would do well to remember.  In 1801 the manor house must have been the scene of some gaiety for there and at Malcolm Fraser’s were half a score of visitors.  Christine, Nairne’s second daughter, who preferred Quebec to the paternal roof, had come home for a visit and other visitors were the Hon. G. Taschereau and his son, Mr. Usburn, Mr. Masson, Mrs. Langan and Mrs. Bleakley, Fraser’s daughters, described as “rich ladies from Montreal,” the last with three children.  No doubt they drove and walked, rowed and fished, much as people from New York and Baltimore and Boston and Toronto and Montreal do still on the same scene, when they are not pursuing golf balls.  The coming of people with more luxurious habits made improvements necessary and also, Nairne says, increased the expense of living—­a complaint that successive generations have continued with justice to make.

With Tom and Mary Nairne absent at school in Edinburgh, the family at Murray Bay during Nairne’s last days consisted of but four persons—­of himself and his wife and the two daughters Magdalen and Christine.  Christine, a fashionable young lady, disliked Murray Bay as a place of residence, tolerated Quebec, but preferred Scotland where she had been educated.  “Christine does not like to stay at Murray Bay and Madie her sister does not like to stay anywhere else,” wrote Nairne in 1800.  In the manner of the eighteenth century he was extremely anxious that his children should be “genteel”.  Christine’s Quebec friends pleased him.  “I saw her dance at a ball at the Lieutenant-Governor’s and she seemed at no loss for Genteel partners but does not prepare to find one for life.  I am well pleased with her and do not in the least grudge her so long as she is esteemed by the best company in the place.”  It was not easy to find at Quebec proper accommodation for unmarried young women living away from home.  Nairne writes in August, 1797, that he and Christine each paid $1.00 a day in Quebec where they lodged, although they mostly dined and drank tea abroad.  “The town gentry of Quebec are vastly hospitable Civil and well-bred but no such a thing as an invitation to stay in any of their houses.”  At length a Mr. Stewart opened his doors.  He must, Nairne wrote, be paid tactfully for the accommodation he furnishes.  Things went better when later Miss Mabane, the daughter of a high official of the Government, kept Christine with her at Quebec all the winter of 1799-1800; no doubt Christine was pleased when Miss Mabane would not allow her to go to Murray Bay even for the summer.  Her elder sister, Madie, appears to have been hoydenish and somewhat uncongenial to a young lady so determined to be “genteel.”