years in a French-Canadian convent, still retained the strong Cockney accent of her native London.  She was a cheery old soul, and, with another old English nun, had charge of the wardrobe, which they insisted on showing me.  I was gazing at piles of clothing neatly arranged on shelves, when the old Cockney nun clapped her hands.  “We will dress you up as a Sister,” she cried, and they promptly proceeded to do so.  They put me on a habit (largest size) over my other clothes, chuckling with glee meanwhile, and I was duly draped in the guimpe, the piece of linen which covers a nun’s head and shoulders and frames her face, called, I believe, in English a “wimple,” and my toilet was complete except for my veil, when, by a piece of real bad luck, the Reverend Mother and my sister came into the room.  We had no time to hide, so we were caught.  Having no moustache, I flattered myself that I made rather a saintly-looking novice, and I hid my hands in the orthodox way in my sleeves, but the Mother Superior was evidently very much put out.  The clothes that had come in contact with my heretical person were ordered to be placed on one side, I presume to be morally disinfected, and I can only trust that the two old nuns did not get into serious trouble over their little joke.  I am sorry that my toilet was not completed; I should like to have felt that just for once in my life I had taken the veil, if for five minutes only.

In the “eighties” the city of Montreal spent large sums over their Winter Carnival.  It attracted crowds of strangers, principally from the United States, and it certainly stimulated the retail trade of the city.  The Governor-General was in the habit of taking a house in Montreal for the Carnival, and my brother-in-law was lent the home of a hospitable sugar magnate.  The dining-room of this house, in which its owner had allowed full play to his Oriental imagination and love of colour, was so singular that it merits a few words of description.  The room was square, with a domed ceiling.  It was panelled in polished satinwood to a height of about five feet.  Above the panelling were placed twelve owls in carved and silvered wood, each one about two feet high, supporting gas-standards.  Rose-coloured silk was stretched from the panelling up to the heavy frieze, consisting of “swags” of fruit and foliage modelled in high relief, and brilliantly coloured in their natural hues.  The domed ceiling was painted sky-blue, covered with golden stars, gold and silver suns and moons, and the signs of the Zodiac.  I may add that the effect of this curious apartment was not such as to warrant any one trying to reproduce it.  The house also contained a white marble swimming bath; an unnecessary adjunct, I should have thought, to a dwelling built for winter occupation in Montreal.