from the dark to dance in the stifling kitchen—the month is August but the stove still blazes—; babies drop to sleep on their mothers' knees; the music-maker bends more resolutely to his bow; coffee is offered for the twentieth time; the bride dances with the groom's relatives and the groom with the bride's—and the groom's father heaps more wood in the stove . . . until Aurora comes. Then the horses turned loose in the pasture whinny that it is time to go home. And their masters, heeding at last, bid "Adieu, Marie" and "Bonne chance, Christophe," to the limp young people in the door. Some one pulls down the flag of Acadie. The groom's father pays the fiddler . . . the noces are at an end.
The national fete of the Provincial French celebrates on Assumption Day, August 15th, the convention held in 1880 to discuss for the first time since their eviction in 1755, the interests of the Acadians. Peals of bells, processions and "church picnics" mark the day of rejoicing.
Every year at the Feast of St. Anne, in July, the Micmac Indians of Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia foregather—as many of them as can accomplish the journey—on the Island of the Holy Family, or Indian Island, seven miles from, the town of St. Peter's, where Monsieur Denys once had a settlement. Here for ten days they live in tepees of birch-bark, subsisting on provisions transported
