This Stand, Frequented By The Quebec
Gentry From 1840 To 1865, Had Gradually Become A Favourite Stopping Place,
A Kind
Of half-way house, where many aged valetudinarians tarried a few
minutes to gossip with friends equally aged, homeward bound,
On bright
winter afternoons, direct from their daily "constitutional" walk, as far
as the turnpike on St. John's road. Professor Hubert Larue [75] will
introduce us to some of the habitues of this little club, which he
styles Le Club des Anciens, a venerable brotherhood uniting choice
spirits among city litterateurs, antiquarians, superannuated Militia
officers, retired merchants: Messrs. Henry Forsyth, Long John Fraser,
Lieut.-Colonel Benjamin LeMoine, F. X. Garneau, G. B. Faribault, P. A. De
Gaspe, Commissary-General Jas. Thompson, Major Lafleur, Chs. Pinguet, the
valiant Captain of the City Watch in 1837. The junior members counted from
fifty to sixty summers; their seniors had braved some sixty or seventy
winters. After discussing the news of the day, local antiquities and
improvements, there were certain topics, which possessed the secret of
being to them eternally young, irresistibly attractive: the thrilling era
of Colonel De Salaberry and General Sir Isaac Brock; the Canadian
Voltigeurs, [76] the American War of 1812-14, where a few of these
veterans had clanked their sabres and sported their epaulettes, &c. With
the exception of an esteemed and aged Quebec merchant, Long John Fraser,
all now sleep the long sleep, under the green sward and leafy shades of
Mount Hermon or Belmont cemeteries, or in the moist vaults of some city
monastery.
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