The City State Years

Should America ever be split, maybe not geographically, but the growing divisions are inevitable. As with secessionist movements that America could enter the City State period anyways. When I mean by that, there’s a good chance that many of these future city-states would be allied not just by their allegiance to certain countries like Mexico and Canada but also politics. This is already happening.

This could even happen in the mid 2020s and that’s when America starts getting divided in time. I predict that New York might become the most powerful American city-state having allies in the former New England and to some extent, Canada. It’s practically also going to be an important trading hub between America and Europe.

Washington DC, Maryland might also become powerful but due to differing political allegiances it’s more allied to the South and Mexico, which acts as a viable trading partner and sociopolitical hub between the Southernmost American city-states and Central America proper. (Mexico could even gain Puerto Rico as well as getting back California, Nevada, Colorado and Texas.)

Los Angeles might still be an important entertainment and infotech hub but that’s been overtaken by China and India. (Israel, in this same period, becomes a trading hub between Europe and Africa but is part of the latter.) As for popstars, let’s say the only thing relevant about Ariana Grande’s that she’s got a child at 45 through ectogenesis. And that’s going to be a big thing in the 2020s.

(Let’s not forget that DC/Warner Media might be the biggest casualty of the American City State period, with a Sino-Indian company taking a 36% stake in DC Comics.)

But even then the America she lived in isn’t the America future Americans will live in. In the city state years, the landscape’s dominated by major competiting cities with smaller towns and villages vying for their loyalties and attentions. On a larger scale, some are torn between themselves, Canada and Mexico. Some companies are casualties of the American city state years, their only hope is to be part of a multinational Chinese corporation.

That’s already happening to some extent, should China ever instigate the Asian Union which the Philippines and Taiwan join along with their neighbours. Chances are America’s not only going to lose its dominance but also be reduced to city-states. Look at what’s been done to Rome/Italy before. America could go down should it split.

The great lone land: the north-west of America. 4th and cheaper ed (Google Books)

CHAPTER III.

Bunker—New York—Niagara—Toronto— String-time In QueBec—A Summons—A Start—In Good Company—Strewing A Peg—An Expedition—Poor Canada—An Old Glimpse At A New Land—Rival Routes—Change Of Masters—The Red River Revolt—The Half-breeds—Early Settlers —Bungling—” Eaters Of Pemmican “—M. Louis Riel—The iluRDER Of Scott.

When a city or a. nation has but one military memory, it clings to it with all the affectionate tenacity of an old maid for her solitary poodle or parrot. Boston— supreme over any city in the Republic—can boast of possessing one military memento: she has the Hill of Bunker. Bunker has long passed into the bygone; but his hill remains, and is likely to remain for many a long day. It is not improbable that the life, character and habits, sayings, even the writings of Bunker—perhaps he couldn’t write !—are familiar to many persons in the United States; but it is in Boston and Massachusetts that Bunker holds highest carnival. They keep in the Senate-chamber of the Capitol, nailed over the entrance doorway in full sight of the Speaker’s chair, a drum, a musket, and a mitre-shaped soldier’s hat;—trophies of the fight fought in front of the low earthwork on Bunker’s Hill. Thus the senators of Massachusetts have ever before them visible reminders of the glory of their fathers: and I am not sure that these former belongings of some long-waistcoated redcoat are not as valuable incentives to correct legislation as that historic ” bauble” of our own constitution.

Meantime we must away. Boston and New York have had their stories told frequently enough—and, in reality, there is not much to tell about them. The world does not contain a more uninteresting accumulation of men and houses than the great city of New York: it is a place wherein the stranger feels inexplicably lonely. The traveller has no mental property in this city whose enormous growth of life has struck scant roots into the great heart of the past.

Our course, however, lies west. We will trace the onward stream of empire in many portions of its way; we will reach its limits, and pass beyond it into the lone spaces which yet silently await its coming; and farther still, where the solitude knows not of its approach and the Indian still reigns in savage supremacy.

Niagara.—They have all had their say about Niagara. From Hennipin to Dilke, travellers have written much about this famous cataract, and yet, put all together; they have not said much about it; description depends so much on comparison, and comparison necessitates -a something like. If there existed another Niagara on the earth, travellers might compare this one to that one; but as there does not exist a second Niagara, they are generally hard up for a comparison. In the matter of roar, however, comparisons are still open. There is so much noise in the world that analysis of noise becomes easy. One man hears in it the sound of the Battle of the Nile—a statement not likely to be challenged, as the survivors of that celebrated naval action are not numerous, the only one we ever had the pleasure of meeting having been stone-deaf. Another writer compares the roar to the sound of a vast mill; and this similitude, more flowery than poetical, is perhaps as good as that of the one who was in Aboukir Bay. To leave out Niagara, when you can possibly bring it in would be as much against the stock-book of travel as to omit the duel, the steeple-chase, or the escape from the mad bull in a thirty-one-and-sixpenny fashionable novel. What the pyramids are to Egypt—what Vesuvius is to Naples—what the field of Waterloo has been for fifty years to Brussels, so is Niagara to the entire continent of North America.

It was early in the month of September, three years prior to the time I now write of, when I first visited this famous spot. The Niagara season was at its height: the monster hotels were ringing with song, music, and dance; tourists were doing the falls, and touts were doing the tourists. Newly-married couples were conducting themselves in that demonstrative manner characteristic of such people in the New World. Buffalo girls had apparently responded freely to the invitation contained in their favourite nigger melody. Venders of Indian bead-work; itinerant philosophers; camera-obscura men; imitation squaws; free and enlightened negroes; guides to go under the cataract,.who should have been sent over it; spiritualists, phrenologists, and nigger minstrels had made the place their own. Shoddy and petroleum were having “a high old time of it,” spending the dollar as though that “almighty article had become the thin end of nothing whittled fine:” altogether, Niagara was a place to be instinctively shunned.

Just four months after this time the month of January was drawing to a close. King Frost, holding dominion over Niagara, had worked strange wonders with the scene. Folly and ruffianism had been frozen up, shoddy and petroleum had betaken themselves to other haunts, the bride strongly demonstrative or weakly reciprocal had vanished, the monster hotels were silent and deserted, the free and enlightened negro had gone back to Buffalo, and the girls of that thriving city no longer danced, as of yore, “under de light of de moon.” Well, Niagara was worth seeing then—and the less we say about it, perhaps, the better. “Pat,” said an American to a staring Irishman lately landed, ” did you ever see such a fall as that in the old country?” “Begarra ! I niverdid; but look here now, why wouldn’t it fall? what’s to hinder it from falling?”

When I reached the city of Toronto, capital of the province of Ontario, I found that the Red River Expeditionary Force had already been mustered, previous to its start for the North-West. Making my way to the quarters of the commander of the Expedition, I was greeted every now and again with a “You should have been here last week . every soul wants to get on the Expedition, and you hav’n’t a chance. The whole thing is complete; we start to-morrow.” Thus I encountered those few friends who on such occasions are as certain to offer their pithy condolences as your neighbour at the dinner-table when you are late is sure to tell you that the soup and fish were delicious. At last I met the commander himself.

“My good fellow, there’s not a vacant berth for you,” lie said; “I got your telegram, but the whole army in Canada wanted to get on the Expedition.”

“I think, sir, there is one berth still vacant,” I answered.

“What is it?”

“You will want to know what they are doing in Minnesota and along the flank of your march, and you have no one to tell you,” I said.

“You are right; we do want a man out there. Look now, start for Montreal by first train to-morrow; by tonight’s mail I will write to the general, recommending your appointment. If you see him as soon as possible, it may yet be all right.” m

I thanked him, said ” Good-bye,” and in little more than twenty-four hours later found myself in Montreal, the commercial capital of Canada.

“Let me see,” said the general next morning, when I presented myself before him, “you sent a cable message from the South of Ireland last month, didn’t you? and you now want to get out to the West? Well, we will require a man there, but the thing doesn’t rest with me; it will have to be referred to Ottawa; and meantime you can remain here, or with your regiment, pending the receipt of an answer.”

So I went back to my regiment to wait.

Spring breaks late over the province of Quebec—that portion of America known to our fathers as Lower Canada, and of old to the subjects of the Grand Monarque as the kingdom of New France. But when the young trees begin to open their leafy lids after the long sleep of winter, they do it quickly. The snow is not all gone before the maple-trees are all green—the maple, that most beautiful of trees! Well has Canada made the symbol of her new nationality that tree whose green gives the spring its earliest freshness, whose autumn dying tints are richer than the clouds of sunset, whose life-stream is sweeter than honey, and whose branches are drowsy through the long summer with the scent and the hum of bee and flower! Still the long line of the Canadas admits of a varied spring. When the trees are green at Lake St. Clair, they are scarcely budding at Kingston, they are leafless at Montreal, and Quebec is white with snow. Even between Montreal and Quebec, a short night’s steaming, there exists a difference of ten days in the opening of the summer. But late as comes the summer to Quebec, it comes in its love

liest and most enticing form, as though it wished to atone for its long delay in banishing from such a landscape the cold tyranny of winter. And with what loveliness does the whole face of plain, river, lake, and mountain turn from the iron clasp of icy winter to kiss the balmy lips of returning summer, and to welcome his bridal gifts of sun and shower! The trees open their leafy lids to look at him—the brooks and streamlets break forth into songs of gladness—”the birch-tree,” as the old Saxon said, ” becomes beautiful in its branches, and rustles sweetly in its leafy summit, moved to and fro by the breath of heaven “—the lakes uncover their sweet faces, and their mimic shores steal down in quiet evenings to bathe themselves in the transparent waters— far into the depths of the great forest speeds the glad message of returning glory, and graceful fern, and soft velvet moss, and white wax-like lily peep forth to cover rock and fallen tree and wreck of last year’s autumn in one great sea of foliage. There are many landscapes which can never be painted, photographed, or described, but which the mind carries away instinctively to look at again and” again in after-time—these are the celebrated views of the world, and they are not easy to find. From the Queen’s rampart, on the citadel of Quebec, the eye sweeps over a greater diversity of landscape than is probably to be found in any one spot in the universe. Blue mountain, farstretching river, foaming cascade, the white sails of ocean ships, the black trunks of many-sized guns, the pointed roofs, the white village nestling amidst its fields of green, the great islein mid-channel, the many shades of colour from deep blue pine-wood to yellowing corn-field—in what other spot on the earth’s broad bosom lie grouped together in a single glance so many of these ” things of beauty” which the e}-e loves to feast on and to place in memory as joys for ever?

I had been domiciled in Quebec for about a week, when there appeared one morning in General Orders a paragraph commanding my presence in Montreal to receive instructions from the military authorities relative to my further destination. It was the long-looked-for order, and fortune, after many frowns, seemed at length about to smile upon me. It was on the evening of the 8th June, exactly two months after the despatch of my cable message from the South of Ireland, that I turned my face to the West and commenced a long journey towards the setting sun. When the broad curves of the majestic river had shut out the rugged outline of the citadel, and the east was growing coldly dim while the west still glowed with the fires of sunset, I could not help feeling a thrill of exultant thought at the prospect before me. I little knew then the limits of my wanderings—I little thought that for many and many a day my track would lie with almost undeviating precision towards the setting sun, that summer would merge itself into autumn, and autumn darken into winter, and that still the nightly bivouac would be made a little nearer to that west whose golden gleam was suffusing sky and water.

But though all this was of course unknown, enough was still visible in the foreground of the future to make even the swift-moving paddles seem laggards as they beat to foam the long reaches of the darkening Cataraqui. “We must leave matters to yourself, I think,” said the General, when I saw him for the last time in Montreal, “you will be best judge of how to get on when you know and see the ground. I will not ask you to visit Fort Garry, but if you find it feasible, it would be well if you could drop down the Red River and join Wolseley before he gets to the place. You know what I want, but how to do it, I will leave altogether to yourself. For the rest, you can draw on us for any money you require. Take care of those northern fellows. Good-bye, and success.”

This was on the 12th June, and on the morning of the 13th I started by the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada for the West. On that morning the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada was in a high state of excitement. It was about to attempt, for the first time, the despatch of a Lightning Express for Toronto; and it was to carry from Montreal, on his way to Quebec, one of the Royal Princes of England, whose sojourn in the Canadian capital was drawing to a close. The Lightning Express was not attended with the glowing success predicted for it by its originators. At some thirty or forty miles from Montreal it came heavily to grief, owing to some misfortune having attended the progress of a preceding train over the rough uneven track. A delay of two hours having supervened, the Lightning Express got into motion again, and jolted along with to lerable celerity to Kingston. When darkness set in it worked itself up to a high pitch of fury, and rushed along the low shores of Lake Ontario with a velocity which promised disaster. The car in which I travelled was one belonging to the director of the Northern Railroad of Canada, Mr. Cumberland, and we had in it a minister of fisheries, one of education, a governor of a province, a speaker of a house of commons, and a colonel of a distinguished rifle regiment. Being the last car of the train, the vibration caused by the unusual rate of speed over the very rough rails was excessive; it was, however, consolatory to feel that any little unpleasantness which might occur through the fact of the car leaving the track would be attended with some sense of alleviation. The rook is said to have thought he was paying dear for good company when he was put into the pigeon pie, but it by no means follows that a leap from an embankment, or an upset into a river, would be as disastrous as is usually supposed, if taken in the society of such pillars of the state as those I have already mentioned. Whether a speaker of a house of commons and a governor of a large province, to say nothing of a minister of fisheries, would tend in reality to mitigate the unpleasantness of being ” telescoped through colliding,” I cannot decide, for we reached Toronto without accident, at midnight, and I saw no more of my distinguished fellow-travellers.

I remained long enough in the city of Toronto to provide myself with a wardrobe suitable to the countries I was about to seek. In one of the principal commercial streets of the flourishing capital of Ontario I found a small tailoring establishment, at the door of which stood an excellent representation of a colonial. The garments belonging to this figure appeared to have been originally designed from the world-famous pattern of the American flag, presenting above a combination of stars, and below having a tendency to stripes. The general groundwork of the whole rig appeared to be shoddy of an inferior description, and a small card attached to the figure intimated that the entire fit-out was procurable at the very reasonable sum of ten dollars. It was impossible to resist the fascination of this attire. While the bargain was being transacted the tailor looked askance at the garments worn by his customer, which, having only a few months before emanated from the establishment of a well-known London cutter, presented a considerable contrast to the new investment; he even ventured upon some remarks which evidently had for their object the elucidation of the enigma, but a word that such clothes as those worn by me were utterly unsuited to the bush repelled all further questioning—indeed, so pleased did the Door fellow appear in a pecuniary point of view, that he insisted upon presenting me gratis with a neck-tie of green and yellow, fully in keeping with the other articles composing the costume. And now, while I am thus arranging these little preliminary matters so essential to the work I was about to engage in, let us examine for a moment the objects and scope of that work, and settle the limits and extent of the first portion of my journey, and sketch the route of the Expedition. It will be recollected that the Expedition destined for the Red River of the North had started some time before for its true base of operations, namely Fort William, on the north-west shore of Lake Superior. The distance intervening between Toronto and Thunder Bay is about 600 miles, 100 being by railroad conveyance and 500 by water. The island-studded expanse of Lake Huron, known as Georgian Bay, receives at the northern extremity the waters of the great Lake Superior, but a difference of level amounting to upwards of thirty feet between the broad bosoms of these two vast expanses of fresh water has rendered necessary the construction of a canal of considerable magnitude. This canal is situated upon American territory—a fact which gives our friendly cousins the exclusive possession of the great northern basin, and which enabled them at the very outset of the Red River affair to cause annoyance and delay to the Canadian Expedition. Poor Canada ! when one looks at you along the immense length of your noble river-boundary, how vividly become apparent the evils under which your youth has grown to manhood! Looked at from home by every succeeding colonial minister through the particular whig, or “tory spectacles of his party, subject to violent and radical alterations of policy because of some party vote in a Legislative Assembly 3000 miles from your nearest coast-line, your own politicians, for years, too timid to grasp the limits

of your possible future, parties every where in your provinces, and of every kind, except a national party; no breadth, no depth, no earnest striving to make you great amongst the nations, each one for himself and no one for the country; men righting for a sect, for a province, for a nationality, but no one for the nation; and all this while, close alongside, your great rival grew with giant’s growth, looking far into the future before him, cutting his cloth with perspective ideas of what his limbs would attain to in after-time, digging his canals and grading his railroads, with one eye on the Atlantic and the other on the Pacific, spreading himself, monopolizing, annexing, outmanoeuvring and flanking those colonial bodies who sat in solemn state in Downing Street and wrote windy proclamations and despatches anent boundary-lines, of which they knew next to nothing. Macaulay laughs, at poor Newcastle for his childish delight in finding out that Cape Breton was an island, but I strongly suspect there were other and later Newcastles whose geographical knowledge on matters American were not a whit superior. Poor Canada! they muddled you out of Maine, and the open harbour of Portland, out of House’s Point, and the command of Lake Champlain, out of many a fair mile far away by the Rocky Mountains. It little matters whether it was the treaty of 1783, or 1818, or ’21, or ’48, or ’71, the worst of every bargain, at all times, fell to you.

