Worcester, December 3,1857
[In] Montreal . . . I saw many delightfully
wholesome-looking people, English and French. Among other excitements I went to
a steeplechase, which is one of the most enlivening things I ever saw — riders
galloping over a mile and half circle of farming country, , taking hedges,
ditches, and walls at full speed, the horses leaping like kittens, of course
always at some risk of failure or delay. This multiplies the points of
interest, and made it infinitely more exciting than any mere trial of speed on
a level track. Then the people, those staid John Bulls, were as wild with
exuberant emotions as a Yankee caucus. Everything indicated an athletic race.
One thing especially delighted me; when I went in to ask the price of
snowshoes, they asked me if I wished gentlemen's or ladies' size; and I
found that ladies there wear them a good deal.
_______________
SOURCE: Mary Potter Thacher Higginson, Editor, Letters
and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1846-1906, p. 95
