Christian charity.

I how of no place, not even excepting London itself, where the exercise
of benevolent feelings is more called for than in these two cities,
Quebec and Montreal. Here meet together the unfortunate, the
improvident, the helpless orphan, the sick, the aged, the poor virtuous
man, driven by the stern hand of necessity from his country and his
home, perhaps to be overtaken by sickness or want in a land of
strangers.

It is melancholy to reflect that a great number of the poorest class of
emigrants that perished in the reign of the cholera have left no trace
by which their sorrowing anxious friends in the old country may learn
their fate. The disease is so sudden and so violent that it leaves no
time for arranging worldly matters; the sentinel comes, not as it did to
Hezekiah, "Set thine house in order, for thou shalt die, and not live."

The weather is sultry hot, accompanied by frequent thunder-showers,
which have not the effect one would expect, that of cooling the heated
atmosphere. I experience a degree of languor and oppression that is very
distressing, and worse than actual pain.

Instead of leaving this place by the first conveyance for the upper
province, as we fully purposed doing, we find ourselves obliged to
remain two days longer, owing to the dilatoriness of the custom-house
officers in overlooking our packages. The fact is that everything and
everybody are out of sorts.

The heat has been too oppressive to allow of my walking much abroad. I
have seen but little of the town beyond the streets adjacent to the