Page:Letters from America, Brooke, 1916.djvu/115

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
QUEBEC AND THE SAGUENAY
65

Siena or some old German town, except that Quebec has her street-cars and grain-elevators to show that she is living.

The American Jew and I took a calèche, a little two-wheeled local carriage, driven by a lively Frenchman with a factitious passion for death-spots and churches. A small black and white spaniel followed the calèche, yapping. The American's face shone with interest. "That dawg's Michael," he said, "the hotel dawg. He's a queer little dawg. I kicked his face; and he tried to bite me. Hup, Michael!" And he laughed hoarsely. "Non!" said the driver suddenly, "it is not the 'otel dog." The American did not lose interest. "These little dawgs are all alike," he said. "Dare say if you kicked that dawg in the face, he'd bite you. Hup, Michael!" With that he fell into deep thought.

We rattled up and down the steep streets, out among tidy fields, and back into the noisily sedate city again. We saw where Wolfe fell, where Montcalm fell, where Montgomery fell. Children played where the tides of war had ebbed and flowed. Mr Norman Angell and his friends tell us that trade is superseding war; and pacifists declare that for the future countries will win their pride