92 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences^ Arts^ and Letters. 



on his knees to ask pardon at the door of the chapel. Swearers, 

 for the sixth offense, had the upper lip cat with a hot iron, and if 

 they still uttered oaths, had the tongue cut out altogether. Two 

 men were shot at Quebec for selling brandy to Indians. 



Not a few French immigrants had been tramps in the old world, 

 and transportation to the new world gave them no new nature. 

 The Bohemian element was in them as an instinct, and was as 

 sure to come out by natural selection as ducklings hatched by a 

 hen are to take to water. The Saint Lawrence flowed in one di- 

 rection ; the sinful loafers steered in quite another. 



Other Canadians had been convicts and so would naturally re- 

 gard all walls as stifling imprisonment. They were not a pious 

 race, but one prayer they never forgot, namely: ''From red-tape 

 and ritualism, good Lord, deliver us !" 



An order of Indian Knights sprung up — 'young men who 

 thought nothing so fine as to go tricked out like Indians, and 

 nothing so attractive as Indian life ; doing nothing, caring for 

 nothing, following every inclination, and getting out of the way 

 of all correction. This club may have been a natural reaction 

 from a society of matrons and maidens established to promote 

 gossip pure and simple. Meetings were held every Thursday at 

 which each member was bound by a gospel oath to confess — not 

 his own sins, but other people's — that is, all she knew, alike good 

 and bad, regarding her acquaintance. 



There is 2i physical reason why those who have learned to live 

 in the open air cannot live in houses. Sleeping under roofs they 

 exchange oxygen for miasma. 



The Circassian mountain chief, S3hamyl, when a Russian pris- 

 oner, was luxuriously housed, but at the end of a week told his 

 keepers he must commit suicide unless they would allow him to 

 lodge above the roof instead of under it. So, too, our Texan hero, 

 Sam Houston, when, after open air campaigns, he entered the 

 hall of congress, compared himself to a mouse under an air 

 pump. 



"Yes, there is sweetness in the prairie air, 

 And life that bloated ease can never hope to share." 



