"You are perfectly wrong," he said to me, "in supposing that your lecture was not appreciated. I was present, and I can assure you that the attentive silence in which they listened to you from beginning to end is the proof that they appreciated you. You would also be wrong in supposing that they do not appreciate humor. On the contrary, they are very keen of it, and I believe that the old New Englander was the father of American humor, through the solemn manner in which he told comic things, and the comic manner in which he told the most serious ones. Yes, they are keen of humor, and their apparent want of appreciation is only due to reserve, to self-control." And, as an illustration of it, my friend told me the following anecdote which, I have no doubt, a good many Americans have heard before: Mark Twain had lectured to a Maine audience without raising a single laugh in his listeners, when, at the close, he was thanked by a gentleman who came to him in the green-room, to tell him how hugely every one had enjoyed his amusing stories. When the lecturer expressed his surprise at this announcement, as the audience had not laughed, the gentleman added: "Yes, we never were so amused in our lives, and if you had gone on five minutes more, upon my word I don't think we could have held out any longer." Such is New England self-control. [Illustration] CHAPTER XIX. A LOVELY RIDE TO CANADA--QUEBEC, A CORNER OF OLD FRANCE STRAYED UP AND LOST IN THE SNOW--THE FRENCH CANADIANS--THE PARTIES IN CANADA--WILL THE CANADIANS BECOME YANKEES? _Montreal, February 1._ The ride from the State of Maine to Montreal is very picturesque, even in the winter. It offers you four or five hours of Alpine scenery through the American Switzerland. The White Mountains, commanded by Mount Washington, are, for a distance of about forty miles, as wild and imposing as anything the real Switzerland can supply the tourist. Gorges, precipices, torrents, nothing is wanting. Nearly the whole time we journeyed across pine forests, coming, now and then, across saw mills, and little towns looking like bee-hives of activity. Now there was an opening, and frozen rivers, covered with snow, formed, with the fields, a huge uniform mass of dazzling whiteness. The effect, under a pure blue sky and in a perfectly clear atmosphere, was very beautiful. Now the country became hilly again. On the slopes, right down to the bottom of the valley, we saw Berlin Falls, bathing its feet in the river. The yellow houses with their red roofs and gables, rest the eyes from that long stretch of blue and white. How beautiful this town and its surroundings must be in the fall, when Dame Nature in America puts on her cloak of gold and scarlet! All the country on the line we traveled is engaged in the lumber trade.