discords; and being cheerful in their disposition, and moral in their habits, they enjoy perhaps as much happiness as is consistent with the frailties of human nature."
About the time Haliburton made this speech he was preparing his History for publication, in which he referred at length to the Acadians. Longfellow had access to this volume for the historical data upon which his narrative was founded. It is related that the tale of the parted lovers came to the poet from his brother-in-law, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and a clergyman, the Rev. Horace Conolly, of whose congregation a Mr. and Mrs. Haliburton had been members when residing in Boston. Mr. Haliburton was connected with the Nova Scotia family of that name. His wife had heard the story of "a young couple in Acadie.[1] On their marriage day all the men of the province . . . were seized and shipped off to be distributed through New England, among them the new bridegroom. His bride . . . wandered about New England . . . and at last when she was old found her bridegroom on his death-bed. The shock was so great that it killed her likewise." This romance Mrs. Haliburton had repeated to her rector. And thus we trace to its source the legend which inspired Evangeline a tale of the grand dérangement idealised and in certain minor points at variance with
- ↑ From Hawthorne's American Note-books, 1838.
