If we go into the French-Canadian villages, where alone we can find an individual womanhood in the Dominion, we shall find conditions that do not exist in exactly similar form elsewhere, and which have been brought about by racial modification of accepted circumstances. The woman of the habitants is in many respects primitive in the sense of the primitive culture of America while still in its infancy of Caucasian settlement. It is true that with the growth of towns and the development of the railway systems there is constantly coming change in the conditions of the habitants, and that it is becoming more and more needful to extend our pilgrimage to the remoter quarters of the country if we would find the more primitive conditions; but they still exist. Some of these enduring customs are peculiarly connected with womanhood. The use of the loom, for example, is still known in some of the far-away villages of the French-Canadians, and in those villages little is worn that is not the product of home toil. It may be that this is the only quarter of the western hemisphere where the hand loom is not a thing of the past; but here it exists, and with it as its natural accompaniment some of the more old-fashioned traits of womanhood. The wife of the _habitant_ is industrious, thrifty, cleanly, and simple in ideas and manners. She is economical to a degree that is rarely found among the Latin races, and she has other virtues that are not common among those of like racial origin. She is moral and religious; indeed, in the latter quality she may be excessive in one way, being entirely under the dominion of her spiritual pastor. But then she has good reason for this filial obedience, for the relations of the French-Canadian bishop or priest with his flock are in all ways commendable. She is fond of innocent gaiety and not averse to adornment of person when this does not conflict with her love of economy; but when, as sometimes happens, the bishop issues a pastoral in which he commands the relinquishment of certain modes of amusement, such as the waltz, or reprehends certain named frivolities of costume, she abandons the forbidden thing with a quiet obedience which may be unmodern in spirit, but which is pleasant to see in its cheerful submission to an authority which she considers as the highest that can be evoked and one which it were sin to despise or disobey.