I have said that the possession of the canal at the Sault St. Marie enabled the Americans to delay the progress of the Red River Expedition. The embargo put upon the Canadian vessels originated, however, in the State, and not the Federal, authorities; that is to say, the State of Michigan issued the prohibition against the passage of the steamboat, and not the Cabinet of Washington. Finally, Washington overruled the decision of Michigan—a feat far more feasible now than it would have been prior to the Southern war—and the steamers were permitted to pass through into the waters of Lake Superior. From thence to Thunder Bay was only the steaming of four-and-twenty hours through a lake whose vast bosom is the favourite playmate of the wild storm-king of the North. But although full half the total distance from Toronto to the Red River had been traversed when the Expedition reached Thunder Bay, not a twentieth of the time nor one hundredth part of the labour and fatigue had been accomplished. For a distance of 600 miles there stretched away to the northwest a vast tract of rock-fringed lake, swamp, and forest; lying spread in primeval savagery, an untravelled wilderness; the home of the Ojibbeway, who here, entrenched amongst Nature’s fastnesses, has long called this land his own. Long before Wolfe had scaled the heights of Abraham, before even Marlborough, and Eugene, and Villers, and Vendome, and Villeroy had commenced to fight their giants’ fights in divers portions of the low countries, some adventurous subjects of the Grand Monarque were forcing their way, for the first time, along the northern shores of Lake Superior, nor stopping there: away to the north-west there dwelt wild tribes to be sought out by two classes of men—by the black robe, who laboured for souls; by the trader, who sought for skins—and a hard race had these two widely different pioneers who sought at that early day these remote and friendless regions, so hard that it would almost seem as though the great powers of good and of evil had both despatched at this same moment, on rival errands, ambassadors to gain dominion’ over these distant savages. It was a curious contest: on the one hand, showy robes, shining beads, and maddening fire-water, on the

other, the old, old story of peace and brotherhood, of Christ and Calvary—a contest so full of interest, so teeming with adventure, so pregnant with the discovery of mighty rivers and great inland seas, that one would fain ramble away into its depths; but it must not be, or else the journey I have to travel myself would never even begin.

Vast as is the accumulation of fresh water in Lake Superior, the area of the country which it drains is limited enough. Fifty miles from its northern shores the rugged hills which form the backbone or “divide” of the continent raise their barren heads, and the streams carry from thence the vast rainfall of this region into the Bay of Hudson. Thus, when the voyageur has paddled, tracked, poled, and carried his canoe up any of the many rivers which rush like mountain torrents into Lake Superior from the north, he reaches the height of land between the Atlantic Ocean and Hudson Bay. Here, at an elevation of 1500 feet above the sea level, and of 900 above Lake Superior, he launches his canoe upon water flowing north and west; then he has before him hundreds of miles of quiet-lying lake, of wildlyrushing river, of rock-broken rapid, of foaming cataract, but through it all runs ever towards the north the oceanseeking current. As later on we shall see many and many a mile of this wilderness—living in it, eating in it, sleeping in it—although reaching it from a different direction altogether from the one spoken of now, I anticipate, by alluding to it here, only as illustrating the track of the Expedition between Lake Superior and Red River. For myself, my route was to be altogether a different one. I was to follow the lines of railroad which ran out into the frontier territories of the United States, then, leaving the iron horse, I was to make my way to the settlements on the west shore of Lake Superior, and from thence to work round to the American boundary-line at Pembina on the Red River; so far through American territory, and with distinct and definite instructions; after that, altogether to my own resources, but with this summary of the general’s wishes: “I will not ask you to visit Fort Garry, but however you manage it, try and reach Wolseley before he gets through from Lake Superior, and let him know what these Red River men are going to do.” Thus the military Expedition under Colonel Wolseley was to work its way across from Lake Superior to Red River, through British territory; I was to pass round by the United States, and, after ascertaining the likelihood of Fenian intervention from the side of Minnesota and Dakota, endeavour to reach Colonel Wolseley beyond Red River, with all tidings as to state of parties and chances of fight. But as the reader has heard only a very brief mention of the state of affairs in Red River, and as he may very naturally be inclined to ask, What is this Expedition going to do—why are these men sent through swamp and wilderness at all? a few explanatory words may not be out of place, serving to make matters now and at a later period much more intelligible. I have said in the opening chapter of this book, that the little community, or rather a portion of the little community, of Red River Settlement had risen in insurrection, protesting vehemently against certain arrangements made between the Governor of Canada and the Hon. Hudson’s Bay Company relative to the cession of territorial rights and governing powers. After forcibly expelling the Governor of the country appointed by Canada, from the frontier station at Pembina, the French malcontents had proceeded to other and still more questionable proceedings. Assembling in large numbers, they had fortified portions of the road between Pembina and Fort Garry, and had taken armed possession of the latter place, in which large stores of provisions, clothing, and merchandise of all descriptions had heen stored by the Hudson Bay Company. The occupation of this fort, which stands close to the confluence of the Red and Assineboine Rivers, nearly midway between the American boundary-line and the southern shore of Lake Winnipeg, gave the French party the virtual command of the entire settlement. The abundant stores of clothing and provisions were not so important as the arms and ammunition which also fell into their hands—a battery of ninepound bronze guns, complete in every respect, besides several smaller pieces of ordnance, together with large store of Enfield rifles and old brown-bess smooth bores. The place was, in fact, abundantly supplied with war material of every description. It is almost refreshing to notice the ability, the energy, the determination which up to this point had characterized all the movements of the originator and mainspring of the movement, M. Louis Riel. One hates so much to see a thing bungled, that even resistance, although it borders upon rebellion, becomes respectable when it is carried out with courage, energy, and decision.

And, in truth, up to this point in the little insurrection it is not easy to condemn the wild Metis of the North-west —wild as the bison which he hunted, unreclaimed as the prairies he loved so well, what knew he of State duty or of loyalty? He knew that this land was his, and that strong men were coming to square it into rectangular farms and to push him farther west by the mere pressure of civilization. He had heard of England and the English, but it was in a shadowy, vague, unsubstantial sort of way, unaccompanied by any fixed idea of government or law. The Company—not the Hudson Bay Company, but the Company—represented for him all law, all power, all govern

ment. Protection he did not need—his quick ear, his unerring eye, his untiring horse, his trading gun, gave him that; but a market for his taurreau, for his buffalo robe, for his lynx, fox, and wolf skins, for the produce of his summer hunt and winter trade, he did need, and in the forts of the Company he found it. His wants were few—a capote of blue cloth, with shining brass buttons; a cap, with beads and tassel; a blanket; a gun, and ball and powder; a box of matches, and a knife, these were all he wanted, and at every fort, from the mountain to the banks of his wellloved River Rouge, he found them, too. What were these new people coming to do with him? Who could tell? If they meant him fair, why did they not say so? why did they not come up and tell him what they wanted, and what they were going to do for him, and ask him what he wished for? But, no; they either meant to outwit him, or they held him of so small account that it mattered little what he thought about it; and, with all the pride of his mother’s race, that idea of his being slighted hurt him even more than the idea of his being wronged. Did not every thing point to his disappearance under the new order of things? He had only to look round him to verify the fact; for years before this annexation to Canada had been carried into effect stragglers from the east had occasionally reached Red River. It is true that these new-comers found much to foster the worst passions of the Anglo-Saxon settler. They found a few thousand occupants, half-farmers, half-hunters, living under a vast commercial monopoly, which, though it practically rested upon a basis of the most paternal kindness towards its subjects, was theoretically hostile to all opposition. Had these men settled quietly to the usual avocations of farming, clearing the wooded ridges, fencing the rich expanses of prairie, covering the great swamps and plains with herds and flocks, it is probable that all would have gone well between the new-comers and the old proprietors. Over that great western thousand miles of prairie there was room for all. But, no; they came to trade and not to till, and trade on the Red River of the North was conducted upon the most peculiar principles. There was, in fact, but one trade, and that was the fur trade. Now, the fur trade is, for some reason or other, a very curious description of barter. Like some mysterious chemical agency, it pervades and permeates every thing it touches. If a man cuts off legs, cures diseases, draws teeth, sells whiskey, cotton, wool, or any other commodity of civilized or uncivilized life, he will be as sure to do it with a view to furs as any doctor, dentist, or general merchant will be sure to practise his particular calling with a view to the acquisition of gold and silver. Thus, then, in the first instance were the new-comers set in antagonism to the Company, and finally to the inhabitants themselves. Let us try and be just to all parties in this little oasis of the Western wilderness.

The early settlers in a Western country are not by any means persons much given to the study of abstract justice, still less to its practice; and it is as well, perhaps, that they should not be. They have rough work to do, and they generally do it roughly. The very fact of their coming out so far into the wilderness implies the other fact of their not being able to dwell quietly and peaceably at home. They are, as it were, the advanced pioneers of civilization who make smooth the way of the coming race. Obstacles of any kind are their peculiar detestation—if it is a tree, cut it down; if it is a savage, shoot it down; if it is a halfbreed, force it down. That is about their creed, and it must be said they act up to their convictions.

Now, had the country bordering on Red River been an unpeopled wilderness, the plan carried out in effecting the transfer of land in the North-west from the Hudson’s Bay Company to the Crown, and from the Crown to the Dominion of Canada, would have been an eminently wise one; but, unfortunately for its wisdom, there were some 15,000 persons living in peaceful possession of the soil thus transferred, and these 15,000 persons very naturally objected to have themselves and possessions signed away without one word of consent or one note of approval. Nay, more than that, these straggling pioneers had on many an occasion taunted the vain half-breed with what would happen when the irresistible march of events had thrown the country into the arms of Canada: then civilization would dawn upon the benighted country, the half-breed would seek some western region, the Company would disappear, and all the institutions of New World progress would shed prosperity over the land; prosperity, not to the old dwellers and of the old type, but to the new-comers and of the new order of things. Small wonder, then, if the little community, resenting all this threatened improvement off the face of the earth, got their powder-horns ready, took the covers off their trading flint-guns, and with much gesticulation summarily interfered with several anticipatory surveys of their farms, doubling up the sextants, bundling the surveying parties out of their freeholds, and very peremptorily informing Mr. Governor M’Dougall, just arrived from Canada, that his presence was by no means of the least desirability to Red River or its inhabitants. The man who, with remarkable energy and perseverance, had worked up his fellow-citizens to this pitch of resistance, organizing and directing the whole movement, was a young French half-breed named Louis Riel—a man possessing many of the attributes suited to the leadership of parties, and quite certain to rise to the surface in any time of political disturbances. It has doubtless occurred to any body who has followed me through this brief sketch of the causes which led to the assumption of this attitude on the part of the French half-breeds—it has occurred to them, I say, to ask who then was to blame for the mismanagement of the transfer: was it the Hudson Bay Company who surrendered for 300,000£ their territorial rights? was it the Imperial Government who accepted that surrender? or was it the Dominion Government to whom the country was in turn retransferred by the Imperial authorities? I answer that the blame of having bungled the whole business belongs collectively to all the great and puissant bodies. Any ordinary matter-of-fact, sensible man would have managed the whole affair in a few hours; but so many high and potent powers had to consult together, to pen despatches, to speechify, and to lay down the law about it, that the whole affair became hopelessly muddled. Of course, ignorance and carelessness were, as they always are, at the bottom of it all. Nothing would have been easier than to have sent a commissioner from England to Red River, while the negotiations for transfer were pending, who would have ascertained the feelings and wishes of the people of the country relative to the transfer, and would have guaranteed them the exercise of their rights and liberties under any and every new arrangement that might be entered into. Now, it is no excuse for any Government to plead ignorance upon any matter pertaining to the people it governs, or expects to govern, for a Government has no right to be ignorant on any such matter, and its ignorance must be its condemnation; yet this is the plea put forward by the Dominion Government of Canada, and yet the Dominion Government and the Imperial Government had ample opportunity of arriving at a correct knowledge of the state of affairs in Red River, if they had only taken the trouble to do so. Nay, more, it is an undoubted fact that warning had been given to the Dominion Government of the state of feeling amongst the half-breeds, and the phrase, “they are only eaters of pemmican,” so cutting to the Metis, was then first originated by a distinguished Canadian politician.

And now let us see what the “caters of pemmican” proceeded to do after their forcible occupation of Fort Garry. Well, it must be admitted they behaved in a very indifferent manner, going steadily from bad to worse, and much befriended in their seditious proceedings by continued and oft repeated bungling on the part of their opponents. Early in the month of December, 1869, Mr. M’Dougall issued two proclamations from his post at Pembina, on the frontier: in one he declared himself Lieutenant-Governor of the territory which Her Majesty had transferred to Canada; and in the other he commissioned an officer of the Canadian militia, under the high-sounding title of “Conservator of the Peace,” ” to attack, arrest, disarm, and disperse armed men disturbing the public peace, and to assault, fire upon, and break into houses in which these armed men were to be found.” Now, of the first proclamation it will be only necessary to remark, that Her Majesty the Queen had not done any thing of the kind imputed to her; and of the second it has probably already occurred to the reader that the title of ” Conservator of the Peace ” was singularly inappropriate to one vested with such sanguinary and destructive powers as was the holder of this commission, who was to ” assault, fire upon, and break into houses, and to attack, arrest, disarm, and disperse people,” and

generally to conduct himself after the manner of Attila, Genshis Khan, the Emperor Theodore, or any other ferocious magnate of ancient or modern times. The officer holding this destructive commission thought he could do nothing better than imitate the tactics of his French adversary, accordingly we find him taking possession of the other rectangular building known as the Lower Fort Garry, situated some twenty miles north of the one in which the French had taken post, but unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, not finding within its walls the same store of warlike material which had existed in the Fort Garry senior. The Indians, ever ready to have a hand in any fighting which may be “knocking around,” came forward in all the glory of paint, feathers, and pow-wow; and to the number of fifty were put as garrison into the place. Some hundreds of English and Scotch half-breeds were enlisted, told off into companies under captains improvised for the occasion, and every thing pointed to a very pretty quarrel before many days had run their course. But, in truth, the hearts of the English and Scotch settlers were not in this business. By nature peaceably disposed, inheriting from their Orkney and Shetland forefathers much of the frugal habits of the Scotchmen, these people only asked to be left in peace. So far the French party had been only fighting the battle of every half-breed, whether his father had hailed from the northern isles, the shires of England, or the snows of Lower Canada; so, after a little time, the Scotch and English volunteers began to melt away, and on the 9th of December the last warrior had disappeared. But the effects of their futile demonstration soon became apparent in the increasing violence and tyranny of Riel and his followers. The threatened attempt to upset his authority by arraying the Scotch and English half-breeds against him served only to add strength to his party. The number of armed malcontents in Fort Garry became very much increased, clergymen of both parties, neglecting their manifest functions, began to take sides in the conflict, and the worst form of religious animosity became apparent in the little community. Emboldened by the presence of some five or six hundred armed followers, Riel determined to strike a blow against the party most obnoxious to him. This was the English-Canadian party, the pioneers of the Western settlement already alluded to as having been previously in antagonism with the people of Red River. Some sixty or seventy of these men, believing in the certain advance of the English force upon Fort Garry, had taken up a position in the little village of Winnipeg, less than a mile distant from the fort, where they awaited the advance of their adherents previous to making a combined assault upon the French. But Riel proved himself more than a match for his antagonists; marching quickly out of his stronghold, he surrounded the buildings in which they were posted, and, planting a gun in a conspicuously commanding position, summoned them all to surrender in the shortest possible space of time. As is usual on such occasions, and in such circumstances, the whole party did as they were ordered, and marching out—with or without side-arms and military honours history does not relate—were forthwith conducted into close confinement within the walls of Fort Garry. Having by this bold coup got possession not only of the most energetic of his opponents, but also of many valuable American Remington Rifles, fourteen shooters and revolvers, Mr. Riel, with all the vanity of the Indian peeping out, began to imagine himself a very great personage, and as very great personages are sometimes supposed to be believers in the idea that to take a man’s property is only to confiscate it, and to take his life is merely to execute him, he too commenced to violently sequestrate, annex, and requisition not only divers of his prisoners, but also a considerable share of the goods stored in warehouses of the Hudson Bay Company, having particular regard to some hogsheads of old port wine and very potent Jamaica rum. The proverb which has reference to a mendicant suddenly placed in an equestrian position had notable exemplification in the case of the Provisional Government, and many of his colleagues; going steadily from bad to worse, from violence to pillage, from pillage to robbery of a very low type, much supplemented by rum-drunkenness and dictatorial debauchery, he and they finally, on the 4th of March, 1870, disregarding some touching appeals for mercy, and with many accessories of needless cruelty, shot to death a helpless Canadian prisoner named Thomas Scott. This act, committed in the coldest of cold blood, bears only one name: the red name of murder—a name which instantly and for ever drew between Kiel and his followers, and the outside Canadian world, that impassable gulf which the murderer in all ages digs between himself and society, and which society attempts to bridge by the aid of the gallows. It is needless here to enter into details of this matter; of the second rising which preceded it; of the dead blank which followed it; of the heartless and disgusting cruelty which made the prisoner’s death a foregone conclusion at his mock trial; or of the deeds worse than butchery which characterized the last scene. Still, before quitting the revolting subject, there is one point that deserves remark, as it seems to illustrate the feeling entertained by the leaders themselves.

