Adieu! for the present:  it will be a fortnight before I can send this letter; another agreable circumstance that:  would to Heaven I were in England, though I changed the bright sun of Canada for a fog!

Dec. 1.

We have had a week’s snow without intermission:  happily for us, your brother and the Fitz have been weather-bound all the time at Silleri, and cannot possibly get away.

We have amused ourselves within doors, for there is no stirring abroad, with playing at cards, playing at shuttlecock, playing the fool, making love, and making moral reflexions:  upon the whole, the week has not been very disagreable.

The snow is when we wake constantly up to our chamber windows; we are literally dug out of it every morning.

As to Quebec, I give up all hopes of ever seeing it again:  but my comfort is, that the people there cannot possibly get to their neighbors; and I flatter myself very few of them have been half so well entertained at home.

We shall be abused, I know, for (what is really the fault of the weather) keeping these two creatures here this week; the ladies hate us for engrossing two such fine fellows as your brother and Fitzgerald, as well as for having vastly more than our share of all the men:  we generally go out attended by at least a dozen, without any other woman but a lively old French lady, who is a flirt of my father’s, and will certainly be my mamma.

We sweep into the general’s assembly on Thursdays with such a train of beaux as draws every eye upon us:  the rest of the fellows crowd round us; the misses draw up, blush, and flutter their fans; and your little Bell sits down with such a saucy impertinent consciousness in her countenance as is really provoking:  Emily on the contrary looks mild and humble, and seems by her civil decent air to apologize to them for being so much more agreable than themselves, which is a fault I for my part am not in the least inclined to be ashamed of.

Your idea of Quebec, my dear, is perfectly just; it is like a third or fourth rate country town in England; much hospitality, little society; cards, scandal, dancing, and good chear; all excellent things to pass away a winter evening, and peculiarly adapted to what I am told, and what I begin to feel, of the severity of this climate.

I am told they abuse me, which I can easily believe, because my impertinence to them deserves it:  but what care I, you know, Lucy, so long as I please myself, and am at Silleri out of the sound?

They are squabbling at Quebec, I hear, about I cannot tell what, therefore shall not attempt to explain:  some dregs of old disputes, it seems, which have had not time to settle:  however, we new comers have certainly nothing to do with these matters:  you can’t think how comfortable we feel at Silleri, out of the way.

My father says, the politics of Canada are as complex and as difficult to be understood as those of the Germanic system.