Acadia: or, A Month with the Blue NosesCozzens, Frederic S. (Frederic Swartwout)
History
Acadia: or, A Month with the Blue Noses
Cozzens, Frederic S. (Frederic Swartwout)
Nova Scotia -- Description and travel
To all these exactions, these unhappy people patiently submitted. But in
vain. The very existence of the subjugated race had become irksome to
their oppressors. A cruelty yet more intolerable to which the history of
the world affords no parallel, remained to be perpetrated.
CHAPTER XVIII.
On the road to Windsor--The great Nova Scotia Railway--A Fellow
Passenger--Cape Sable Shipwrecks--Seals--Ponies--Windsor--Sam Slick--A
lively Example.
A dewy, spring-like morning is all I remembered of my farewell to Halifax.
A very sweet and odorous air as I rode towards the railway station in the
funereal cab; a morning without fog, a sparkling freshness that twinkled
in the leaves and crisped the waters.
So I take leave of thee, quaint old city of Chebucto. The words of a
familiar ditty, the memory of the unfortunate Miss Bailey, rises upon me
as the morning bugle sounds--
"A captain bold in Halifax, who lived in country quarters,
Seduced a maid, who hung herself next morning in her garters;
His wicked conscience smoted him, he lost his spirits daily,
He took to drinking ratifia, and thought upon Miss Bailey."
While the psychological features of the case were puzzling his brain and
keeping him wide awake--
"The candles blue, at XII. o'clock, began to burn quite paley,
A ghost appeared at his bedside, and said--
behold, Miss Bailey!!!"
Even such a sprite, so dead in look, so woe-begone, drew Priam's curtain
in the dead of night to tell him half his Troy was burned; but this visit
was for a different purpose, as we find by the words which the gallant
Lothario addressed to his victim:
"'You'll find,' says he, 'a five-pound note in my regimental
small-clothes;
'T will bribe the sexton for your grave,' the ghost then vanished
gaily,
Saying, 'God bless you, wicked Captain Smith, although you've
ruined Miss Bailey.'"
There is no end to these legends; the whole province is full of them. The
Province Building is stuffed with rich historical manuscripts, that only
wait for the antiquarian explorer.[G]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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