On the night of the murder the body was interred in a very deep hole which had been dug within the walls of the fort. Two clergymen had asked permission to inter the remains in either of their churches, but this request had been denied. On the anniversary of the murder, namely, the 4th March, 1871, other powers being then predominant in Fort Garry, a large crowd gathered at the spot where the murdered man had been interred, for the purpose of exhuming the body. After digging for some time they came to an oblong box or coffin in which the remains had been placed, but it was empty, the interment within the walls had been a mock ceremony, and the final resting-place of the body lies hidden in mystery. Now there is one thing very evident from the fact, and that is that Riel and his immediate followers were themselves conscious of the enormity of the deed they had committed, for had they believed that the taking of this man’s life was really an execution justified upon any grounds of military or political necessity, or a forfeit fairly paid as price for crimes committed, then the hole inside the gateway of Fort Garry would have held its skeleton, and the midnight interment would not have been a senseless lie. The murderer and the law both take life—it is only the murderer who hides under the midnight shadows the body of his victim.

The Great Lone Land: A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-west … (Google Books)

CHAPTER III.

Bunker—New York—Niagara—Toronto—Spring-time In QueBec—A Summons—A Start—In Good Company—Strippino A Peg—An Expedition—Poor Canada—An Old Glimpse At A New Land—-rival Routes—Change Op Masters—The Red River Revolt—The Hale-breeds—Early Settlers —Bungling—”eaters Op Pemmican”—M. Louis Riel—Tile Murder Op Scott.

When a city or a nation has but one military memory, it clings to it with all the affectionate tenacity of an old maid for her solitary poodle or parrot. Boston— supreme over any city in the Republic—can boast of possessing one military memento: she has the Hill of Bunker. Bunker has long passed into the bygone; but his hill remains, and is likely to remain for many a long day. It is not improbable that the life, character and habits, sayings, even the writings of Bunker—perhaps he couldn’t write !—are familiar to many persons in the United States; but it is in Boston and Massachusetts that Bunker holds highest carnival. They keep in the Senate-chamber of the Capitol, nailed over the entrance doorway in full sight of the Speaker’s chair, a drum, a musket, and a mitre-shaped soldier’s hat—trophies of the fight fought in front of the low earthwork on Bunker’s Hill. Thus the senators of Massachusetts have ever before them visible reminders of the glory of their fathers: and I am not sure that these former belongings of some long-waistcoated

redcoat are not as valuable incentives to correct legislation as that historic ” bauble” of our own constitution.

Meantime we must away. Boston and New York have had their stories told frequently enough—and, in reality, there is not much to tell about them. The world does not contain a more uninteresting accumulation of men and houses than the great city of New York: it is a place wherein the stranger feels inexplicably lonely. The traveller has no mental property in this city whose enormous growth of life has struck scant roots into the great heart of the past.

Our course, however, lies west. We will trace the onward stream of empire in many portions of its way; we will reach its limits, and pass beyond it into the lone spaces which yet silently await its coming; and farther still, where the solitude knows not of its approach and the Indian still reigns in savage supremacy.

Niagara.—They have all had their say about Niagara. From Hennipin to Dilke, travellers have written much about this famous cataract, and yet, put all together, they have not said much about it; description depends so much on comparison, and comparison necessitates a something like. If there existed another Niagara on the earth, travellers might compare this one to that one; but as there does not exist a second Niagara, they are generally hard up for a comparison. In the matter of roar, however, comparisons are still open. There is so much noise in the world that analysis of noise becomes easy. One man hears in it the sound of the Battle of the Nile—a statement not likely to be challenged, as the survivors of that celebrated naval action are not numerous, the only one we ever had the pleasure of meeting having been stone-deaf. Another writer compares the roar to the sound of a vast mill; and this similitude, more flowery than poetical, is perhaps as good as that of the one who was in Aboukir Bay. To leave out Niagara when you can possibly bring it in would be as much against the stock-book of travel as to omit the duel, the steeple-chase, or the escape from the mad bull in a thirty-one-and-sixpenny fashionable novel. What the pyramids are to Egypt—what Vesuvius is to Naples—what the field of Waterloo has been for fifty years to Brussels, so is Niagara to the entire continent of North America.

It was early in the month of September, three years prior to the time I now write of, when I first visited this famous spot. The Niagara season was at its height: the monster hotels were ringing with song, music, and dance; tourists were doing the falls, and touts were doing the tourists. Newly-married couples were conducting themselves in that demonstrative manner characteristic of such people in the New World. Buffalo girls had apparently responded freely to the invitation contained in their favourite nigger melody. Venders of Indian bead-work; itinerant philosophers; camera-obscura men; imitation squaws; free and enlightened negroes; guides to go under the cataract, who should have been sent over it; spiritualists, phrenologists, and nigger minstrels had made the place their own. Shoddy and petroleum were having “a high old time of it,” spending the dollar as though that “almighty article had become the thin end of nothing whittled fine:” altogether, Niagara was a place to be instinctively shunned.

Just four months after this time the month of January was drawing to a close. King Frost, holding dominion over Niagara, had worked strange wonders with the scene. Polly and ruffianism had been frozen up, shoddy and petroleum had betaken themselves to other haunts, the bride strongly demonstrative or weakly reciprocal had vanished, the monster hotels were silent and deserted, the free and enlightened negro had gone back to Buffalo, and the girls of that thriving city no longer danced, as of yore, “under de light of de moon.” Well, Niagara was worth seeing then—and the less we say about it, perhaps, the better. “Pat,” said an American to a staring Irishman lately landed, “did you ever see such a fall as that in the old country?” “Begarra! I niver did; but look here now, why wouldn’t it fall? what’s to hinder it from falling?”

When I reached the city of Toronto, capital of the province of Ontario, I found that the Red River Expeditionary Force had already been mustered, previous to its start for the North-West. Making my way to the quarters of the commander of the Expedition, I was greeted every now and again with a “You should have been here last week; every soul wants to get on the Expedition, and you hav’n’t a chance. The whole thing is complete; we start to-morrow.” Thus I encountered those few friends who on such occasions are as certain to offer their pithy condolences as your neighbour at the dinner-table when you are late is sure to tell you that the soup and fish were delicious. At last I met the commander himself.

“My good fellow, there’s not a vacant berth for you,” he said; “I got your telegram, but the whole army in Canada wanted to get on the Expedition.”

“I think, sir, there is one berth still vacant,” I answered.

“What is it?”

“You will want to know what they are doing in Minnesota and along the flank of your march, and you have no one to tell you,” I said.

“You are right; we do want a man out there. Look now, start for Montreal by first train to-morrow; by tonight’s mail I will write to the general, recommending your appointment. If you see him as soon as possible, it may yet be all right.”

I thanked him, said ” Good-bye,” and in little more than twenty-four hours later found myself in Montreal, the commercial capital of Canada.

“Let me see,” said the general next morning, when I presented myself before him, “you sent a cable message from the South of Ireland last month, didn’t you? and you now want to get out to the West? Well, we will require a man there, but the thing doesn’t rest with me; it will have to be referred to Ottawa; and meantime you can remain here, or with your regiment, pending the receipt of an answer.”

So I went back to my regiment to wait.

Spring breaks late over the province of Quebec—that portion of America known to our fathers as Lower Canada, and of old to the subjects of the Grand Monarque as the kingdom of New France. But when the young trees begin to open their leafy lids after the long sleep of winter, they do it quickly. The snow is not all gone before the maple-trees are all green—the maple, that most beautiful of trees! Well has Canada made the symbol of her new nationality that tree whose green gives the spring its earliest freshness, whose autumn dying tints are richer than the clouds of sunset, whose life-stream is sweeter than honey, and whose branches are drowsy through the long summer with the scent and the hum of bee and flower! Still the long line of the Canadas admits of a varied spring. When the trees are green at Lake St. Clair, they are scarcely budding at Kingston, they are leafless at Montreal, and Quebec is white with snow. Even between Montreal and Quebec, a short night’s steaming, there exists a difference of ten days in the opening of the summer. But late as comes the summer to Quebec, it comes in its loveliest and most enticing form, as though it wished to atone for its long delay in banishing from such a landscape the cold tyranny of winter. And with what loveliness does the whole face of plain, river, lake, and mountain turn from the iron clasp of icy winter to kiss the balmy lips of returning summer, and to welcome his bridal gifts of sun and shower! The trees open their leafy lids to look at him—the brooks and streamlets break forth into songs of gladness—”the birch-tree,” as the old Saxon said, ” becomes beautiful in its branches, and rustles sweetly in its leafy summit, moved to and fro by the breath of heaven “—the lakes uncover their sweet faces, and their mimic shores steal down in quiet evenings to bathe themselves in the transparent waters— far into the depths of the great forest speeds the glad message of returning glory, and graceful fern, and soft velvet moss, and white wax-like lily peep forth to cover rock and fallen tree and wreck of last year’s autumn in one great sea of foliage. There are many landscapes which can never be painted, photographed, or described, but which the mind carries away instinctively to look at again and again in after-time—these are the celebrated views of the world, and they are not easy to find. From the Queen’s rampart, on the citadel of Quebec, the eye sweeps over a greater diversity of landscape than is probably to be found in any one spot in the universe. Blue mountain, farstretching river, foaming cascade, the white sails of ocean ships, the black trunks of many-sized guns, the pointed roofs, the white village nestling amidst its fields of green, the great isle in mid-channel, the many shades of colour from deep blue pine-wood to yellowing corn-field—in what other spot on the earth’s broad bosom lie grouped together in a single glance so many of these ” things of beauty ‘.’ which the eye loves to feast on and to place in memory as joys for ever?

Outing – Volume 63 (Hathitrust)

From here:

IN CANADA’S GREATEST GAME REGION
721
able to fly, and forthwith they begin to
flock. Instead of small bunches, one sud-
denly begins m see ducks in scores and
even hundreds. The deep-diving va-
rieties are slower in feathering and some
are late breeders. Of these, the canvas-
backs hardly fly before September, the
redheads later in that month. The
scaups or bluebills hatch about the mid-
die of July, and the scoters even later,
so they could hardly be on wing before
October.
At first the young ducks are quite
tame and are easy to approach in the
marshy pools, under cover of the tall
growth. The ducks of the canvasback
type do not resort much to the small
pools, after the breeding season, but pre-
fer the great areas of cane and rush
growing from deep water, and also flock
out in the open lake. By October the
migration is in full tide, and the lakes
and marshes are fairly alive with ducks
and geese. In the arm of the lake, where
we had our camp beds of wild celery
grow; and in late fall the lake is said to
be fairly black with fowl.
Where do these all come from? Such
numbers are not locally bred. The
breeding area may not be as enormous
as has been supposed, but there must be
a great deal of suitable marsh, in the
aggregate, bordering thousands of lakes,
and sometimes in large areas, as the mus-
keg country around Hudson’s Bay.
Moreover, I do not consider that the
present breeding-grounds are taxed to
their full capacity. Each year the in-
crease has been shot down beyond the
point where the various species can hold
their own, so that even on rich breed-
ing-grounds the number breeding seems
sparse. I do not doubt that around
Lake Winnipegosis alone scores of thou-
sands more ducks could be raised if there
were the stock to do it.
Over this region in suitable localities
the shore-bird tribe are quite abundant
in the migrations, and a few species
breed in moderate numbers. Last sum-
mer I saw more yellow-legs than I ever
observed in the east, even thirty or more
years ago. Turnstones and plover flock
along the shores and in the pools.
Grassbirds or pectoral sandpipers and
other species of their tribe were numer-
ous. Wilson’s or jack snipe breed on
the marshes. By August the young were
flying, and we kept flushing them.
When it comes to upland game, I have
never seen the partridge or ruffed grouse
anything like as abundant. Tramping
in the woods in early summer I encoun-
tered young broods every few minutes.
During late July and August, when they
were well grown, they came out of the
woods to our camp in droves, running
around the yard, going into the sheds for
grain, perching on the woodpile or the
water barrel. In the little poplar grove
close by they would fly up at our ap-
proach and sit on the limbs, letting us
walk close beneath them. Looking
down on us, they jerked their tails,
ruffled their feathers, and reiterated their
“quit, quit” like turkeys. It seemed as
though they were beseeching to be put
into the pot.
Upland Birds
Of the prairie chicken, or sharp-tailed
grouse, I frequently saw coveys run-
ning around the yard in the potato patch,
and frequently flushed them from the
brush and grass patches back of the
marshes bordering the forest. Though
these are numerous, there are more of
the ruffed grouse. In winter the ptar-
migan migrates down from the north,
and they have “white partridges” to
eat.
The great wild forest has its big
game. Winter brings caribou, in some
localities, and roving bands of great gray
timber wolves. Of the latter I saw skins
which must have been seven feet long.
The black-tailed deer, locally called
“jumping deer,” is a permanent and
common resident. The same is true of
the lordly moose. Moose is the prime
game of the region, the main source of
meat supply of the wilderness dwellers,
year in and year out. When they do
not have it fresh they use it smoked
and dried.
The region is certainly a wonderful
moose country. Hardly had I entered
the poplar forest the first time when I
saw a pile of moose droppings, which I
found almost everywhere. The forest
seemed like one great barnyard. I picked

722
OUTING
up a nice cast-off antler only a few min-
utes’ walk from camp. Nevertheless I
did not actually catch a glimpse of a
moose all summer. Foliage and mos-
quitoes readily account for that. They
are exceedingly wary, and even the In-
dians have hard work to find them at this
season.
I was much interested in the ways of
the Indians and half-breeds as related to
the moose. Your regular Indian will
not work as long as he can get a bite to
eat, the half-breed being a shade or two
less lazy. Happiness consists in having
a tent, a few blankets and pots, a little
bag each of tea, sugar, flour, and to-
bacco, and, if possible, a chunk of bacon.
For fresh meat he shoots ducks or par-
tridge, and now and then a deer or
moose. These people are wonderfully
keen at finding signs or trails and de-
ciphering their age and meaning. In
the back part of the marsh bordering
the forest they find recorded the latest
news, which they read as easily as we do
a newspaper. When they discover a
fresh trail they follow it persistently for
a couple of days, sleeping on the trail
wherever night overtakes them. The
moose usually proceeds to windward.
After feeding enough, it will turn and
swerve out to one side, maybe a hundred
yards, and then, after proceeding back
parallel to the trail some distance, it
lies down to rest, facing down trail. It
may hear the hunters passing on the
trail, or scent them when they have gone
beyond to windward, in which case it
will make off.
When the Indians, therefore, read by
the signs that the moose is close, they
quarter zig-zag across the trail to some
distance on either side, in absolute silence,
watching for the moose. In winter it
is much easier to go quietly and to see
ahead. In this way they sometimes come
upon the moose lying down or standing
in the bushes, in which case it is probably
all up with his majesty.
A period of plenty now ensues with
the Indians or half-breeds. They gorge
themselves with moose meat for the next
week. Often they will bring a good
hunk to the settler’s lone ranch and swap
it off for a sack of potatoes, which
makes a pleasing variation in diet for
both parties. While the meat lasts the
Indian is rich. He does no more work till
it is gone, when the sting of poverty again
drives him forth. Even the half-breeds
live mainly from hand to mouth. When
they have no moose, they depend chiefly
on shooting ducks, which are abundant
from April to November, with partridge
and prairie-chicken the year round. At
one time when marooned across the lake
I made my way to a half-breed’s shack
to get something to eat. All they had
on hand was some old bread dried hard,
which I managed to eat by soaking in
scme half-sour milk.
Dogs a Necessity
One possession very essential to the
settler in the wilderness along the big
lake is a pack of dogs for sledging on
the ice in winter. They also serve to
defend the property from thieving In-
dians who wander around now and then.
These aborigines, voyaging along the
lakes in their canoes or small sailboats,
like to camp by the landing-pier and
beg what they can. It is not policy to
forbid them access to the premises.
Without the dogs they would prowl
around by night and steal. The dogs,
tied up by day, are released at night.
An Indian could hardly approach the
house after dark without being set upon
by the pack.
These dogs are powerful wolfish
brutes, fierceandtreacherous. Those on
our premises, with one exception, a bitch with a pup, never made friends with us
all summer. The owners ruled them by
means of a long, loaded rawhide whip,
which could be snapped with a report
like a pistol. On one occasion a mem-
ber of our party undertook to separate
two dogs which were fighting. The two
turned upon him, and at once the others
joined in the attack. In a moment they
had torn his clothing and bitten him,
and they would have soon killed him had
not the hired man rushed to his rescue
with the big lash.
Every other night a net was set in the
lake. This was drawn in the morning,
and a bushel or so of fish taken out, which served both for man and dogs,
being fed to the dogs raw. The catch

