MIRACLES IN FRENCH CANADA. 237 



expedient of causing a fog to hide the vessel of her friends. She 

 rendered barren women fruitful, and once or twice cured the 

 dumb ; by her efforts attempts to plant Jansenism in the colony- 

 were frustrated ; she also brought to naught the designs of stray 

 Huguenots. At the siege of Quebec Wolfe dispatched an expe- 

 dition to harry the river parishes. " Wherever resistance was 

 offered," says Parkman, " farmhouses and villages were laid in 

 ashes, though churches were generally spared." The church at 

 Beauprd was not spared by the troops ; it was set on fire three 

 times, but each time Saint Anne extinguished the flames, and 

 some of the Highlanders confessed the miracle. When the north 

 shore down to Cap Tourmente was blazing, nearly all the farm- 

 houses in which she was specially venerated escaped. 



But since 1860 or 1865, when the rush of poj)ulation to the 

 New England factories set in and French Canada began to receive 

 at second hand the new ideas absorbed by the emigrants, the saint 

 has been comparatively listless. She cures headache and dys- 

 pepsia, converts Protestants with Catholic wives, finds employ- 

 ment for clients, protects them while traveling, restores lost ob- 

 jects, procures young women admission to convents, and endows 

 those who come to her in a proper spirit with grace and strength 

 to quit evil practices. Now and then we hear of a hysterical girl 

 being cured on the spot, or of an epileptic finding relief, but as a 

 matter of fact the character of the miracles has deteriorated 

 since faith in them has been shaken by New England influences. 

 Hence the rather bitter remark, attributed to Mgr. B^gin, that if 

 the French Canadians are supplanting the Puritan stock, Puri- 

 tanism is having its revenge in French Canada. 



Formerly images of Saint Anne were carried in procession 

 through a parish to bring on rain or to stop rain, a ceremony that 

 reminded one of the old Roman religion and the transportation of 

 Bacchus, Ceres, and Dea Dia through the fields and vineyards by 

 white-clad youths, followed by the lustral water and the full in- 

 cense box. The practice is falling into desuetude; the habitant, 

 like the rest of us, is beginning to be satisfied with the weather 

 as it comes, and to have confidence in the predictions of the 

 meteorological office. A bad crop is still attributed to the 

 backsliding of the farmers or to the nonpayment of tithes. In 

 French Canada the tithe, collectable by law and a first lien on the 

 soil, is every twenty-sixth bushel of cereals. Of late, since the 

 opening of the western prairies, the habitants have dropped cereal 

 growing and taken to raising hay for the United States market. 

 In this manner the cures have been cheated out of tithes, and some 

 in whom the sense of reverence must have been dim pointed to the 

 McKinley bill, which levied a duty of four dollars per ton, as an 

 expression of the divine wrath. 



