiet of that old shop, it was impossible to tell which spoke the more directly, the Figure as it slowly came to perfection or the childlike figure of the old Master-Carver bending so gently over the image of the Lord.
Not one, but several mornings, we came to watch. And as we watched and listened to the quiet voice of this old Quebec-carver, now nearing the end, it was in our heart to wish that all Canada could step over the threshold to witness this strange scene, wherein one of her forest trees in the hand of one of her talented sons, is metamorphosed from a tree into the Figure of the Saviour of the World.
CHAPTER XVI.
ROMANCE AND THE TWO-WHEELED CART.
Two wheels are both leisurely....