IN CANADA’S GREATEST GAME REGION
723
consisted of pickerel, white-fish, suckers,
perch, and other species, and we had de-
licious fresh fish all summer.
Promptly on the 15th of August begins
the annual commercial fishery. The
white-fish in particular is especially val-
uable, and the fishery is very profitable.
I was told that an expert fisherman some-
times makes $40 a day. Practically every
settler and half-breed along the lake, as
well as some Indians, work at this
through the fall and into the winter till
the ice gets very thick. It is done en-
tirely with nets. While the lake is open
the trading company sends out a steamer
which rounds up the different fisheries
and buys up the catch, which is put on
ice and shipped off by rail fresh in cold
storage. Such quantities of fish were
caught in these nets that, even with the
sparse population, the supply of fish in
the lake was running low. The govern-
ment came to the rescue and has estab-
lished a fish hatchery out on one of the
islands, which seems to the visitor
strangely out of place in such a wilder-
ness.
The best fishing seems to be at the
north end of the lake. Various camps are
established there, to which men proceed
for the fall fishing with sailing craft or
motorboat. The fishermen have hard
times of it, as these northern lakes are
very rough and tempestuous, big waves
arising very suddenly when the wind
breezes up. They are liable to get
caught out and to be in considerable
danger.
One day when hunting across the lakes
I came upon an Indian woman standing
upon the shore, crying. Her son and
his family had just left in a sailboat for
the fishery over a hundred miles north
up the lake. “My Johnny go fishing up
the lake,” she explained brokenly, with a
wave of her hand indicating where he
had gone. “He stay all fall, far away.
Big wind, he blow, blow. My Johnny
he get drowned, maybe.” It was a
pathetic touch of human nature.
Before the lake freezes, stakes are
driven where the nets are to be placed,
and ropes run from one to the other,
making a sort of trolley. Holes in the
ice are kept open and the nets are hauled
down and pulled along under the ice.
When the net is hauled the cold is so
severe that it freezes immediately when
it encounters the air. What frightfully
cold work it must be hauling those nets
and the fish with the mercury below
zero! The dog sledges are the ideal
conveyance for tunning from hole to
hole, and for carrying apparatus or tak-
ing the fish ashore. It is too cold for
horses to stand around, but the dogs do
not mind it at all. When it comes to
taking the fish to town, the horses can
be used, but the dogs are faster and can
drag surprising loads on a fast run.
The Real Business of Life
With the coming of cold weather,
when the wild animals have their win-
ter fur, the trapping industry begins. It
is a great industry, too, for thousands
of dollars worth of fur are still shipped
out of that country. Muskrat, mink,
and skunk are the most numerous, with
some fox and otter. By general consent
the man first on the ground preempts a
certain considerable area, and sometimes
fairly covers it with traps. Where we
stayed they had small steel traps by the
hundreds hanging from the rafters of a
shed. Most of these men become very
expert in setting traps and have an in-
timate knowledge of the habits of the
animals, in^> far as they bear upon the
problem of trapping.
It surely is no “snap” to keep in run-
ning order a number of lines of traps
in severe weather and get results. The
business, though, in the hands of keen
and vigorous men is very profitable, and
a season will net a man hundreds of
dollars. Between fishing and trapping,
the settler or half-breed can afford to
take things quite easily during the sum-
mer—provided he can only let liquor
alone, which, unfortunately, few of them
seem able to do.
The problem of the destruction of
game by settlers, half-breeds, and Indians
is an important one. That the game
laws are very little observed in the re-
gions of semi-wilderness goes without
saying. The few scattered inhabitants
live off the land, and it can hardly be
otherwise. It would take an army of
game guardians, one to every shack or

724
OUTING
Indian reserve, to prevent illicit killing
of game. The Indians do not stay on
their reserves, but roam around all sum-
mer in their canoes, camping and killing.
The lone settler must live and is bound
to take some game, but he might do it
more economically.
Rather than have the present good
laws a dead letter, it might be recog-
nized in some guarded way that, in case
of necessity, residents in specified areas
might take game at any season for their
own use. Instructive circulars could be
issued by the chief game guardian, dis-
tributed, posted in public places, and
published in newspapers, explaining the
importance to the settler of having game,
its general rapid decrease, and urge, for
the settler’s own good, certain economies
such as the following:
Exercise self-denial in shooting wild-
fowl on their way north in the spring,
taking as few as possible. When the
ducks and geese have settled down to
breed, refrain from shooting at least till
the eggs are laid, and then shoot only
drakes, as these do not help rear the
young. Never shoot a mother duck with
a brood. Do not shoot any chicken or
partridge in the spring or until the young
are big enough to take care of them-
selves, certainly not before the latter part
of July. Spare the female moose and
deer and take bucks in preference. Try
to enlist the cooperation of Indian chiefs,
agents, and storekeepers on reservations,
and teachers where there are schools,
and have the Indians shown how a little
care will make the game last them much
longer, and how some Indian tribes have
almost no game at all. Where any In-
dians can read their own language, pla-
cards might be gotten up for these reser-
vations.
The entrance of a railroad into a new
country, of course, is bound to be a
menace to the game. Still there are
some things which should be stopped.
Though the lone settlers may need game
at various times, some effective organ-
ization might be made to prevent summer
shooting excursions from railroad towns.
Prominent business men and reputable
citizens should respect themselves enough
to obey the game laws and cooperate with
the game guardians. In this region it
was the regular thing to expect Sunday
excursions up the lake from the railroad
terminus to slaughter the game.
The following may serve to illustrate.
One party had quite an affair. They
took out a caterer, shot over fifty ducks,
and had them served a la mode. An-
other party attempted the same plan, but
they were so drunk that, though they
shot off 450 shells, they damaged only
three ducks.
The game guardians of the province
are excellent and worthy men, earnest in
their work. I had some delightful con-
ferences with Charles Barber, chief game
guardian, and enjoyed visits in camp
from his deputies. It is a big problem
to enforce law or secure evidence in such
sparsely settled regions. The coming of
an officer is known, and everyone is on
guard when he arrives. As soon as he
leaves they do as they please. After all,
the main hope is in educating public
sentiment to realize that it is for the
good of the Province to conserve the
supply of game. The lone settler needs
it, many men want to hunt, and it is
an asset to the Province to attract well-
to-do men who will come to hunt and
spend money liberally.
Appreciation of this will cause the best
elements to frown upon gross abuses
and make them more ready to report vio-
lations, which they will feel are against
the public interest. It will be good for
all concerned when the United States
and Canada can make treaty to cooperate
in protecting the wildfowl both on their
breeding grounds in Canada and our
northern States and during their flight
south. This will help bring to bear a
body of public sentiment and interest in
protection and give mutual encourage-
ment in the enforcement of the laws.
The new sport of AQUAPLANING is described in
the April OUTING, It resembles a combination of
Aeroplaning, tight-rope walking, and bronco busting.

Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly (Google Books)

