Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 March 1885 — Marketing in a French-Canadian Town. [ARTICLE]

Marketing in a French-Canadian Town.

It is characteristic of St. Francois and the early hours of the place that the housewife who does not arrive at the village market by 6or half-past 6 in the morning subjects her household to the perils of semi-starvation. The farmers’ wives who bring in the fruit and vegetables and butter and eggs from their farms are all in their places by 5 o'clock, and by 8 many of them are already jogging along on their way homeward. And the market is the chief place for the purchase of edibles in the town of St. Francois. Its supply is meager enough and its customs are primitive. The market-women all ask one price and take another: hence a purchase involves an immense amount of bargaining and chaffering and gesticulating, and the worthy townspeople bid each other good morning, and jostle 1 each other with their market baskets and peer down over each other’s shoulders upon the meager array upon the counters with bustling and curiosity. Berries and vegetables are sold in what the native call “tureens”— a.most vague and elastic term, as a “tureen” appears to an outsider to be anything from a tea-cup to a scrub-pail. You may buy a turren-full of raspberries for 10 cents, or one for a dollar, and you can only give an indefinite guess at the quality you are getting for your money. The supply is very scanty, and poor in quality, too. The tiny wild strawberries. raspberries, and choke-cherries form the bulk of the fruit obtainable in St. Francois. The French-Canadian farmer is a slow and conservative gardener, and many vegetables and fruits which would ripen easily in the olhnate are not cultivated nowadays, simply because his grandfather did not cultivate them before him, and his sluggish brain has not yet awakened to the fact that it would a wise and profitable thing to, raise them. But, if the vegetable nfarket is scanty, the fish market on summer mornings is a sight to behold,from the number of eels which crawl • over and under each other and wriggle along the counters and fall off on the floor, where they lie writhing till the merchant, seeing his wares escaping him, picks them up and stuns them by striking their heads against the wall.— Ex.