Are they not glorious, handsome, manly fellows, our Sillery boys? No
wonder we are all proud of them, of the twins as much as the rest, and
more so perhaps. "Our Parish" you must know, is renowned for the
proportion in which it contributes to the census: twins - a common
occurrence; occasionally, triplets.
Such we knew this Canadian home in the days of the late Henry Lemesurier.
MONTAGUE COTTAGE.
"I knew by the smoke which so gracefully curled,
Above the green wood that a cottage was near."
- Moore's Woodpecker.
Facing Sillery hill, on the north side of "Sans Bruit," formerly the
estate of Lieut.-Col. the Hon. Henry Caldwell, Mr. Alfred P. Wheeler,
[245] the Tide Surveyor of H. M. Customs, Quebec, built in 1880, a
comfortable and pleasing little cottage. He has called it Montague Cottage
[246] in memory of Wolfe's brave assistant Quarter Master General Col.
Caldwell, of Sans Bruit, the Col. Rivers of "The Novel and the preferred
suitor of Emily Montague who addressed her romantic 'Sillery letters to
Col. Rivers from a house not far from the Hill of Sillery.
It is stated in all the old Quebec Guide Books that the house in which the
'divine Emily then dwelt stood on the foot of Sillery Hill, close to Mrs.
Graddon's property at Kilmarnock, her friend Bella Fermor probably lived
near her.