THE CANADIAN GIR
BY CORA STUART WHEELER.
AND HER BROTHER.
— Ss&^^Ztt tta £gr tob-^
fro. out her nrt – j Breaking now of the Canadian girl-andl^ I ^ ^ ^
thoroughbred the onl> I F
tunity of meeting m . n>
her strength, « P*g» J unde,.stand
of endurance She does ^<)f
or accept it as one ott I thought upon
tn n . own to obtain a° certain the “«t t her New York
, road for Eighteenth color for her
she s The elder
band left her without es
: bifurcated ..
evening drew-*’ knows how—and came throng
safe and (blest be Canada), i
* the n
Provincial secretary (11 •
Toronto, the mother of n
life is full of good works and
was recently presented by_ne _
bicvcle as a pleasant might accomplish her
personal fatigue. Thi»»- “; a a • he is
«P the
n
The
‘ ^
thus
and their dogs
afoot or on horseback.
that 8be
with le»
an(
T d
,no?tondt aifethte ™« ^^in^
tality was .extended to me w hi
canadi,,, »,- l.cr –
phras”‘, on. – .
States are not “in it” with
ters. Thev have a dashm., cvc ing cortume, sometimes, which I wonder we
. of the line have not borrowed. The
a scarlet coat as
than
in
«o
on
near I
is pos-
•hlp ..”nd’this jauntv coat on crisp mornings
^ll1 llllv over her abbreviated habit,
;ht
. . „ warmth ; for few American m its P«!tareeq«ecare of thcmselves as does the
‘ Not that the wheel is
ian girl
much better care of her health ;
from no apparent *<**?*>££„ onc sturdy common sens »’• -^ ^^ ^G
never known an acbe to a\ou
time to endure. One mg i , -“- – gul^ny air
81D,e -u — ‘,vo;.er her abbreviated habit, late November I «tepp^ -ut ut ^ & H^)t
fl^^^CUeel, with true delight of Kingston, Jeelu,^ ^P- ^ ^nutun,n
=Sf^^->T!£1f^ ^^r^^rno harm foro.ee, U,t
before she Counts her
‘ decorative effect ; far from
to the Canadian girl, as well
372 TllK VANADIAX filRL AND HER .BROTHER.
A CANADIAN BAI1Y.
SHEILA, OF DALIlKKill, OTTAWA.
that is the way every American does. When she
comes here she says : ‘ Oh ! how can you call
this cold ? Why, this is simply bracing !’ and
so she goes on all the first winter melting and
burning, while we are simply comfortable, re
fusing mittens, moccasins and fur caps, and
looking like an American Beauty, as she is,
through it all. But with the second season comes
our revenge. Our Amer
ican visitor has already
exhausted her power of
resistance the first sea
son, and the second no
fires can be big enough,
no furs thick enough,
to keep her from shiver
and chill. As one of
them said, she ‘ was not
warm from the last of
September till the first
of June.'”
Be not deceived if
you see the Canadian
girl apparently with no
top-coat in the early
winter weather. Be sure
that she is discreetly
garbed in chamois skin
from head to feet under THE CANADIAN mi!L
all that appearance of ‘ry indifference to the ele
ments. She looks very ‘ ‘ swagger, ‘ ‘ but something
beside pride is keeping her warm ; and the fur
dealers and the shopmen know very well that too
many devices cannot be conceived for keeping the
precious Canadian girl well protected. Multi
farious were the eccentricities in fur and woolen
fabrics to be worn mysteriously over dimpled
knees, and to cover that chilly place just between
shoulders that at evening they recklessly bare ;
wristlets of fur and cufflets of wool, anklets and
moccasins, covers for chin and covers for ears ;
everything except a nose-tip did my inquiring
mind investigate. Having conserved her forces
by reducing the resistance of cold to a minimum,
and filled her glorious lungs with oxygen and her
supple muscles with strength, the Canadian girl
has an enormous quantity of bottled energy, likely
to go off like a champagne cork unless given a
sensible vent. Hence she takes to athletics with
an enthusiasm and energetic industry that would
stamp any American girl as a freak of the most
virulent type.
The fame of the Canadian girl as a golfer has
not waited for me to recite it in the States, as
one of the athletic pastimes which the girl of the
States shares with her sister in the Caribou coun
try is golfing, and each has tested in tournament
the prowess of the other. While the Boston club
woman hesitates not to take her grip and an
evening gown, and start, at a day’s notice, to
“read a paper” on the Pacific, coast, so the lady golfer of the Toronto club, or the equally famous
players from Parliament circles in Ottawa, get
them gayly away without misgivh g, even into
AND IIEK noitsu AND
THE CANADIAN GIRL HER BROTHER. 373
the Stated to match tlu ‘skill, and win and Canadian girl and her brother—in fact, her whole
wear their laurels us proudly and joyously as the family—trifle with the golf-club; are mountainclub woman does the reward of her intellectual
venture. Miss White and Miss Crombie of the
Toronto Club, especially the former, are perhaps ican practice grounds.
ous regions mystic with peril compared with the
mild and well-considered diversity of most Ameramortg the Canadian lady players best known in
the States. Miss White was the champion who
beat Miss Oliver at Murray Bay. Miss Oliver, it
may be remembered, was in the semi-finals of
all United States ladies. It may be interesting
for golf players to knowthat Miss White’s rec
ord for the Murray Bay
course was the excellent
one of 95. In the To ronto Club there is but
one scratch player —
Miss Crombie, a bril liant player, who is
noted for her straight
driving. Miss Wilkie
and Miss Cassells are
strong on the approach,
beside which are many
young and middle-aged
matrons who make close running with their
brothers and husbands
m the links. One of the
prettiest sights in To ronto is to see fifteen
or twenty of these la
dies, with shining eyes
and cheeks of rose, chat
ting of “twosomes and
threesomes ” and ” driv
ing from the Tee,
To see the girl, with the sparkle of all her but
tled energy coming to the surface, you should
know the hockey girl. It is enough to set the
staid est pulse of age into a Highland fling to go
out with the Girls’ Hockey Team of Queen’s,
as tif KEN’S COLLEGE LADIES’ HOCKEY TEAM.
ALICE WATSON. B. DATNTRV-TATES. ADA BIBCU. MAUIOX FRASEIt. MABEL PAHKEIl. NELLIE WATSON. MARGARET RUSSELL.
KATE M’LEAN. EDNA GRIFFITH.
they group about the
httle tables on the club
house veranda, drinking—the inevitable Cana- when it sets forth to conquer or be conquered, dian beverage—tea. It is only in Scotch-Canadian I had almost said to slay or be slain, for the regions that one finds the same rabid enthusiasm hockey girl knoweth no fe
374 THE CANADIAN GIRL AND HER BROTHER.
was one of the first to admit women, and no re
striction is laid upon their intercourse by rigid
rules of exclusion in lecture hours, the Queen’s
College girl electing, by an unwritten decision, to
pass her casual or intimate fellow of the other
sex in the college halls absolutely without recog
nition. The wisdom of this, and the unique
quality of the girl nature that conceives and car
ries out such a self-restraint is assuredly of a
high and fine type. The girls and men of the
hockey clubs do not play against each other, but
either club takes a tremendous pride in the suc
cesses of the other ; and the Girls’ Club prides
itself upon using the same ferocious sticks pre
sented to them by the men—a heavier, broader,
and more deadly weapon than usually used by
girl hockey players ; the feminine stick being,
however, much wickeder than those used in
the States. It is very much like an old-fash
ioned “shinny” stick. Their game is made
much more diflicult and dangerous in that the
puck used is, unlike our red ball, a black rubber
disc, two and one-half inches in diameter, and
about an inch thick, The object of the game is
to put this rubber disc through the opponent’s
goal, which is called “shooting a goal.” In
their game there is an off-side, as in football,
while in our hockey game in the States we have
no off-side. The men play thirty minutes, then
rest ten minutes, and then thirty more; but the
girls play but twenty.
“My!” said Lady Daintry, the president of
the Queen’s Hockey Club, “you’re a corpse at
the end of twenty.” A favorite device is “body checking.” This
is making a furious feint of rushing on the puck
to lift it with your stick only to collide purposely
with your opponent and the strongest- goes down.
This has to be done with much nicety, lest the
referee, who is always an accomplished skater
of good wind, rushes down upon you and ex
poses you. With the little black puck on the
ice, and all the enemies squabbling over it with
heads down, and everybody seeming all feet, a sudden and unexpected lift of the puck is
likely to land the cruel rock-elm sticks without
time for selecting the point of contact. The
Queen’s Club is rather unique in this that but
one of its members has escaped somewhat seri
ous accident.
” Oh, we don’t mind !” said the captain. ” We
don’t wear padded trousers, like the men, hut
we do pad our knees ; for first you go up and
then you go down, and oh, my ! your knees are black and blue. I couldn’t say my prayers in
proper position all winter for mine. If the puck
hits you you think you are dead. In one of the
men’s games the puck was lifted and struck an
other man flat on the cheek. Instead of falling
off the suction held it, and when it was taken
away it carried part of the cheek with it. When
you get hit with the stick you are benumbed,
but in five minutes you feel as though the roof
of your head was coming off. One of the men
fell a little while ago in a game, and another
skated right over, cutting his face open before
he could stop himself. The men coach us girls,
but we play alone.”
Said another girl : “It is being on the ice
that makes hockey so much more exciting. All
the swell girls and women play in Ottowa. They
go to Perth, Carleton Place and Smith’s Falls to
play match games.”
The costume of the Queen’s College team is a
neat, blue blouse, dark blue serge skirt to boot
tops, with a belt of the Queen’s College colors,
bare heads except for 15, 000, 000 hairpins. Since
the captain and the president agree in this state
ment I dare not deduct one hairpin.
The present members of Queen’s College La
dies’ Hockey Team, season 1.85)6-97, are : Ada
Birch (right wing) ; B. Daintry-Yates, president
(left wing) ; Alice Watson (left wing) ; Mar
garet Russell, secretary (point); Nellie Watson,
captain (centre) ; Mabel Parker (cover points) ;
Marion Fraser (centre) ; Edna Griffith (point);
Kate McLean (goal).
At a practice match, where there were only four
on a side, some were using broken hockey sticks.
The puck lay between the captain and goal,
and both made a rush at it. As Lady Daintry
went to lift it with her broken stick the other
girl bent also to prevent ; the jagged end of the
stick caught her in the nose, la\-ing her face
open and throwing the eye out upon the cheek.
She was taken at once to a hospital by her oppo
nent, and had three stitches taken, the healthy
Mesh healing without a scar. Lady Daintry as
sured me that the first time she played she fell,
by actual count, twenty-seven times in threequarters of an hour. Her coach picked her up
seventeen times and then gave it up as hopeless.
At the close of their games the teams gather
in the center of the rink, when it is not upon
open ice, and cheer, the defeated team trying to
get its cheer in first. The Queen’s College cry
is, “The blue, red and yellow, the hlue, red and yellow, forever, forever, forever!”
The Gaelic cry as written is :
” Oil thigh no Banrighim
Nn Banrighim gu brath
Cha ghiel! cha ghiel ! cha ghiel !”
THE CANADIAN GIRL AXD HER BROTHER. 375
As howled it sounds like this :
” Oi ti n’ Banrigliim Na Banrighiin gu bra Ki-yel! ki-yel ! ki-yel !”
Think not that in these rough-and-tumble ‘•amusements the Canadian girl forgets the femi
nine duties of life. A more thoughtful or prac
tical being in the care of her own house, when
she has one, and to those who need her aid be
fore she marries, as she always docs, has not
been discovered. The match hockey game even
was turned to a philanthropic benefit last year
when thej* charged fifteen cents admission, and
turned the gate receipts, amounting to $60, over
to the Kingston Hos
pital. As this was their
first match game the shrieks and yells of the friends of their oppo
nents rather rattled the
girls at first, but they
soon got used to it.
It may not be unin
teresting, since the
American foot and its dressing is openly ad
mired by our Canadian sisters, to know how
the hockey skater ar
rays that portion of her structure. The hockey
skate is perfectly
straight, and secured
to a boot which is taken
along and exchanged
for the one worn—a
c’l>ug, clumsy boot,
which would be trying
to the prettiest foot.
Add to this a heavy
hide anklet laced over the whole, which has a
jOle for the heel of the under shoe to go through, and one can understand why the hockey
prl a foot is not a thing of beauty.
Kingston is somewhat famed” for all ladies’ sj>ort.s. Halifax was the first and Kingston the
second to revive the interest in tennis, and intro
duce it into this country a few years ago, while
Kingston was first to have a ladies’ hockey team, ami this season had the finest and keenest com
petition at their bench show in fox-terriers ever seen in Canada,
‘” ( ‘llrt’
HUAKTETTE Of KILTIES’ CHURCII
an I
y
• ncfti,«\’
gatl>ers
** he goes.
the men’s hockey team has
gives rise to all sorts of
to put it gently, others His bachelor teas, whicl
are societ}’ events, are served with silver
“swiped” from all over the American conti
nent, his spoons alone representing most of the
first-class hostelries in Canada and the States.
Last year, when he returned from the Queen’s
triumphant tour of hockey and polo matches, he
brought an assortment of cake dishes. His tro
phies usually arrive promptly, but he is very apt
to forget portions of his own wardrobe. Having
appropriated a jersey belonging to an opponent,
and several pairs of trousers, he discovered, on
reaching home, that he had left the jersey be
hind. Curtis, unabashed, at once telegraphed,
“Stole Crawford’s jersey and left it behind—
send it along” ; and the
men sent it.
The same captain is
somewhat of a misogy
nist. On the train one
day a clergyman’s wife,
whose record for start
ling ways rivals the
Queen’s man, decided
to talk with him. How
ever she brought it
about, a conversation
ensued, which ended
briefly in the polite de
parture of Curtis, who,
on his return from the smoker, having played
a big game the day be
fore, retired to a re mote scat, drew down
his cap and went to sleep. Madam moved
forward to the seat di
rectly behind him, and, leaning over, calfrily tickled his cheek and awakened him. This was maddening ; but Cur tis bided his time, and at the stop for lunch
brought back into the car a pair of salt-cellars to
add to his collection of souvenirs. .With these
he cheerfully returned to his seat, and when Mrs.
Clergyman reopened the conversation, he punc
tuated his replies by slowly emptying the salt cellars over her bonnet and shoulders. The
whole car understood by this time, and I am
afraid sympathized with the drowsy young ath
lete.If Toronto prides itself upon anything it is
the city ordinance forbidding cars to run on
the Sabbath. The municipal front swells with
i inexplicable sense of virtue whenever this
convenience to women, children and the poor
‘ AND “QUEEN’S OWN”—
I’ARADE.
376 THE CANADIAN GIRL AND HER BROTHER.
in pocket is mentioned. The bicycle dealer and
the hackineii are among these proudly good citi
zens. Especially is this true on the day of
” Church Parade,” when even’ cross-street en
tering the thoroughfares through which the
inarching regiments pass to their annual refresh
ment of souls is dangerously packed with car
riages loaded with beautifully-dressed woman
hood. It is The Girl, overflowing carriage, dog
cart and drag, unescorted, excited and admiring ;
envied of her sisters if she cry, ” There’s Jack !”
with easy familiarity while the Kilties, with their
muscular, bared knees and fanciful attire, are
passing ; or, best of all, if she be able to select
among the clear-cut, aristocratic faces of the
Queen’s Own a relative or a sweetheart. This regi
ment looks what it is. The best blood of Canada
fills its veins, and “he who runs” on Church
Parade Day ” may read ” it in features and bear
ing and in the quiet elegance of their dark uniform.
A very funny and characteristic scene took
place in the Kingston Opera House
when Ian Maclaren gave his first
lecture in that place. I was assured
by my friends that it was the thing
to go early, to hear what the college
men would say. When we arrived
the upper gallery, which at the
centre is reserved for the Queen’s
men in a body, was crowded, and
a running fire of comment and
raillery, interspersed with palpable
hail with much unction and sometimes with tell
ing compliment a favorite professor or a popula1
belle impartially. One professor, a man of muc!.
elegance and a tremendous favorite with tl.
men, vociferously greeted as “Baldy,” was ab
solutely so abashed by his tumultuous reeeptiou,-
as he came down the middle aisle with his family,
that, notwithstanding their friendly suggestions
that lie should ” not be afraid” and ” take off his
topcoat like a man,” it required some moments
before he could gather courage to stand up long
enough to perform that simple and necessary
act. My sympathies yet go out to a y oung man
in evening dress, with a graceful girl a1 his side,
who had braved the ridicule of his fellows for
her sake, and occupied one of the best scat,* in
the centre of the house, in full view of the men.
If there are any details of his evening toilet and
the resources from which he gathered it in and
paid for his seats with which that whole audience
is unfamiliar to-day it is not to be laid to any
MlbS BOULTUN. MISS YORKER.
A PtT FDR THE MATCH.
neglect of the Queen’s men. After this
exhibition I was in no wise astonished, but accepted it as part of the courtesies
extended to me when invited to speak
before another large educational insti
tution in Ontario, that when I entered
hits, rained upon the incoming audience. It was the room and made my way meekly behind their
not a continual Babel, but here and there, like distinguished president to the platform to deliver single fire-crackers, one voice and then another, a lecture befare them, they hailed me on my
distinctly audible through the whole house, would winding way with the opening strains of ” ClemMISS WHITE. MISS OROMBIK. MISS WILKIE.
DRIVING FROM THE TEE.
entine ” _ ” oh, my dar~ departments represented in
.
‘••
.•’
•:
It*’
ling!” They got no further
in their demonstration, how
ever, checked by a smile and
a warning gesture of Dr.
McL -. I wish to say here
that however noisy may be
the prefatory demonstration
of the Canadian “brother”
he, as well as his sister, formed as intelligent, apprecia
tive and enthusiastic audi
ences as one need care to
face. The Scotch-Ca- ^
nadian, it seems to
me, never loses a
point. Before, in
closing, I return to
the Canadian girl I wish
to speak of another pecu
liar phase in Canadian college
and varsity life which I saw
in full furor in Toronto. On
Halloween every theatre in the city is given up in a sense
to the varsity men, who en
gage the whole top gallery and have removed to it a piano.
Difficult and absurd as this
seems, I am told that the
local dealers consider it an
excellent advertisement to be
able to furnish these pianos for their hazardous climb.
From one theatre to the other
the men proceed in triumphal
march, leaving a sufficient
group permanently at each one to hold the fort in their absence. The
moment the regular
performance on the stage ceases, the varsity
men open their pro gramme with songs and
°u s and college cries, maddening and yet am using.
„ Select<?d the brand Opera
‘°Use’ “here Chevalier and his
were billed. The nght and left were crowded
“It/I VOUno- »-»-. nen in evening dress,
‘””# e’aborately with the cole different colleges rban nerets of th«. s, SOME CANADIAN GIRLS ASD THEIR
1 AVOK1TE DOGS.
the boxes ; while from the
side galleries and above one’s
head came the—alas ! —un
hallowed roars of the Hal
loween rioters. For some
reason they chose to guy the
popular Frenchman in his
most perfect recitals, and to
show an equally unreason
able approval of the flattest and most
uninteresting of his company ; and,
again, for my disappoint
ment —instead of the musical
and characteristic ringing song
which I had anticipated,
those that they sang be
tween the acts were ab
solutely moss-grown
and moth-eaten with
age. I heard afterward
that for some reason this
was not a fair example of
what they could do, but the
sight was certainly exhilar
ating as it was, to see them
inarching in long and solid
lines, four and eight abreast,
through the streets to sere
nade the various girls’ col- •ges connected with the
university, where etiquette
shrouds the expectant col
lege maid in absolute gloom
as she listens to this annual
Halloween tribute. ” Little
brother” has his inning,
also, on this fateful night,
since, if he escape the ma ternal vigilance, he and his
comrades gather in front of
the various grocery houses
and shrilly demand an offer
ing. Sometimes—in fact, often—quarts of nuts are
thrown out for them to scramble after. The
more generous deal ers occasionally upset
a barrel of apples tx
satisfy their demands. ^
is rarely they are driven
empty-handed. I have spoken of the
dian girl and her
might almost have said
378 THE CANADIAN GIRL AND HER HROTHER.
Canadian dog and his mistress, for she is rarely
without one, and more frequently two or three
dash fondly about her and are her constant
comrades in her long, cross – country walks.
Just now it is the terrier that finds most favor
with the Canadian girl as well as with her
brother. She cares not a thing for a lap-dog.
The dog she wants must have much the clement
she demands in her brother. lie must have
some points of comradeship ; and if there are
any points of comradeship or blood or breeding
that she has not at her tongue’s tip I have yet
to discover them. The Canadian girl and her
dogs are the most joyous and inspiring sight
that I found in Canada, and I have wondered
sometimes, if this contact and interest in horses
and dogs—the two most familiar forms of domes
ticated animal life—may not have entered into
the very essence of the Canadian girl to make her the joy forever that she is. I grew so accus
tomed to having the beautiful, bounding crea
tures, who knew me as the friend of their mis
tresses, greet me as I came, and frequently offer,
with joyous demonstration, to escort me on my
exceedingly mild pedestrian ventures, that I
should hardly have felt the photographs which
I brought away complete if the dogs had not
been included.
When J spoke of the mistresses I was thinking
of ” Lady Daintry ” or, more explicit)’, B. Daintry-Yates and Helen Daintry-Yates—one a fair,
svelte maiden, with that rare and beautiful hair
known by artists as ash blonde ; the other, her
dark-eyed sister. Each has her own terriers of
different breeds, famous already, though pup
pies, for the bench prizes taken, as shown by
characteristic memoranda in Lady Oaintry’s
striking chirography on the back of their pic
tures. “Winnings: Sapperton-Turk, I., Open
Puppy. II. Wire-haired Terrier. Special. Sapperton – Columbus, I., Local Terrier.” These
charming young women quite fulfill the descrip
tion which one of them gave me of American
women.
” I never knew one,” she said, ” who was
not frantically clever.”
The acquisition by these young ladies of four
valuable dogs has inspired them with an inten
tion which would be, to an American girl, most
daring aiid impossible, and yet these charming,
cultivated, well-born girls, who have inherited
the sporting instincts of generations of gentle
men, are deliberately planning to establish ken
nels of their own, and, in fact, have already matured many of the details as well as securing
the land in the desired location.
“We call them the Sapperton Kennels, be
cause wherever a Daintry-Yates owns, by acqui
sition or inheritance, a foot of land, it has been
called Sapperton. If there might be a Sapperton Hall, Sappertonleigh, Sapperton Manor or
Sapperton Abbey, why not, as many times be
fore, give the name to Sapperton Kennels, with
two mistresses instead of one master? We are
going to do it, anyway, and Sapperton-Turk and
Columbus and Tess, with their famous pedi
grees, are the beginning of the end, when our
kennels shall make us famous.” But the days of the Canadian girl inevitably
draw toward that dawn when she becomes the
Canadian woman ; the wedding-day which shuts
her out from very little that she has known in
her girlhood ; opening to her that which, to her
honor be it said, is an accepted crown of glory—
honest, healthful wifehood and motherhood. In
saving good-by even for a little while, 1 would
like to leave with you my last picture of one
Canadian girl. She had been a beauty and a
belle, the last to be married of six sisters, and,
as her father told me, the fairest flower of his
flock. The other five, who were present at the
breakfast, fell upon him with merry and re
proachful asides ; but as he had said the same
thing of each on her wedding-day, the youngest
was but taking her turn. The wedding was much
like other weddings, except for a certain spirit
of good-fellowship that made everybody in the
whole town determine that this last wedding—
for the father was not a rich man—should be as
pretty and complete as the other five. One
young girl and another went on duty to assist
in the arrangement of the house ; the mother of
two more went over to make the punch the night
before, from an old recipe which was never
allowed to go out of the family, and consequently
could only be concocted by the dear lady her
self, which friendly office she had executed for
each of the sisters. I being a stranger, guest of
one of the guests, was invited to go and see the
bride off at the train. Upon inquiry I found
that this was quite the proper thing to do, espe
cially as the one of the household with whom I
went was in mourning for an aunt, and could
not attend the wedding proper. When the hour
arrived we made our way to the Grand Trunk
Station—for the groom was a son of a prominent
member of Parliament, and the father of the
maid of honor being a director of this road, had
sent his private car to bear the young couple
away. I was quite as familiar as the bride her self, from constant 1 ^arsay, with all the details
of her handsome, brown traveling costume, dis
THE CANADIAN GlRL HER BROTHER. 379
tinguished by the number of mink heads which
adorned it.
This was the pretty and essentially Canadian
picture, in which I looked my last upon one Ca
nadian girl. She stood on the rear platform of
the car, where she had arrived fully thirty min utes before the time of starting, to act her part
in this public reception. As I came up with my
friend we were greeted by one and another who
stood about the grimy tracks in exquisite morn
ing costumes, picturesque with feathered hats
and hats flamboyant with winged ribbons, some
of them so amazing that they could never have
graced the head of an American girl of like sta
tion. Pretty girls, attended and unattended,
stood here and there on the platform and among
the tracks. The handsome middle-aged father
was presented to me, and stood watching, with
softening eyes, the last of his flock, as my friend
and hers went forward to the steps of the car,
and reaching up, gave her a parting kiss. The
newly made groom, with the true Englishman’s
lack of sentiment, was at that moment practically
engaged in brushing the rice with whisk broom
from the mink adorned collar of her smart gown.
A grinning porter stood in the door of the car
waiting to receive back the brush. On the out
side a really beautiful girl, the maid of honor,
stood upon the coal-smirched boards in pink
satin slippers, a silk and illusion gown, and long
gloves of the color of the blush-roses in her hand.
Her sunny hair was shining uncovered in the
sun, and to the careless observer she seemed to
be leaning with reckless abandon, the exquisite
fabric of her gown sweeping against the neither
new nor elegant exterior of the car. A melancholy
touch of romance which completed the scene was
a young cadet, known as the handsomest man in
town, who stood, apparently forgetful of his sur
roundings, in the very middle of the track a half
dozen yards from the car, and, with shoulders
squarely set and forage-cap jauntily perched over
his ear, was gazing at ‘the bride with what he
fondly believed to be a heartbreaking expression.
I hope you may know them better, and if any
one tells you, as many did me, that the Canadians
detest every American that they do not envy,
you will find, as I did, that this prejudice, if it
ever existed with the parents, has not descended
to the Canadian <>irl and her brother.

