But he is wrong. Quebec does rebuild, does progress. Quebec progresses very slowly, but also very surely. To a man who returns after twenty years' absence from her quiet streets, the changes are most apparent. There are fewer _caleches_ upon the street--those quaint two-wheeled vehicles which merge the joys of a Coney island whirly-coaster and the benefits of Swedish massage--although the drivers of these distinctive carriages still supply the American's keen demand for "local color" by shouting "_marche donc_" to their stout and ugly little horses as they go running up and down the steep side-hill streets. Nowadays most tourists eschew the _caleche_ and turn towards trolley cars. That of itself tells of the almost sinful modernization of Quebec. It is almost a quarter of a century since the electric cars invaded the narrow streets of the Upper Town, and in so doing caused the wanton demolition of the last of the older gates--Porte St. Jean. The destruction of St. Jean's gate was a mistake--to put the matter slightly. It came at a time when the question was being gently raised of the replacement of the older gates that had gone long before--Palace, Hope and Prescott. Nowadays but two of these portals remain, the St. Louis and the Kent gates, and these are not in architectural harmony with the solid British fortifications. Indeed, that is one of the great crimes to be charged against the modernization of Quebec. Other old towns in America have brought their architects to a clever sense of the necessity of making their newer buildings fit in absolute harmony with the older. They have clung jealously to their architectural personality. Quebec has missed that point. With the exception of the lovely Chateau which fits the traditions of the town, as a solitaire fits a ring setting, the newer buildings represent a strange hodge-podge of ideas. Quebec herself rather endures being quaint than enjoys it; for in this day of Canadian development she has dreamed of the future after the fashion of those insistent towns further to the west. It has not been pleasant for her to drop from second place in Canadian commercial importance to fourth or fifth. She has had to sit back and see such cities as Winnipeg, for instance, come from an Indian trading-place to a metropolitan center two or three times her size, while her own wharves rot. It is a matter of keen humiliation to the town every time a big ocean liner goes sailing up the river to Montreal--her river, if you are to give ear to the protests of her citizens whom you meet along the Terrace of a late afternoon--without halting at her wharves, perhaps without even a respectful salute to the town which has been known these many years as the Gibraltar of America.