to this day, in some of the remoter villages, he buys almost nothing; he is carpenter, farmer, blacksmith, shoemaker; and, if not he, his wife is weaver and tailor.  The waggon he drives is his handiwork; so is the harness; the home-spun cloth of his suit is made by his wife from the wool of his own sheep:  it is an excellent fabric but, alas, the young people now prefer the machine-made cottons and cloths of commerce and will no longer wear homespun.  Sometimes the habitant makes his own boots, the excellent bottes sauvages of the country.  The women make not only home-spun cloth, but linen, straw hats, gloves, candles, soap.  When there are maple trees, the habitant provides his own sugar; he makes even the buckets in which the sap of the maple tree is caught.  Tobacco grows in his garden, for the habitant is an inveterate smoker:  sometimes the boys begin when only five years old or less.  The women and the girls, indeed, do not smoke and an American visitor, who declares that he saw pretty French Canadian brunettes of sixteen puffing clouds of smoke as they worked in the harvest field, is solemnly rebuked by a French Canadian writer; the brunettes must have been Indian women.[28]

Though nearly all the children now go to school, yet reading can hardly be considered one of the amusements of the habitant.  In the neighbourhood of Malbaie, at least, rarely does one see other than books of devotion in a habitant household; the book-shelf is conspicuous by its absence.  Of course newspapers are read but many of the habitants are still illiterate, or nearly so, and read nothing.  Not less gay are they for this deprivation.  They are endless talkers, good story tellers, and fond of song and dance.  They have preserved some of the popular songs of France,—­Malbrouck s’en va-t-en guerre, En roulant ma Boule roulant, A la Claire Fontaine, and others—­and these airs simple, pleasing, a little sad, have become characteristic of French Canada.  Nearly every house has its violin, often home-made, and though this music is rude it suffices for dancing.  But some of the bishops are as severe in regard to dancing as is the Methodist “Book of Discipline” and in their dioceses the practise is allowed only under narrow restrictions.  The short Canadian summer makes that season for the habitant one of severe labour.  Winter, though it has its own labours, such as cutting wood, is the great season of social intercourse.  For a long time the habitant would not consider a mechanic his social equal; perhaps, still, the daughters of a farmer would spurn the advances of the village carpenter.  But whatever the social distinctions, baptisms, marriages, anniversaries, are made the occasions for festivity.  There are corvees recreatives, such as parties gathered for taking the husks off Indian corn, when there is apt to be a good deal of kissing as part of the game.  At New Year, the jour de l’an, the feasting lasts for three days.  Hospitality is universal and it is almost a slight not to call at this time upon any acquaintance living within a distance of twenty miles.  Every habitant has his horse and sleigh and thinks little of a long drive.