The American Magazine, Volume 43 (Google Books)

I HAVE tried a hundred times to put my finger on the elusive point where the Canadian girl begins to differ from her American sister of the States. I gave it up there, and I relinquish it now, once and forever ; but that she is essentially diverse is certainly true, from the moment when she beams in baby coquetry from out her first ur-decked hood.

The thing that impresses one most with the Canadian girl—and I am speaking now of the thoroughbred, the only type I had the opportunity of meeting in any sense as a study—is her strength, or perhaps I should say her power of endurance. She does not understand fatigue or accept it as one of the possibilities of ordinary existence. She expends no more thought upon walking to the next town to obtain a certain color for her china painting than her New York sister would in taking the L road for Eighteenth Street, and returns from her jaunt apparently as fit and rosy as when she set forth. The elder ladies take kindly to the electric trams, but the girls and their dogs one meets everywhere only afoot or on horseback.

As for the bicycle, to use the saucy modern phrase, our dear and dainty daughters of the States are not “in it ’’ with their Canadian sisters. They have a dashing addition to their cycling costume, sometimes, which I wonder we on this side of the line have not borrowed. The girl who goos a-golfing wears a scarlet coat as near like that of her hunting brother as is possible, and this jaunty coat on crisp mornings she buttons snugly over her abbreviated habit, before she mounts her wheel, with true delight in its picturesque warmth ; for few American girls take as good care of themselves as does the Canadian girl-universal. Not that the wheel is to her an adjunct of decorative effect ; far from it. The bicycle is to the Canadian girl, as well

as to her brother, simply a new and convenient mode of “getting there.” She shops, she visits, she calls en bike. She does more than this : she attends the theatre, and stables her steed in a neighboring shop while being entertained. She goes to church on it, and takes joy to her soul, as did the charming woman who attended a musicale given by my own hostess, undeterred by the fact that the sudden defection of her husband left her without escort. Indeed, no She donned her bifurcated garments, tucked up the tail of her evening dress—discreet Heaven only knows how—and came through the night alone, safe and (blest be Canada) uncriticised. The Provincial secretary of the King’s Daughters at Toronto, the mother of fifteen children, whose life is full of good works and committee meetings, was recently presented by her husband with a bicycle as a pleasant surprise, in order that she might accomplish her manifold duties with less personal fatigue. Think of an American husband, chivalrous as he is, thus aiding and abetting his wife in purely public duties. I do not wonder at this one ; for no sweeter hospitality was extended to me while in Canada than that of this same little Scotch-Canadian lady in her dainty, well-kept home. I have spoken of the Canadian much better care of her health ; yet this arises from no apparent delicacy, but rather from a sturdy common sense that teaches one who has never known an ache to avoid what she has no time to endure. One bright, cool morning in late November I stepped out into the sunny air of Kingston, feeling well protected by a light gray jacket, such as we wear in the early autumn on this side of the line. “How American “” said a young daughter of the house, “Lady Daintry,” of whom I shall speak again. “It will do no harm for once, but

girl taking so

A CANADIAN BABY. SHEILA, OF DALREIGH, OTTAWA.

that is the way every American does. When she comes here she says: “Oh how can you call this cold 2 Why, this is simply bracing !’ and so she goes on all the first winter melting and burning, while we are simply comfortable, refusing mittens, moccasins and fur caps, and looking like an American Beauty, as she is, through it all. But with the second season comes our revenge. Our American visitor has already exhausted her power of resistance the first season, and the second no fires can be big enough, no furs thick enough, to keep her from shiver and chill. As one of them said, she ‘was not warm from the last of September till the first of June.’” Be not deceived if you see the Canadian girl apparently with no top-coat in the early winter weather. Be sure that she is discreetly garbed in chamois skin from head to feet under

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all that appearance of airy indifference to the elements. She looks very “swagger,” but something beside pride is keeping her warm ; and the fur dealers and the shopmen know very well that too many devices cannot be conceived for keeping the precious Canadian girl well protected. Multifarious were the eccentricities in fur and woolen fabrics to be worn mysteriously over dimpled knees, and to cover that chilly place just between shoulders that at evening they recklessly bare; wristlets of fur and cufflets of wool, anklets and moccasins, covers for chin and covers for ears; everything except a nose-tip did my inquiring mind investigate. Having conserved her forces by reducing the resistance of cold to a minimum, and filled her glorious lungs with oxygen and her supple muscles with strength, the Canadian girl has an enormous quantity of bottled energy, likely to go off like a champagne cork unless given a sensible vent. Hence she takes to athletics with an enthusiasm and energetic industry that would stamp any American girl as a freak of the most virulent type. The fame of the Canadian girl as a golfer has not waited for me to recite it in the States, as one of the athletic pastimes which the girl of the States shares with her sister in the Caribou country is golfing, and each has tested in tournament the prowess of the other. While the Boston club woman hesitates not to take her grip and an evening gown, and start, at a day’s notice, to “read a paper” on the Pacific coast, so the lady golfer of the Toronto club, or the equally famous players from Parliament circles in Ottawa, get them gayly away without misgiving, even into

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the States, to match their skill, and win and wear their laurels as proudly and joyously as the club woman does the reward of her intellectual venture. Miss White and Miss Crombie of the Toronto Club, especially the former, are perhaps among the Canadian lady players best known in the States. Miss White was the champion who beat Miss Oliver at Murray Bay. Miss Oliver, it may be remembered, was in the semi-finals of all United States ladies. It may be interesting for golf players to know that Miss White’s record for the Murray Bay course was the excellent one of 95. In the Toronto Club there is but one scratch player— Miss Crombie, a brilliant player, who is noted for her straight driving. Miss Wilkie and Miss Cassells are strong on the approach, beside which are many young and middle-aged matrons who make close ru n n in g with their brothers and husbands in the links. One of the prettiest sights in Toronto is to see fifteen or twenty of these ladies, with shining eyes and cheeks of rose, chatting of “twosomes and threesomes” and “driving from the Tee,” as they group about the little tables on the clubhouse veranda, drinking—the inevitable Canadian beverage—tea. It is only in Scotch-Canadian regions that one finds the same rabid enthusiasm for golf, an amusement so peculiar to Scotland that nothing, unless curling, disputes its place as the national game. My own remote ancestor, Mary Stuart, is pilloried in history as showing a shameless indifference to her husband’s murder by playing golf, a few days after his death, in the field beside Seaton. Beware, unless you would lose your prestige forever, of calling a golf-club a stick to a Canadian girl who lives upon terms of intimacy with the driver, the cleek, the putter, the brassy and the niblick, the latter used to rescue the balls from gullies, ruts and woods after unfortunate shots. Be it known that the links where the

A Lich, watson.

Canadian girl and her brother—in fact, her whole family—trifle with the golf-club, are mountainous regions mystic with peril compared with the mild and well-considered diversity of most American practice grounds. To see the girl, with the sparkle of all her bottled energy coming to the surface, you should know the hockey girl. It is enough to set the staidest pulse of age into a Highland fling to go out with the Girls’ Hockey Team of Queen’s,

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when it sets forth to conquer or be conquered. I had almost said to slay or be slain, for the hockey girl knoweth no fear. She not only entertains no squeamish sympathy when her brother hockey player comes in with his face flattened or an ear to be replaced, but in her playing she emulates the reckless abandon of his play as mercilessly as she would gibe at any sign of weakness in enduring the often painful and sometimes disfiguring results. The Queen’s Club is perhaps a good example, for its members are young and supposedly at the tender age, and there, more essentially than at any other place, I realized that the men of her college are the Canadian girls’ brothers. She has a fine dignity and sense of fitness, as shown in the fact that, although this famous Scotch college was one of the first to admit women, and no restriction is laid upon their intercourse by rigid rules of exclusion in lecture hours, the Queen’s College girl electing, by an unwritten decision, to pass her casual or intimate fellow of the other sex in the college halls absolutely without recognition. The wisdom of this, and the unique quality of the girl nature that conceives and carries out such a self-restraint is assuredly of a high and fine type. The girls and men of the hockey clubs do not play against each other, but either club takes a tremendous pride in the successes of the other; and the Girls’ Club prides itself upon using the same ferocious sticks presented to them by the men—a heavier, broader, and more deadly weapon than usually used by girl hockey players; the feminine stick being, however, much wicketler than those used in the States. It is very much like an old-fashioned “shinny” stick. Their game is made much more difficult and dangerous in that the puck used is, unlike our red ball, a black rubber disc, two and one-half inches in diameter, and about an inch thick. The object of the game is to put this rubber disc through the opponent’s goal, which is called “shooting a goal.” In their game there is an off-side, as in football, while in our hockey game in the States we have no off-side. The men play thirty minutes, then rest ten minutes, and then thirty more; but the girls play but twenty. “My s” said Lady Daintry, the president of the Queen’s Hockey Club, “you’re a corpse at the end of twenty.” A favorite device is “body checking.” This is making a furious feint of rushing on the puck to lift it with your stick only to collide purposely with your opponent and the strongest goes down. This has to be done with much nicety, lest the referee, who is always an accomplished skater of good wind, rushes down upon you and exposes you. With the little black puck on the ice, and all the enemies squabbling over it with heads down, and everybody seeming all fect, a sudden and unexpected lift of the puck is likely to land the cruel rock-elm sticks without time for selecting the point of contact. The Queen’s Club is rather unique in this that but one of its members has escaped somewhat serious accident. “Oh, we don’t mind “” said the captain. “We don’t wear padded trousers, like the men, but we do pad our knees; for first you go up and then you go down, and oh, my your knees are black and blue. I couldn’t say my prayers in proper position all winter for mine. If the puck

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hits you you think you are dead. In one of the men’s games the puck was lifted and struck another man flat on the cheek. Instead of falling off the suction held it, and when it was taken away it carried part of the cheek with it. When you get hit with the stick you are benumbed, but in five minutes you feel as though the roof of your head was coming off. One of the men fell a little while ago in a game, and another skated right over, cutting his face open before he could stop himself. The men coach us girls, but we play alone.” Said another girl : “It is being on the ice that makes hockey so much more exciting. All the swell girls and women play in Ottowa. They go to Perth, Carleton Place and Smith’s Falls to play match games.” The costume of the Queen’s College team is a neat, blue blouse, dark blue serge skirt to boot tops, with a belt of the Queen’s College colors, bare heads except for 15,000,000 hairpins. Since the captain and the president agree in this statement I dare not deduct one hairpin. The present members of Queen’s College Ladies’ Hockey Team, season 1896–97, are: Ada Birch (right wing); B. Daintry-Yates, president (left wing); Alice Watson (left wing); Margaret Russell, secretary (point); Nellie Watson, captain (centre); Mabel Parker (cover points); Marion Fraser (centre); Edna Griffith (point); Kate McLean (goal). At a practice match, where there were only four on a side, some were using broken hockey sticks. The puck lay between the captain and goal, and both made a rush at it. As Lady Daintry went to lift it with her broken stick the other girl bent also to prevent; the jagged end of the stick caught her in the nose, laying her face open and throwing the eye out upon the check. She was taken at once to a hospital by her opponent, and had three stitches taken, the healthy flesh healing without a scar. Lady Daintry assured me that the first time she played she fell, by actual count, twenty-seven times in threequarters of an hour. Her coach picked her up seventeen times and then gave it up as hopeless. At the close of their games the teams gather in the center of the rink, when it is not upon open ice, and cheer, the defeated team trying to get its cheer in first. The Queen’s College cry is, “The blue, red and yellow, the blue, red and yellow, forever, forever, forever !” The Gaelic cry as written is : “Oil thigh no Banrighim

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As howled it sounds like this : “Oi ti n’ Banrighim Na Banrighim gu bra Ki-yell ki-yel ! ki-yel !” Think not that in these rough-and-tumble amusements the Canadian girl forgets the feminine duties of life. A more thoughtful or practical being in the care of her own house, when she has one, and to those who need her aid before she marries, as she always does, has not been discovered. The match hockey game even was turned to a philanthropic benefit last year when they charged fifteen cents admission, and turned the gate receipts, amounting to $60, over to the Kingston Hospital. As this was their first match game the shrieks and yells of the friends of their opponents rather rattled the girls at first, but they soon got used to it. It may not be uninteresting, since the American foot and its dressing is openly admired by our Canadian sisters, to know how the hockey skater arrays that portion of her structure. The hockey skate is perfectly straight, and secured to a boot which is taken along and exchanged for the one worn—a chug, clumsy boot, which would be trying to the prettiest foot. Add to this a heavy hide anklet laced over the whole, which has a hole for the heel of the under shoe to go through, and one can understand why the hockey girl’s foot is not a thing of beauty. Kingston is somewhat famed for all ladies’ sports. Halifax was the first and Kingston the second to revive the interest in tennis, and introduce it into this country a few years ago, while Kingston was first to have a ladies’ hockey team, and this season had the finest and keenest competition at their bench show in fox-terriers ever seen in Canada. Captain Curtis of the men’s hockey team has an idiosyncrasy which gives rise to all sorts of yarns. He gathers in, to put it gently, others’ possessions as he goes. His bachelor teas, which

CHURCH PARADE.

are society events, are served with silver “swiped ” from all over the American contiment, his spoons alone representing most of the first-class hostelries in Canada and the States. Last year, when he returned from the Queen’s triumphant tour of hockey and polo matches, he brought an assortment of cake dishes. His trophies usually arrive promptly, but he is very apt to forget portions of his own wardrobe. Having appropriated a jersey belonging to an opponent, and several pairs of trousers, he discovered, on reaching home, that he had left the jersey behind. Curtis, unabashed, at once telegraphed, “Stole Crawford’s jersey and left it behind— send it along”; and the men sent it. The same captain is somewhat of a misogynist. On the train one day a clergyman’s wife, whose record for startling ways rivals the Queen’s man, decided to talk with him. However she brought it about, a conversation ensued, which ended briefly in the polite departure of Curtis, who, on his return from the smoker, having played a big game the day before, retired to a remote seat, drew down his cap and went to sleep. Madam moved forward to the seat directly behind him, and, leaning over, calmly tickled his cheek and awakened him. This was maddening ; but Curtis bided his time, and at the stop for lunch brought back into the car a pair of salt-cellars to add to his collection of souvenirs. With these he cheerfully returned to his seat, and when Mrs. Clergyman reopened the conversation, he punctuated his replies by slowly emptying the saltcellars over her bonnet and shoulders. The whole car understood by this time, and I am afraid sympathized with the drowsy young athlete. If Toronto prides itself upon anything it is the city ordinance forbidding cars to run on the Sabbath. The municipal front swells with an inexplicable sense of virtue whenever this inconvenience to women, children and the poor

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The American Magazine, Volume 43

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in pocket is mentioned. The bicycle dealer and the hackmen are among these proudly good citizens. Especially is this true on the day of “Church Parade,” when every cross-street entering the thoroughfares through which the marching regiments pass to their annual refreshment of souls is dangerously packed with carriages loaded with beautifully-dressed womanhood. It is The Girl, overflowing carriage, dogcart and drag, unescorted, excited and admiring ; envied of her sisters if she cry, “There’s Jack” with easy familiarity while the Kilties, with their muscular, bared knees and fanciful attire, are passing ; or, best of all, if she be able to select among the clear-cut, aristocratic faces of the Queen’s Own a relative or a sweetheart. This regiment looks what it is. The best blood of Canada fills its veins, and “he who runs ” on Church Parade Day “may read ” it in features and bearing and in the quiet elegance of their dark uniform.

