APPENDIX B. Vault 
However mistakenly they may have chosen, and however imper- 
fectly I may discharge their behest, I can, at least, bring you, as child 
to parent, warm and loyal greeting from a little coterie of disinterested 
enthusiasts, striving to inspire with the uplifting leaven of sentiment 
the surrounding apathetic indifference of that great commercial centre, 
which 
“Sprung from the hope of noble hearts, 
Brought into being through sacrifice 
Of men and women who played their parts, 
And counted not their lives as the price. 
She has grown in her strength like a Northern Queen, 
*Neath her crown of light and her robe of snow, 
And stands in her beauty fair, between 
The Royal Mount and the River below.” 
Poetry and statistics are, on the ground of incompatibility, 
divorced by matter-of-fact decree; but I may, perhaps, in dismissing 
the one, be able to present the other in a manner not wholly devoid of 
interest, or unpleasantly dry. 
It may be recalled, in passing, that the Society has enjoyed an 
unbroken, and, we trust, a useful existence since 1862; was incor- 
porated in 1870; and, in 1895, took possession of its present quarters 
in the old Chateau, built by Claude de Ramezay in 1705, now the 
property of the City of Montreal. In consideration of maintaining a 
free public museum, the Society is granted possession of the premises 
by lease for a long term of years at a nominal rental. 
Considerations of time and space here forbid any attempt to re-tell 
the story of the Chateau, the scenes it has witnessed and the great 
personages who have moved within its massive walls. Let the 
informed student gifted with imagination, seat him in some quiet 
corner, restoring in his mind’s eye its old proportions, and peopling 
its rooms with the stately dames and courtly cavaliers who move over 
its floors to the accompanying rustle of silk and satin in the dance, or 
stride about its corridors with military tread and clang, or, perhaps, 
with statesman-like gravity put pen and seal to paper which goes to 
the making of history, and let him clothe the ghosts of a dead past 
in form to suit his own imaginative fancy. If something more tangible 
is desired, the inquirer is directed to a recent article in an American 
periodical by the Honorary Curator, Mr. R. W. McLachlan, dealing 
with the sojourn of Franklin in 1775, and another, by the same writer, 
shortly to appear in magazine form, covering the history of the 
Chateau more at large. 
