one or more associated with it. Most of these legends had some moral
lessons attached to them: they were tales of disaster which came from
disobeying the teachings of the Church or of miraculous escape from
death or perdition due to the supernatural rewarding of righteousness.
Taken together, they make up a wholesome and vigorous body of
folklore, reflecting both the mystic temper of the colony and the
religious fervor of its common life. A distinguished son of French
Canada has with great industry gathered these legends together, a
service for which posterity will be grateful.[1]

[Footnote 1: Sir J.M. Lemoine, _Legends of the St. Lawrence_ (Quebec,
1878).]

Various chroniclers have left us pen portraitures of the habitant as
they saw him in the olden days. Charlevoix, La Hontan, Hocquart, and
Peter Kalm, men of widely different tastes and aptitudes, all bear
testimony to his vigor, stamina, and native-born vivacity. He was
courteous and polite always, yet there was no flavor of servility in
this most benign trait of character. It was bred in his bone and
was fostered by the teachings of his church. Along with this went a
_bonhomie_ and a lightheartedness, a touch of personal vanity, with a
liking for display and ostentation, which unhappily did not make for
thrift. The habitant "enjoys what he has got," writes Charlevoix, "and
often makes a display of what he has not got." He was also fond
of honors, even minor ones, and plumed himself on the slightest
recognition from official circles. Habitants who by years of hard
labor had saved enough to buy some uncleared seigneury strutted about
with the airs of genuine aristocrats while their wives, in the words
of Governor Denonville, "essayed to play the fine lady." More than one
intendant was amused by this broad streak of vanity in the colonial