Within the habitant’s abode there were usually not more than three regular rooms.  The front door opened into a capacious living room with its great open fireplace and hearth.  This served as dining-room as well.  A gaily coloured woollen carpet or rug, made in the colony, usually decked the floor.  There was a table and a couch; there were chairs made of pine with seats of woven underbark, all more or less comfortable.  Often a huge side-board rose from the floor to the low, open-beamed ceiling.  Pictures of saints adorned the walls.  A spinning-wheel stood in the corner, sharing place perhaps with a musket set on the floor stock downward, but primed for ready use.  Adjoining this room was the kitchen with its fireplace for cooking, its array of pots and dishes, its cupboards, shelves, and other furnishings.  All of these latter the habitant and his sons made for themselves.  The economic isolation of the parish made its people versatile after their own crude fashion.  The habitant was a handy man, getting pretty good results from the use of rough material and tools.  Even at the present day his descendants retain much of this facility.  At the opposite end of the house was a bedroom.  Upstairs was the attic, so low that one could scarcely stand upright in any part of it, but running the full length and breadth of the house.  Here the children, often a round dozen of them, were stowed at night.  A shallow iron bowl of tallow with a wick protruding gave its dingy light.  Candles were not unknown, but they were a luxury.  Every one went to bed when darkness came on, for there was nothing else to do.  Windows were few, and to keep out the cold they were tightly battened down.  The air within must have been stifling; but, as one writer has suggested, the habitant and his family got along without fresh air in his dwelling just as his descendant of to-day manages to get along without baths.

For the most part the people of Old Canada were comfortably clothed and well fed.  Warm cloth of drugget—­etoffe du pays, as it was called—­came from the hand-looms of every parish.  It was all wool and stood unending wear.  It was cheap, and the women of the household fashioned it into clothes.  Men, women, and children alike wore it in everyday use; but on occasions of festivity they liked to appear in their brighter plumage of garments brought from France.  In the summer the children went nearly unclothed and bare-footed always.  A single garment without sleeves and reaching to the knees was all that covered their nakedness.  In winter every one wore furs outdoors.  Beaver skins were nearly as cheap as cloth, and the wife of the poorest habitant could have a winter wardrobe that it would nowadays cost a small fortune to provide.  Heavy clogs made of hide—­the bottes sauvages as they were called—­or moccasins of tanned and oiled skins, impervious to the wet, were the popular footwear in winter and to some extent in summer as well.  They were laced high up above the ankles,