"Let not ambition mock their useful toil, Their homely joys and destiny obscure, Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile, The short and simple annals of the poor." Gray.
The Counties of Compton and Beauce, in the Province of Quebec, werefirst opened up to settlement about fifty years ago. To this spot asmall colony of Highlanders from the Skye and Lewis Islands gravitated.They brought with them the Gaelic language, a simple but austerereligion, habits of frugality and method, and aggressive health. Thatgeneration is gone, or almost gone, but the essential characteristics ofthe race have been preserved in their children. The latter are generousand hospitable, to a fault. Within a few miles of the American frontier,the forces of modern life have not reached them. Shut in by immensestretches of the dark and gloomy "forest primeval," they live drowsilyin a little world where passions are lethargic, innocence open-eyed, andvice almost unknown. Science has not upset their belief in Jehovah. Godis real, and somewhat stern, and the minister is his servant, to beheard with respect, despite the appalling length of his sermons.Sincerely pious, the people mix their religion with a little whiskey,and the blend appears to give satisfaction. The farmers gather at thevillage inn in the evening, and over a "drap o' Scotch" discuss thepast. As the stimulant works, generous sentiments are awakened in thebreast; and the melting songs of Robbie Burns--roughly rendered, it maybe--make the eye glisten. This is conviviality; but it has no relationto drunkenness. Every household has its family altar; and every night,before retiring to rest, the family circle gather round the father orthe husband, who devoutly commends them to the keeping of God.
The common school is a log hut, built by the wayside, and the"schoolmarm" is not a pretentious person. But, what the school cannotsupply, a long line of intelligent, independent ancestors have supplied,robust, common sense and sagacity.
Something of the gloom and sternness of the forest, something of thesadness which is a conscious presence, is in their faces. Their humorhas a certain savor of grimness. For the rest, it may be said that theyare poor, and that they make little effort to be anything else. They doa little farming and a little lumbering. They get food and clothing,they are attached to their homesteads, and the world with all itstempting possibilities passes them by. The young people seek the States,but even they return, and end their days in the old home. They marry,and get farms, and life moves with even step, the alternating seasons,with their possibilities, probably forming their deepest absorptions. Itremains only to be said that, passionately attached to the customs, thehabits of thought of their forefathers, the Highlanders of the LakeMegantic region are intensely clannish. Splendidly generous, they wouldsuffer death rather than betray the man who had eaten of their salt.Eminently law-abiding, they would not stretch out a hand to deprive offreedom one who had thrown himself upon their mercy.