gather round, and the announcement is made of tithes and taxes due, of articles lost or found, of anything indeed of general interest to the community.  It was in this way that as St. Martin’s day, November 11th, approached the people were reminded of the falling due of the cens et rentes.  The meaning of the two terms is somewhat obscure.  The cens was a trifling payment by the censitaire in recognition of the seigneur’s position and rights as landowner; while the rentes represented a real rental based in some degree on the supposed value of the land.  But the rate was usually conventional and very small.  In early Canada the river was the highway and upon it therefore every settler desired to have a frontage.  There was, also, greater safety from Indian attacks in having the houses close together at the front of the farms.  So these became long narrow strips, with the houses built so close together that the country side often seems like a continuous village.  The habitant paid usually in cens et rentes twenty sols (about twenty cents) for each arpent (192 feet) of frontage; instead of cash usually he might pay in kind—­a live capon or a small measure (demi-minot) of grain for each arpent.  He paid also about one cent of rent for each superficial acre.  Thus for a farm of 100 acres, with two arpents of frontage, a habitant might pay $1.00 in cash and two capons.  If each of 400 such tenants paid for their frontage in capons, 800 of these fowls would he brought to the seigneur’s barn-yard each autumn!

Though payment was due on November 11th, the habitants usually waited for the first winter days when the sleighing had become good.  In many of the sleighs, hastening with the merry sound of bells over the wintry roads to the manor house, there would be one or two captive capons or a bag or two of grain.  M. de Gaspe has described how on such an occasion the seigneur, or some member of his family for him, would be found by the tenant “seated majestically in a large arm chair, near a table covered with green baize cloth.”  Here he received the payments, or in many cases only excuses for non-payment.  The scene outside was often animated, for the fowls brought in payment of the rent, with legs tied but throats free, would not bear their captivity in silence.  Rent day was a festal occasion, but the great day in the year at the manor house was New Year’s Day.  Then the people came to offer their respects to the seigneur and Nairne speaks of the prodigious consumption of whiskey and cakes at such a time.  The seigneur was usually god-father to the first-born of the children of his tenants.  It is a pretty custom among French Canadians for the children to go on New Year’s Day, which is a great festival, to the chamber of their parents in the early morning and kneel before the bed for their benediction.  To the seigneur as to a parent came on this day his god-children and we have it from M. de Gaspe, an eye witness, that on one occasion he saw no less than one hundred of these come to call upon the seigneur at the manor house!  In the old days the people came also on the first day of May to plant the May-pole before his door and to dance round it.