THAT was Mrs. Overtheway, really the bishop’s wife, and after morning prayers she was probably going on to Rika Dom to see her dear friend Juliano Horatio Ewing, the famous lady novelist.
And it might be so to-day, for, in spite of its dignity as the provincial capital, little Fredericton, with its elm-hung streets, over which floats the sound of cathedral bells, is still a celestial city, as quiet as the crystal air that surrounds it. Years ago a military barracks provided a dash of martial colour, and of the precise, long-established social life of the isolated place a romance might be written.
The most interesting houses are near the Cathedral. Below it the street runs close to the water’s edge, and the bank is lined with willows. Rafts tie up at night along the shore, and the houses all look out on the water. This one, a double house with [page 59] bow windows, belonged to Mrs. Ewing during the sixties, when her husband, a Major in the British Army, was stationed in Fredericton. Afterwards Mr. George E. Parkin and his family lived in the old River House. Bishopscote, the Medleys’ house, was just across the way.
Mrs. Ewing loved Fredericton with its “shady streets that had no names, and very few lamps, and pretty wooden houses with pretty faces at the windows”. Sometimes she speaks of Rose Hall, on the grounds of which stood a house occupied by Benedict Arnold. At the creek’s mouth nearby he built small vessels for the river trade.
A house interesting to Canadians in general is the red brick rectory where lived the Rev. George Goodridge Roberts and his wife Emma Wetmore Bliss. Here Charles G. D., the eldest son; a daughter, Elizabeth; and Theodore Goodridge, a younger brother, all grew up.
Mrs. C. F. Fraser writes of the days of “dear Rector Roberts”: “On winter evenings they were wont to read aloud for each other’s amusement the rhymes and stories which the day called forth…In summer weather the great old-fashioned garden, haunt of all fragrant and time-honoured flowers, was the favourite spot. There, in and about the hammocks, with their cousin, Bliss Carman, extending his great length on the grass below, and shaggy Nestor, wisest of household dogs, wandering about [page 60] from one to another, with half-tamed birds fluttering and twittering in the trees above, these young people did indeed see visions and dream dreams.” [page 62]
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