We Did Not Hear Pa Ask When Madame De La Tour "Flourished,"
Though "Flourish" That Determined Woman Did, In Boston As Well As In
The French Provinces.
In the present woman revival, may we not hope
that the heroic women of our colonial history will have the
prominence that is their right, and that woman's achievements will
assume their proper place in affairs?
When women write history, some
of our popular men heroes will, we trust, be made to acknowledge the
female sources of their wisdom and their courage. But at present
women do not much affect history, and they are more indifferent to
the careers of the noted of their own sex than men are.
We expected to approach Shediac with a great deal of interest. It
had been, when we started, one of the most prominent points in our
projected tour. It was the pivot upon which, so to speak, we
expected to swing around the Provinces. Upon the map it was so
attractive, that we once resolved to go no farther than there. It
once seemed to us that, if we ever reached it, we should be contented
to abide there, in a place so remote, in a port so picturesque and
foreign. But returning from the real east, our late interest in
Shediac seemed unaccountable to us. Firmly resolved as I was to note
our entrance into the harbor, I could not keep the place in mind; and
while we were in our state-room and before we knew it, the steamboat
Jay at the wharf. Shediac appeared to be nothing but a wharf with a
railway train on it, and a few shanty buildings, a part of them
devoted to the sale of whiskey and to cheap lodgings. This landing,
however, is called Point du Chene, and the village of Shediac is two
or three miles distant from it; we had a pleasant glimpse of it from
the car windows, and saw nothing in its situation to hinder its
growth. The country about it is perfectly level, and stripped of its
forests. At Painsec Junction we waited for the train from Halifax,
and immediately found ourselves in the whirl of intercolonial travel.
Why people should travel here, or why they should be excited about
it, we could not see; we could not overcome a feeling of the
unreality of the whole thing; but yet we humbly knew that we had no
right to be otherwise than awed by the extraordinary intercolonial
railway enterprise and by the new life which it is infusing into the
Provinces. We are free to say, however, that nothing can be less
interesting than the line of this road until it strikes the
Kennebeckasis River, when the traveler will be called upon to admire
the Sussex Valley and a very fair farming region, which he would like
to praise if it were not for exciting the jealousy of the "Garden of
Nova Scotia." The whole land is in fact a garden, but differing
somewhat from the Isle of Wight.
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