t death will spread
over a primitive village community. This happened in the French division
of the place, which, of course, was decorated to the utmost ability of
the people in honor of the _fete_: and so palpable was the gloom cast
over all by the circumstance, that the bright flannels flaunting from
the _cordons_ stretched across the way seemed to darken into palls, and
the gay red streamers must have appeared to the subdued carnival spirits
as warning crape-knots on the door-handle of death.

I believe it is a maxim with the Italian connoisseur of art, that no
landscape is perfect without one red spot to give value to its varieties
of green. On this principle, let me break the monotony of this little
rural sketch with the one touch of genuine American character that
belonged to it at the time of which I speak. Let William Button be the
one red spot that predominated vastly over the green influences by which
he was surrounded. The little inn at Lorette was then kept by a worthy
host bearing the above-mentioned name, which was dingily lettered out
upon a swinging sign, dingily representing a trotting horse,--emblem
as dear to the slow Canadian as to the fast American mind. William
Button--known as Billy Button to hosts of familiar friends--was, I
think, a Kentuckian by birth; a fact which might honestly account for
his having come by the loss of an eye through some operation by which
marks of violence had been left upon the surrounding tracts of his
rugged countenance. He was a short, thick-set man, with bow-legs like
those of a bull-terrier, and walked with a heavy lurch in his gait.
William's head was of immense size in proportion to his stature. Indeed,
that important joint of his person must have been a division by about
two of what artists term heroic proportions, or eight heads to a
height,--a standard by which Button was barred from being a hero, for
his head could hardly have been much less than a fourth of his entire
length. The expression of his face was remarkably typical of American
humor and shrewdness, an effect much aided by the chronic wink afforded
by his closed eye. How Button found his way to this remote spot would
have been a puzzle to any person unfamiliar with American character. How
he managed to live among and deal with and very considerably master a
community speaking no language with which he was acquainted was more
unaccountable still. The inn could not have been a very profitable
speculatio