ackeyed, black-haired young girl, looking as
if an infusion of Indian blood had darkened the red of her cheeks,
presiding over a stock of onions, potatoes, beets, and turnips; there an
old woman with a face carven like a walnut, behind a flattering array of
cherries and pears; yonder a whole family trafficking in loaves of
brown-bread and maple-sugar in many shapes of pious and grotesque device.
There are gay shows of bright scarfs and kerchiefs and vari-colored
yarns, and sad shows of old clothes and second-hand merchandise of other
sorts; but above all prevails the abundance of orchard and garden, while
within the fine edifice are the stalls of the butchers, and in the
basement below a world of household utensils, glass-ware, hard-ware, and
wooden-ware. As in other Latin countries, each peasant has given a
personal interest to his wares, but the bargains are not clamored over as
in Latin lands abroad. Whatever protest and concession and invocation of
the saints attend the transacting of business at Bonsecours Market are in
a subdued tone. The fat huckster-women drowsing beside their wares,
scarce send their voices beyond the borders of their broad-brimmed straw
hats, as they softly haggle with purchasers, or tranquilly gossip
together.

At the cathedral there are, perhaps, the worst paintings in the world,
and the massive pine-board pillars are unscrupulously smoked to look like
marble; but our tourists enjoyed it as if it had been St. Peter's; in
fact it has something of the barnlike immensity and impressiveness of St.
Peter's. They did not ask it to be beautiful or grand; they desired it
only to recall the beloved ugliness, the fondly cherished hideousness and
incongruity of the average Catholic churches of their remembrance, and it
did this and more: it added an effect of its own; it offered the
spectacle of a swarthy old Indian kneeling before the high altar, telling
his beads, and saying with many sighs and tears the prayers which it cost
so much martyrdom and heroism to teach his race. "O, it is only a savage
man," said the little French boy who was showing them the place,
impatient of their interest in a thing so unworthy as this groaning
barbarian. He ran swiftly about from object to object, rapidly lecturing
their inattention. "It is now time to go up into the tower," said he, and
they gladly made that toilsome ascent, though it is doubtful if the
ascent of towers is not too much like the ascent of mountains e