WO wheels are both leisurely and elegant. No doubt it was these considerations which in the beginning of Time decided Romance on riding in a two-wheeled cart. We cannot imagine Romance anything but leisurely. She lives where time stands still, yet paradoxically hitches to the wheels of Progress. It is true we cannot imagine the automobile or even the aeroplane without a four-wheel carriage. But it is equally difficult to think of either of these as leisurely. They are the symbols of speed and utility in a commercial age. Nevertheless, despite the new order of this age of speed, Romance, though not utterly ignoring car and plane, continues to ride in her old cart—
“Jiggity jog, jiggity jog!”
Bad roads, or no roads at all, never betray the ox or Dobbin into the ditch. “Get out and get under” is a song not in the two-wheeler’s repertoire. Yet of course the slow-coach misses, as by a great gulf, the thrills which are the auto’s and aeroplane’s very own. So, between two or four, for the time being, honours are easy.
Yet to the two-wheeler must go the honour of pioneering transportation. With it began all life in Canada. And there are parts of the Dominion where two-wheels are still a people’s dependence. All Eastern Canada still pins faith to the two-wheel cart, whether it be Quebec or dear old Nova Scotia or the far-away Islands of the Gulf. Big wheel or little wheel, or whether “cheval, chien or le boeuf” produces the motor power, Romance, in the East, still rides in the two-wheel cart.
It appears on every road. Where there are no roads it must go along as if there were one. Unless a forest obstructs no lesser obstacle can ever hope to turn one of these old carts from its objective.
One may tramp a country road in Quebec without seeing a sign of life. Then presently a speck heaves in sight on the distant horizon. Long before it can be “made out” intuition says, “It is a two-wheel cart”.
As it comes towards you, its own individuality becomes more and more evident. You can distinguish it perhaps for the cart of the old woman from Saint Feréol who comes down once or twice a week to sell her pickings of wild framboise or mountain raspberries to berry-hungry Pilgrims-to-the-shrine-of-bonne-Saint Anne. For, shrewd old woman that she is, she knows that even “pilgrims” must eat.
This old weather-beaten French-woman and her cart from the hill country are well-known characters of the Beaupré road; and every woman having anything from a farm to sell, hails madame as she drives along, so that when this particular cart arrives in the town every village housewife is agog at her door to see what madame has brought them to-day “pour diner”. And as for the cart itself, it overflows with beets and carrots, potatoes, maple sugar, a jar or two of honey; and, from the mass, struggling chickens gasping for breath. But “des oeufs et framboise” are all carefully protected under layers of cool leaves. Some morning we engage to ride back with madame when she has sold all her berries and what-not. We sit, one on the board beside the fat figure of madame, the other, on a box among the empty berry pails in the body of the cart. We ask madame how she got so many tins? “Du lard, mesdames, du lard”, she responds quickly. Looking about on the heap of lard tins, it seems to us as if the mountain folk must buy lard just to get the tins for their berries.
At first the springless cart is a little too much of a good thing, but we soon get used to the jolting and then forget it in speculating on the sights and sounds of the road. That whirr and buzz is not bees but a spinning wheel at work. We look in at an open door and there is madame at the wheel. She and the market woman exchange a hearty bon jour. The houses are fairly close on this road. Scarcely one is passed before another heaves in sight.
In some yards the hay-cart goes into the barn with a full load. In another there is heard the heavy thud, thud of the loom. From our high seat we can see right into the room where madame is at work, shuttle in hand, bobbins in basket, balls of yarn on the floor.