“Nunneries occupied more space than now--the Hotel Dieu making an ugly break in St. Paul street. Of churches there were few.... The city was composed of one and two story houses, very few of three stories, built, with very few exceptions, of rubble stone, plastered over. All the stores and many of the houses had iron doors and shutters; many buildings had vaulted cellars and many had the garret floored with heavy logs, covered with several inches of earth, and flat paving stones, with a stone staircase outside, so that a roof might burn without doing other damage.... “Four streets leading to the country--St. Mary’s, St. Laurent, St. Joseph and St. Antoine--were bordered by houses, mostly of wood--one story, but intervening streets were short and vacant ground extensive. Log fences divided fields on the west of Craig street as far as Beaver Hall Hill, which was a grassy lawn with a long, one-story wooden building across the summit and a garden behind. All to the west of this was open fields where now stands the city of our richest people.... “Village primitiveness had not disappeared in Montreal fifty years ago. Old men sat out on the doorsteps to gossip with passing friends and often the family would be found there of an evening. In the suburbs neighbours would collect for a dance in the largest house and any respectable passer-by was welcomed if he chose to step in.... Business relations were more intimate between French and English fifty years ago than now, and I think there was more kindly feeling.... But social relations were much as they are now, the races keeping separate in their charities, their amusements and their gatherings. The English were more dominant--they were more generally the employers, the French the employed.”