He has kept his place, with his own customs, his own Gallic views of life, and his religious habits, with an assiduity and firmness none too common.

He is essentially a man of the home, of the soil, and of the stream; he has by nature instinctive philosophy and temperamental logic.

As a lover of the soil of Canada he is not surpassed by any of the other citizens of the country, English or otherwise.
It would almost seem as though the pageantry of past French Canadian history, and the beauty and vigour of the topographical surroundings of French Canadian life, had produced an hereditary pride and exaltation--perhaps an excessive pride and a strenuous exaltation, but, in any case, there it was, and is.

The French Canadian lives a more secluded life on the whole than any other citizen of Canada, though the native, adventurous spirit has sent him to the Eastern States of the American Union for work in the mills and factories, or up to the farthest reaches of the St.Lawrence, Ottawa, and their tributaries in the wood and timber trade.
Domestically he is perhaps the most productive son of the North American continent.

Families of twenty, or even twenty-five, are not unknown, and, when a man has had more than one wife, it has even exceeded that.
Life itself is full of camaraderie and good spirit, marked by religious traits and sacerdotal influence.
The French Canadian is on the whole sober and industrious; but when he breaks away from sobriety and industry he becomes a vicious element in the general organism.