A very funny and characteristic scene took place in the Kingston Opera House when Ian Maclaren gave his first lecture in that place. I was assured by my friends that it was the thing to go early, to hear what the college men would say. When we arrived the upper gallery, which at the centre is reserved for the Queen’s men in a body, was crowded, and a running fire of comment and raillery, interspersed with palpable |

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hail with much unction and sometimes with telling compliment a favorite professor or a popular belle impartially. One professor, a man of much elegance and a tremendous favorite with the men, vociferously greeted as “Baldy,” was absolutely so abashed by his tumultuous reception, as he came down the middle aisle with his family, that, notwithstanding their friendly suggestions that he should “not be afraid ” and ‘‘take off his topcoat like a man,” it required some moments before he could gather courage to stand up long enough to perform that simple and necessary act. My sympathies yet go out to a young man in evening dress, with a graceful girl at his side, who had braved the ridicule of his fellows for her sake, and occupied one of the best seats in the centre of the house, in full view of the men. If there are any details of his evening toilet and the resources from which he gathered it in and paid for his seats with which that whole audience is unfamiliar to-day it is not to be laid to any

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neglect of the Queen’s men. After this exhibition I was in no wise astonished, but accepted it as part of the courtesies extended to me when invited to speak before another large educational institution in Ontario, that when I entered the room and made my way meekly behind their distinguished president to the platform to deliver a lecture before them, they hailed me on my winding way with the opening strains of “Clemling !” They got no further in their demonstration, however, checked by a smile and a warning gesture of Dr. McL–. I wish to say here that however noisy may be the prefatory demonstration of the Canadian “brother” he, as well as his sister,

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formed as intelligent, appreciaaudi

tive and enthusiastic ences as one need care to face. The Scotch-Canadian, it seems to me, never loses a point. Before, in closing, I return to the Canadian girl I wish to speak of another peculiar phase in Canadian college and varsity life which I saw in full furor in Toronto. On Halloween every theatre in the city is given up in a sense to the varsity men, who engage the whole top gallery and have removed to it a piano. Difficult and absurd as this seems, I am told that the local dealers consider it an excellent advertisement to be able to furnish these pianos for their hazardous climb. From one theatre to the other the men proceed in triumphal march, leaving a sufficient group permanently at each one to hold the fort in their absence. The o moment the regular performance on the stage ceases, the varsity men open their programme with songs and shouts and college cries, maddening and yet amusing. I selected the Grand

Opera House, where Chevalier and his company were billed. The boxes upon right and left were crowded with young men in evening dress, and hung elaborately with the colors of the different colleges or varsity, with plain and simple statements and bannerets of the special

the boxes; while from the side galleries and above one’s head came the—alas !—unhallowed roars of the Halloween rioters. For some reason they chose to guy the popular Frenchman in his most perfect recitals, and to show an equally unreasonable approval of the flattest and most uninteresting of his company ; and, alas ! again, for my disappointment — instead of the musical and characteristic ringing song which I had anticipated, those that they sang between the acts were absolutely moss-grown and moth-eaten with age. I heard afterward that for some reason this was not a fair example of what they could do, but the sight was certainly exhilarating as it was, to see them marching in long and solid lines, four and eight abreast, through the streets to seremade the various girls’ colleges connected with the university, where etiquette shrouds the expectant college maid in absolute gloom as she listens to this ann Halloween tribute. “ *> brother” has his inni also, on this fateful since, if he escape the m termal vigilance, he and his comrades gather in front of \ the various grocery houses and shrilly demand an offering. Sometimes—in fact, often—quarts of nuts are thrown out for them to scramble after. The more generous dealers occasionally upset a barrel of apples to satisfy their demands. It is rarely they are driven away empty-handed. I have spoken of the Canadian girl and her dogs. I might almost have said the

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Canadian dog and his mistress, for she is rarely without one, and more frequently two or three dash fondly about her and are her constant comrades in her long, cross – country walks. Just now it is the terrier that finds most favor with the Canadian girl as well as with her brother. She cares not a thing for a lap-dog. The dog she wants must have much the element she demands in her brother. He must have some points of comradeship ; and if there are any points of comradeship or blood or breeding that she has not at her tongue’s tip I have yet to discover them. The Canadian girl and her dogs are the most joyous and inspiring sight that I found in Canada, and I have wondered sometimes, if this contact and interest in horses and dogs—the two most familiar forms of domesticated animal life—may not have entered into the very essence of the Canadian girl to make her the joy forever that she is. I grew so accustomed to having the beautiful, bounding creatures, who knew me as the friend of their mistresses, greet me as I came, and frequently offer, with joyous demonstration, to escort me on my exceedingly mild pedestrian ventures, that I should hardly have felt the photographs which I brought away complete if the dogs had not been included. When I spoke of the mistresses I was thinking of “Lady Daintry” or, more explicity, B. Daintry-Yates and Helen Daintry-Yates—one a fair, svelte maiden, with that rare and beautiful hair known by artists as ash blonde ; the other, her dark-eyed sister. Each has her own terriers of different breeds, famous already, though puppies, for the bench prizes taken, as shown by characteristic memoranda in Lady Daintry’s striking chirography on the back of their pictures. “Winnings : Sapperton-Turk, I., Open Puppy. II. Wire-haired Terrier. Special. Sapperton – Columbus, I., Local Terrier.” These charming young women quite fulfill the description which one of them gave me of American WOInel). ‘‘I never knew one, not frantically clever.” The acquisition by these young ladies of four valuable dogs has inspired them with an intention which would be, to an American girl, most daring and impossible, and yet these charming, cultivated, well-born girls, who have inherited the sporting instincts of generations of gentlemen, are deliberately planning to establish kennels of their own, and, in fact, have already matured many of the details as well as securing the land in the desired location.

” she said, “who was
“We call them the Sapperton Kennels, because wherever a Daintry-Yates owns, by acquisition or inheritance, a foot of land, it has been called Sapperton. If there might be a Sapperton Hall, Sappertonleigh, Sapperton Manor or Sapperton Abbey, why not, as many times before, give the name to Sapperton Kennels, with two mistresses instead of one master? We are going to do it, anyway, and Sapperton-Turk and Columbus and Tess, with their famous pedigrees, are the beginning of the end, when our kennels shall make us famous.” But the days of the Canadian girl inevitably draw toward that dawn when she becomes the Canadian woman ; the wedding-day which shuts her out from very little that she has known in her girlhood ; opening to her that which, to her honor be it said, is an accepted crown of glory— honest, healthful wifehood and motherhood. In saying good-by even for a little while, I would like to leave with you my last picture of one Canadian girl. She had been a beauty and a belle, the last to be married of six sisters, and, as her father told me, the fairest flower of his flock. The other five, who were present at the breakfast, fell upon him with merry and reproachful asides ; but as he had said the same thing of each on her wedding-day, the youngest was but taking her turn. The wedding was much like other weddings, except for a certain spirit of good-fellowship that made everybody in the whole town determine that this last wedding— for the father was not a rich man—should be as pretty and complete as the other five. One young girl and another went on duty to assist in the arrangement of the house ; the mother of two more went over to make the punch the night before, from an old recipe which was never allowed to go out of the family, and consequently could only be concocted by the dear lady herself, which friendly office she had executed for each of the sisters. I being a stranger, guest of one of the guests, was invited to go and see the bride off at the train. Upon inquiry I found that this was quite the proper thing to do, especially as the one of the household with whom I went was in mourning for an aunt, and could not attend the wedding proper. When the hour arrived we made our way to the Grand Trunk Station—for the groom was a son of a prominent member of Parliament, and the father of the maid of honor being a director of this road, had sent his private car to bear the young couple away. I was quite as familiar as the bride herself, from constant hearsay, with all the details of her handsome, brown traveling costume, distinguished by the number of mink heads which adorned it. This was the pretty and essentially Canadian picture, in which I looked my last upon one Canadian girl. She stood on the rear platform of the car, where she had arrived fully thirty minutes before the time of starting, to act her part in this public reception. As I came up with my friend we were greeted by one and another who stood about the grimy tracks in exquisite morning costumes, picturesque with feathered hats and hats flamboyant with winged ribbons, some of them so amazing that they could never have graced the head of an American girl of like station. Pretty girls, attended and unattended, stood here and there on the platform and among the tracks. The handsome middle-aged father was presented to me, and stood watching, with softening eyes, the last of his flock, as my friend and hers went forward to the steps of the car, and reaching up, gave her a parting kiss. The

newly made groom, with the true Englishman’s lack of sentiment, was at that moment practically engaged in brushing the rice with, whisk broom from the mink adorned collar of her smart gown.

After the Painting by Richard Esermann.

A grinning porter stood in the door of the car waiting to receive back the brush. On the outside a really beautiful girl, the maid of honor, stood upon the coal-smirched boards in pink satin slippers, a silk and illusion gown, and long gloves of the color of the blush-roses in her hand. Her sunny hair was shining uncovered in the sun, and to the careless observer she seemed to be leaning with reckless abandon, the exquisite fabric of her gown sweeping against the neither new nor elegant exterior of the car. A melancholy touch of romance which completed the scene was a young cadet, known as the handsomest man in town, who stood, apparently forgetful of his surroundings, in the very middle of the track a half dozen yards from the car, and, with shoulders squarely set and forage-cap jauntily perched over his ear, was gazing at the bride with what he fondly believed to be a heartbreaking expression. I hope you may know them better, and if any one tells you, as many did me, that the Canadians detest every American that they do not envy, you will find, as I did, that this prejudice, if it ever existed with the parents, has not descended to the Canadian girl and her brother.

Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly, Volume 43 (Google Books)

SOME CANADIAN GIRLS ASD THEIR 1 AVOK1TE DOGS.

the boxes; while from the side galleries and above one’s head came the—alas !—unhallowed roars of the Halloween rioters. For some reason they chose to guy the popular Frenchman in his most perfect recitals, and to show an equally unreasonable approval of the flattest and most uninteresting of his company; and, again, for my disappointment— instead of the musical and characteristic ringing song which I had anticipated, those that they sang between the acts were absolutely moss-grown and moth-eaten with age. I heard afterward that for some reason this was not a fair example of what they could do, but the sight was certainly exhilarating as it was, to see them inarching in long and solid lines, four and eight abreast, through the streets to serenade the various girls’ col•ges connected with the university, where etiquette shrouds the expectant college maid in absolute gloom as she listens to this annual Halloween tribute. “Little brother” has his inning, also, on this fateful night, since, if he escape the maternal vigilance, he and his comrades gather in front of the various grocery houses and shrilly demand an offering. Sometimes—in fact, often—quarts of nuts are thrown out for them to scramble after. The more generous dealers occasionally upset a barrel of apples tx satisfy their demands. ^ is rarely they are driven empty-handed.

I have spoken of the
dian girl and her
might almost have said

Canadian dog and his mistress, for she is rarely without one, and more frequently two or three dash fondly about her and are her constant comrades in her long, cross – country walks. Just now it is the terrier that finds most favor with the Canadian girl as well as with her brother. She cares not a thing for a lap-dog. The dog she wants must have much the clement she demands in her brother. lie must have some points of comradeship; and if there are any points of comradeship or blood or breeding that she has not at her tongue’s tip I have yet to discover them. The Canadian girl and her dogs are the most joyous and inspiring sight that I found in Canada, and I have wondered sometimes, if this contact and interest in horses and dogs—the two most familiar forms of domesticated animal life—may not have entered into the very essence of the Canadian girl to make her the joy forever that she is. I grew so accustomed to having the beautiful, bounding creatures, who knew me as the friend of their mistresses, greet me as I came, and frequently offer, with joyous demonstration, to escort me on my exceedingly mild pedestrian ventures, that I should hardly have felt the photographs which I brought away complete if the dogs had not been included.

When J spoke of the mistresses I was thinking of “Lady Daintry ” or, more explicit)’, B. Daintry-Yates and Helen Daintry-Yates—one a fair, svelte maiden, with that rare and beautiful hair known by artists as ash blonde; the other, her dark-eyed sister. Each has her own terriers of different breeds, famous already, though puppies, for the bench prizes taken, as shown by characteristic memoranda in Lady Oaintry’s striking chirography on the back of their pictures. “Winnings: Sapperton-Turk, I., Open Puppy. II. Wire-haired Terrier. Special. Sapperton – Columbus, I., Local Terrier.” These charming young women quite fulfill the description which one of them gave me of American women.

“I never knew one,” she said, “who was not frantically clever.”

The acquisition by these young ladies of four valuable dogs has inspired them with an intention which would be, to an American girl, most daring aiid impossible, and yet these charming, cultivated, well-born girls, who have inherited the sporting instincts of generations of gentlemen, are deliberately planning to establish kennels of their own, and, in fact, have already matured many of the details as well as securing the land in the desired location.

“We call them the Sapperton Kennels, because wherever a Daintry-Yates owns, by acquisition or inheritance, a foot of land, it has been called Sapperton. If there might be a Sapperton Hall, Sappertonleigh, Sapperton Manor or Sapperton Abbey, why not, as many times before, give the name to Sapperton Kennels, with two mistresses instead of one master? We are going to do it, anyway, and Sapperton-Turk and Columbus and Tess, with their famous pedigrees, are the beginning of the end, when our kennels shall make us famous.”

But the days of the Canadian girl inevitably draw toward that dawn when she becomes the Canadian woman ; the wedding-day which shuts her out from very little that she has known in her girlhood ; opening to her that which, to her honor be it said, is an accepted crown of glory— honest, healthful wifehood and motherhood. In saving good-by even for a little while, 1 would like to leave with you my last picture of one Canadian girl. She had been a beauty and a belle, the last to be married of six sisters, and, as her father told me, the fairest flower of his flock. The other five, who were present at the breakfast, fell upon him with merry and reproachful asides; but as he had said the same thing of each on her wedding-day, the youngest was but taking her turn. The wedding was much like other weddings, except for a certain spirit of good-fellowship that made everybody in the whole town determine that this last wedding— for the father was not a rich man—should be as pretty and complete as the other five. One young girl and another went on duty to assist in the arrangement of the house; the mother of two more went over to make the punch the night before, from an old recipe which was never allowed to go out of the family, and consequently could only be concocted by the dear lady herself, which friendly office she had executed for each of the sisters. I being a stranger, guest of one of the guests, was invited to go and see the bride off at the train. Upon inquiry I found that this was quite the proper thing to do, especially as the one of the household with whom I went was in mourning for an aunt, and could not attend the wedding proper. When the hour arrived we made our way to the Grand Trunk Station—for the groom was a son of a prominent member of Parliament, and the father of the maid of honor being a director of this road, had sent his private car to bear the young couple away. I was quite as familiar as the bride herself, from constant 1 ^arsay, with all the details of her handsome, brown traveling costume, dis

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Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly, Volume 43
edited by Frank Leslie

About this book

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tinguished by the number of mink heads which adorned it.

This was the pretty and essentially Canadian picture, in which I looked my last upon one Canadian girl. She stood on the rear platform of the car, where she had arrived fully thirty minutes before the time of starting, to act her part in this public reception. As I came up with my friend we were greeted by one and another who stood about the grimy tracks in exquisite morning costumes, picturesque with feathered hats and hats flamboyant with winged ribbons, some of them so amazing that they could never have graced the head of an American girl of like station. Pretty girls, attended and unattended, stood here and there on the platform and among the tracks. The handsome middle-aged father was presented to me, and stood watching, with softening eyes, the last of his flock, as my friend and hers went forward to the steps of the car, and reaching up, gave her a parting kiss. The newly made groom, with the true Englishman’s lack of sentiment, was at that moment practically engaged in brushing the rice with whisk broom from the mink adorned collar of her smart gown.

A grinning porter stood in the door of the car waiting to receive back the brush. On the outside a really beautiful girl, the maid of honor, stood upon the coal-smirched boards in pink satin slippers, a silk and illusion gown, and long gloves of the color of the blush-roses in her hand. Her sunny hair was shining uncovered in the sun, and to the careless observer she seemed to be leaning with reckless abandon, the exquisite fabric of her gown sweeping against the neither new nor elegant exterior of the car. A melancholy touch of romance which completed the scene was a young cadet, known as the handsomest man in town, who stood, apparently forgetful of his surroundings, in the very middle of the track a half dozen yards from the car, and, with shoulders squarely set and forage-cap jauntily perched over his ear, was gazing at ‘the bride with what he fondly believed to be a heartbreaking expression. I hope you may know them better, and if any one tells you, as many did me, that the Canadians detest every American that they do not envy, you will find, as I did, that this prejudice, if it ever existed with the parents, has not descended to the Canadian <>irl and her brother.

