LETTER I. 13 



Tempted by them, I visited a ' dental doctor/ 

 and for the first time passed an hour in one of 

 those terrible chairs peculiar to dentists' surgeries, 

 without suffering any pain worth complaining of. 

 ' Shall I stop it with gold or composition, miss ?' 

 inquires the tormentor. ' Which do you recom- 

 mend, doctor ?' ' Oh, please yourself ; it's your 

 funeral, not mine,' was the queer retort. 



From the main street we wandered out by the 

 tram-lines into the suburbs, passing on our way 

 through a poor quarter, where almost all the 

 inhabitants were French. It seems to me that 

 two-thirds of the population of Montreal is 

 French, and quite three-fourths of the wealth 

 English. Along the river's bank, for quite four 

 miles outside the town, a long line of villas takes 

 up every available building site, the gardens 

 running down to the river's brim. 



Hospitals and lunatic asylums abound, and 

 (much more interesting) there is a great dairy- 

 farm doing a capital business, ' run,' like most of 

 the milk business of Montreal, by Englishmen. 

 But I must cut my rambles in pen and ink short, 

 Lena, for here are the men anxious to arrange 

 about a visit to ' the kennels,' and a base-ball 

 match to-morrow. 



Fancy, my dear, an English club, a racquet 

 court, and the kennels of a well-managed pack of 



