Читать книгу Life and Letters of Sir Wilfrid Laurier онлайн

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... That did not prevent me keeping my health and being very happy with your aunt, and my children too, for I am certain that Wilfrid loves his stepmother just as if she was his own mother. I always remember that at the age of eleven, when he came home from school, he would go and sit on his stepmother's lap to eat his bread and jam or bread and sugar, with his arms round her neck, and that he would put his "piece" on his knees and wipe his mouth with his handkerchief and kiss her over and over, and then pick up his "piece," eat a few mouthfuls and begin to kiss her again....

Carolus L.

St. Lin in the early fifties was a prosperous frontier village. Twenty miles to the north the blue Laurentians set a barrier to further expansion. The village itself was the centre of a broad, fertile, slightly rolling plain, still covered for the most part with the maples and elms, the pine and spruce, of the primitive forest. Its great stone church towered high above the houses that lined the two straggling streets. The river Achigan, on which it lay, turned the wheels of the grist-mills on its banks, floated down the logs from the upper reaches, and, not least, provided fishing and swimming-holes for boys' delight. It was a quiet, pleasant home, well devised to give its children happiness in youth, strength in manhood, and serene memories in old age. Young Laurier shared in the usual children's games, though an old companion recalls that many a time when the boys would call, "Wilfrid, come, we are ready for a race," the answer from the boy bent over a book would be, "Just a minute," and again, "A minute more." He particularly delighted in wandering through the woods, sometimes with gun on his shoulder for rabbit or partridge, but more often with no other purpose than to search out bird and plant and tree. His sharp eyes and retentive memory gave him an intimate and abiding knowledge of wood life of which few but his closest friends in later days were aware.