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Joy in the Morning by Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
page 57 of 204 (27%)

The Château Frontenac at Quebec is a turreted pile of masonry wandering
down a cliff over the very cellars of the ancient Castle of St. Louis. A
twentieth-century hotel, it simulates well a mediæval fortress and lifts
against the cold blue northern sky an atmosphere of history. Old voices
whisper about its towers and above the clanging hoofs in its paved
court; deathless names are in the wind which blows from the "fleuve,"
the great St. Lawrence River far below. Jacques Cartier's voice was
heard hereabouts away back in 1539, and after him others, Champlain and
Frontenac, and Father Jogues and Mother Marie of the Conception and
Montcalm--upstanding fighting men and heroic women and hardy discoverers
of New France walked about here once, on the "Rock" of Quebec; there is
romance here if anywhere on earth. Today a new knighthood hails that
past. Uniforms are thick in steep streets; men are wearing them with
empty sleeves, on crutches, or maybe whole of body yet with racked faces
which register a hell lived through. Canada guards heroism of many
vintages, from four hundred years back through the years to Wolfe's
time, and now a new harvest. Centuries from now children will be told,
with the story of Cartier, the tale of Vimy Ridge, and while the Rock
stands the records of Frenchmen in Canada, of Canadians in France will
not die.

Always when I go to the Château I get a table, if I can, in the smaller
dining-room. There the illusion of antiquity holds through modern
luxury; there they have hung about the walls portraits of the worthies
of old Quebec; there Samuel Champlain himself, made into bronze and
heroic of size, aloft on his pedestal on the terrace outside, lifts his
plumed hat and stares in at the narrow windows, turning his back on
river and lower city. One disregards waiters in evening clothes and
up-to-date table appointments, and one looks at Champlain and the
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