Lady’s Realm: An Illustrated Monthly Magazine – Volume 13 – Page 132
https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=oI03AQAAMAAJ

1903 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
Then memories crept into his mind—memories of the Lady Teazle order, country maidens who, after an apprenticeship of “Combing Aunt Deborah’s lap-dog” and “playing whist with the curate,” made up arrears when they came to town. Hence …

The maiden aunt’s dog (Google Books)

Lacy’s acting edition of plays, dramas, farces and extravagances, …
https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=tRdaAAAAMAAJ

Snippet view – ‎More editions
It cost me a fortune once — that of a humpbacked old maiden aunt, who cut me out of her will because I tormented her lapdog — and I vow and protest I didn’t carry oh the game more than ten or twelve years. Clar. (aside) Why the deuce don’t …
The Florida Historical Quarterly – Volume 78 – Page 313
https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=tkwTAAAAYAAJ

Florida Historical Society – 1999 – ‎No preview – ‎More editions
Dicks’ Standard Plays: Richelieu; Lady of Lyons; Money; Ernest …
https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=KxxAAAAAYAAJ

Snippet view
… of two maiden aunts. I’ve some … And I, Sir Thomas’s neighbour, have beheld the whole thirteen married off from under my nose by fellows who may hare only danced a set of quadrilles with them, picked up their fan, or fondled their lap-dog.
Fairest of Them All – Page 122
https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=0843945133

Josette Browning – 1999 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
Wentworth Hume, an insipidly handsome, blond, over- bred lapdog of a man, entered the parlor with his coldly lovely wife Agatha on his arm, and a severe, elderly woman named Miss Edith Hume, perhaps a maiden aunt, attending close …
Inspector and 3 Other Plays – Page 34
https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=4DZQAQAAIAAJ

Nikolaĭ Vasilʹevich Gogolʹ, ‎Eric Bentley – 1987 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
A new couch with soft cushions, a cute little lap dog sitting on the soft cushions, an even cuter little canary merrily trilling … oh yes, we must get Madeira, the bride’ll have a whole string of maiden aunts, we couldn’t ask ’em to drink Rhine wine.
Encyclopedia of Walt Disney’s animated characters – Page 29
https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=0786863366

John Grant – 1998 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
There he discovers a land where inanimate objects have lives and personalities of their own: there is a lugubrious armchair, a footstool that has all the attributes of a yappy little lapdog, an umbrella that behaves like a prim maiden aunt, and so …
New Monthly Magazine – Volume 19 – Page 493
https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=mtMzAQAAMAAJ

Thomas Campbell, ‎Samuel Carter Hall, ‎Edward Bulwer Lytton Baron Lytton – 1827 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
… whose ponderous quantum of hair was buckled up behind, like the tails of my old maiden aunt Leonora’s coach-horses. … The ugly curly-pated lap-dog having been now silenced by several flirts from a scented cambric handkerchief, Miss …
Mark Hurdlestone; Or, The Two Brothers – Page 125
https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=oL4kAAAAMAAJ

Susanna Moodie – 1853 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
takes too much of the cold tough nature of his father’s to make a good lover. While he talks sense to the maiden aunt, I shall be pouring nonsense into the young lady’s ears — nursing her lap-dog, caressing her pony, writing amatory verses in …
The modern theatre – Volume 5 – Page 13
https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=LS9MAAAAMAAJ

Eric Bentley – 1957 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
A new couch with soft cushions, a cute little lap dog sitting on the soft cushions, an even cuter little canary merrily trilling … oh yes, we must get Madeira, the bride’ll have a whole string of maiden aunts, we couldn’t ask ’em to drink Rhine wine.
Dicks’ standard plays – Page 24
https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=9x4OAAAAQAAJ

The American Magazine, Volume 43
About this book

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376 – 380

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in pocket is mentioned. The bicycle dealer and the hackmen are among these proudly good citizens. Especially is this true on the day of “Church Parade,” when every cross-street entering the thoroughfares through which the marching regiments pass to their annual refreshment of souls is dangerously packed with carriages loaded with beautifully-dressed womanhood. It is The Girl, overflowing carriage, dogcart and drag, unescorted, excited and admiring ; envied of her sisters if she cry, “There’s Jack” with easy familiarity while the Kilties, with their muscular, bared knees and fanciful attire, are passing ; or, best of all, if she be able to select among the clear-cut, aristocratic faces of the Queen’s Own a relative or a sweetheart. This regiment looks what it is. The best blood of Canada fills its veins, and “he who runs ” on Church Parade Day “may read ” it in features and bearing and in the quiet elegance of their dark uniform.

A very funny and characteristic scene took place in the Kingston Opera House when Ian Maclaren gave his first lecture in that place. I was assured by my friends that it was the thing to go early, to hear what the college men would say. When we arrived the upper gallery, which at the centre is reserved for the Queen’s men in a body, was crowded, and a running fire of comment and raillery, interspersed with palpable |

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hail with much unction and sometimes with telling compliment a favorite professor or a popular belle impartially. One professor, a man of much elegance and a tremendous favorite with the men, vociferously greeted as “Baldy,” was absolutely so abashed by his tumultuous reception, as he came down the middle aisle with his family, that, notwithstanding their friendly suggestions that he should “not be afraid ” and ‘‘take off his topcoat like a man,” it required some moments before he could gather courage to stand up long enough to perform that simple and necessary act. My sympathies yet go out to a young man in evening dress, with a graceful girl at his side, who had braved the ridicule of his fellows for her sake, and occupied one of the best seats in the centre of the house, in full view of the men. If there are any details of his evening toilet and the resources from which he gathered it in and paid for his seats with which that whole audience is unfamiliar to-day it is not to be laid to any

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neglect of the Queen’s men. After this exhibition I was in no wise astonished, but accepted it as part of the courtesies extended to me when invited to speak before another large educational institution in Ontario, that when I entered the room and made my way meekly behind their distinguished president to the platform to deliver a lecture before them, they hailed me on my winding way with the opening strains of “Clemling !” They got no further in their demonstration, however, checked by a smile and a warning gesture of Dr. McL–. I wish to say here that however noisy may be the prefatory demonstration of the Canadian “brother” he, as well as his sister,

[graphic][graphic][graphic][graphic][graphic][graphic][graphic][graphic][graphic][graphic][graphic]
formed as intelligent, appreciaaudi

tive and enthusiastic ences as one need care to face. The Scotch-Canadian, it seems to me, never loses a point. Before, in closing, I return to the Canadian girl I wish to speak of another peculiar phase in Canadian college and varsity life which I saw in full furor in Toronto. On Halloween every theatre in the city is given up in a sense to the varsity men, who engage the whole top gallery and have removed to it a piano. Difficult and absurd as this seems, I am told that the local dealers consider it an excellent advertisement to be able to furnish these pianos for their hazardous climb. From one theatre to the other the men proceed in triumphal march, leaving a sufficient group permanently at each one to hold the fort in their absence. The o moment the regular performance on the stage ceases, the varsity men open their programme with songs and shouts and college cries, maddening and yet amusing. I selected the Grand

Opera House, where Chevalier and his company were billed. The boxes upon right and left were crowded with young men in evening dress, and hung elaborately with the colors of the different colleges or varsity, with plain and simple statements and bannerets of the special

the boxes; while from the side galleries and above one’s head came the—alas !—unhallowed roars of the Halloween rioters. For some reason they chose to guy the popular Frenchman in his most perfect recitals, and to show an equally unreasonable approval of the flattest and most uninteresting of his company ; and, alas ! again, for my disappointment — instead of the musical and characteristic ringing song which I had anticipated, those that they sang between the acts were absolutely moss-grown and moth-eaten with age. I heard afterward that for some reason this was not a fair example of what they could do, but the sight was certainly exhilarating as it was, to see them marching in long and solid lines, four and eight abreast, through the streets to seremade the various girls’ colleges connected with the university, where etiquette shrouds the expectant college maid in absolute gloom as she listens to this ann Halloween tribute. “ *> brother” has his inni also, on this fateful since, if he escape the m termal vigilance, he and his comrades gather in front of \ the various grocery houses and shrilly demand an offering. Sometimes—in fact, often—quarts of nuts are thrown out for them to scramble after. The more generous dealers occasionally upset a barrel of apples to satisfy their demands. It is rarely they are driven away empty-handed. I have spoken of the Canadian girl and her dogs. I might almost have said the

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Canadian dog and his mistress, for she is rarely without one, and more frequently two or three dash fondly about her and are her constant comrades in her long, cross – country walks. Just now it is the terrier that finds most favor with the Canadian girl as well as with her brother. She cares not a thing for a lap-dog. The dog she wants must have much the element she demands in her brother. He must have some points of comradeship ; and if there are any points of comradeship or blood or breeding that she has not at her tongue’s tip I have yet to discover them. The Canadian girl and her dogs are the most joyous and inspiring sight that I found in Canada, and I have wondered sometimes, if this contact and interest in horses and dogs—the two most familiar forms of domesticated animal life—may not have entered into the very essence of the Canadian girl to make her the joy forever that she is. I grew so accustomed to having the beautiful, bounding creatures, who knew me as the friend of their mistresses, greet me as I came, and frequently offer, with joyous demonstration, to escort me on my exceedingly mild pedestrian ventures, that I should hardly have felt the photographs which I brought away complete if the dogs had not been included. When I spoke of the mistresses I was thinking of “Lady Daintry” or, more explicity, B. Daintry-Yates and Helen Daintry-Yates—one a fair, svelte maiden, with that rare and beautiful hair known by artists as ash blonde ; the other, her dark-eyed sister. Each has her own terriers of different breeds, famous already, though puppies, for the bench prizes taken, as shown by characteristic memoranda in Lady Daintry’s striking chirography on the back of their pictures. “Winnings : Sapperton-Turk, I., Open Puppy. II. Wire-haired Terrier. Special. Sapperton – Columbus, I., Local Terrier.” These charming young women quite fulfill the description which one of them gave me of American WOInel). ‘‘I never knew one, not frantically clever.” The acquisition by these young ladies of four valuable dogs has inspired them with an intention which would be, to an American girl, most daring and impossible, and yet these charming, cultivated, well-born girls, who have inherited the sporting instincts of generations of gentlemen, are deliberately planning to establish kennels of their own, and, in fact, have already matured many of the details as well as securing the land in the desired location.

” she said, “who was
“We call them the Sapperton Kennels, because wherever a Daintry-Yates owns, by acquisition or inheritance, a foot of land, it has been called Sapperton. If there might be a Sapperton Hall, Sappertonleigh, Sapperton Manor or Sapperton Abbey, why not, as many times before, give the name to Sapperton Kennels, with two mistresses instead of one master? We are going to do it, anyway, and Sapperton-Turk and Columbus and Tess, with their famous pedigrees, are the beginning of the end, when our kennels shall make us famous.” But the days of the Canadian girl inevitably draw toward that dawn when she becomes the Canadian woman ; the wedding-day which shuts her out from very little that she has known in her girlhood ; opening to her that which, to her honor be it said, is an accepted crown of glory— honest, healthful wifehood and motherhood. In saying good-by even for a little while, I would like to leave with you my last picture of one Canadian girl. She had been a beauty and a belle, the last to be married of six sisters, and, as her father told me, the fairest flower of his flock. The other five, who were present at the breakfast, fell upon him with merry and reproachful asides ; but as he had said the same thing of each on her wedding-day, the youngest was but taking her turn. The wedding was much like other weddings, except for a certain spirit of good-fellowship that made everybody in the whole town determine that this last wedding— for the father was not a rich man—should be as pretty and complete as the other five. One young girl and another went on duty to assist in the arrangement of the house ; the mother of two more went over to make the punch the night before, from an old recipe which was never allowed to go out of the family, and consequently could only be concocted by the dear lady herself, which friendly office she had executed for each of the sisters. I being a stranger, guest of one of the guests, was invited to go and see the bride off at the train. Upon inquiry I found that this was quite the proper thing to do, especially as the one of the household with whom I went was in mourning for an aunt, and could not attend the wedding proper. When the hour arrived we made our way to the Grand Trunk Station—for the groom was a son of a prominent member of Parliament, and the father of the maid of honor being a director of this road, had sent his private car to bear the young couple away. I was quite as familiar as the bride herself, from constant hearsay, with all the details of her handsome, brown traveling costume, distinguished by the number of mink heads which adorned it. This was the pretty and essentially Canadian picture, in which I looked my last upon one Canadian girl. She stood on the rear platform of the car, where she had arrived fully thirty minutes before the time of starting, to act her part in this public reception. As I came up with my friend we were greeted by one and another who stood about the grimy tracks in exquisite morning costumes, picturesque with feathered hats and hats flamboyant with winged ribbons, some of them so amazing that they could never have graced the head of an American girl of like station. Pretty girls, attended and unattended, stood here and there on the platform and among the tracks. The handsome middle-aged father was presented to me, and stood watching, with softening eyes, the last of his flock, as my friend and hers went forward to the steps of the car, and reaching up, gave her a parting kiss. The

newly made groom, with the true Englishman’s lack of sentiment, was at that moment practically engaged in brushing the rice with, whisk broom from the mink adorned collar of her smart gown.

After the Painting by Richard Esermann.

A grinning porter stood in the door of the car waiting to receive back the brush. On the outside a really beautiful girl, the maid of honor, stood upon the coal-smirched boards in pink satin slippers, a silk and illusion gown, and long gloves of the color of the blush-roses in her hand. Her sunny hair was shining uncovered in the sun, and to the careless observer she seemed to be leaning with reckless abandon, the exquisite fabric of her gown sweeping against the neither new nor elegant exterior of the car. A melancholy touch of romance which completed the scene was a young cadet, known as the handsomest man in town, who stood, apparently forgetful of his surroundings, in the very middle of the track a half dozen yards from the car, and, with shoulders squarely set and forage-cap jauntily perched over his ear, was gazing at the bride with what he fondly believed to be a heartbreaking expression. I hope you may know them better, and if any one tells you, as many did me, that the Canadians detest every American that they do not envy, you will find, as I did, that this prejudice, if it ever existed with the parents, has not descended to the Canadian girl and her brother.

“THE SLEEPING BEAUTY.”

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NotwitHSTANDING the crudities that distinguish the present art development of California, the last quarter of a century has given to this coast a few painters who have justly achieved a cosmopolitan reputation. Harrison, Keith, Hill and Matilda Lotz have assured rank with famous American artists, while foremost in a younger set already prominent is Grace Hudson, the Indian painter. No other artist to-day is so popular with the picture-loving public of San Francisco. A canvas from her brush is sold before it leaves the easel, her life-size Indian babies being particularly in demand.

This enthusiastic home appreciation is more than ordinary evidence of genius in the painter, for the Digger Indian is too familiar an object in the West to be invested with a fictitious value. His picturesque possibilities could only be guessed by an artist, and such a one is Mrs. Hudson. The moment she touches the Indian, she has complete mastery of her subject. She paints not only the facial lineaments and form, but his specific characteristics—his unyielding stolidity and irresponsibility, the utter absence

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of little meannesses incompatible with the large, strongly marked features, nay, even the filth and vermin of his rags are offensively uppermost. “Little Mendocino’ is not the picture of a crying baby, but a living child outraged to tears and abandoned to the hopeless grief of childhood. It is a miracle of homely expression with not a vestige of Digger grime wanting—papoose, blanket and basket being sensibly dirty and illsmelling. “Who could relish his dinner with that painting on the wall opposite?’ exclaimed one delighted critic to his companion. “Or keep from scratching his head 2” was the other’s expressive but somewhat coarse rejoinder. The picture was the sensation of the San Francisco art exhibit in 1893, and for realistic imitation has never been surpassed by Mrs. Hudson’s more recent productions. In her treatment of a subject there is never any violation of common sense, no straining after effect, nor omission of what one has a right to expect. Her figures are drawn boldly, and the expression earnestly stud

“LITTLE MENDOCINo.”

SUNSHINE AND STORMS.

The Metropolitan Magazine, Volume 49
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‘Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow;
Those who would seek for pearls must dive below.'”

“Let me only be sure of the pearls,” said the incorrigible captain, “and down I’ll dive instanter. But I tell you what, brother!” throwing away the remnant of his cigar, and resting his folded arms upon the table: “I tell you what: when a man wants money, the thermometer of his patriotism runs down to the freezing point. The bountiful smiles of Dame Fortune have a magical effect in making a man love his country. But when he owes nothing to her but his poverty—”

“But suppose a different case,” interrupted Sir Carrol, seriously. “Suppose a man’s poverty the effect of his own folly and extravagance.”

“How sir !” said the captain, sharply. “Am I to be called foolish and extravagant, because I have a mind above my fortune? Think of the figure a man cuts in a dragoon regiment, without money. How can a young fellow of any spirit bear to be thought either mean, or as poor as a church mouse ?—almost afraid to put his hand in his pocket, to give a sous to a beggar.”

“A hard case indeed, Jack! I grant it,” said the baronet, in a conciliating tone.

“Well, brother,” continued the captain, starting up, and pacing the room with rapid strides: “it’s all very well to talk of a man’s extravagance, who has nothing but his pay to look to; but trust me, it drives a man to do what he would not, when he sees himself obliged to play Jerry Sneak, running away from society like a dog with his tail between his legs, because he cannot live in it like a gentleman.”

“You should never want the means, while I have them, Jack, of living like a gentleman: that is precisely how I should wish to see you live. But let me ask you,—not impertinently, but as a friend, a brother, an elder brother, — do you, when you have money, spend it like a gentleman? Dont be offended, Jack: but do you live as our father would have wished to see a son of his live?”

Captain Digby sighed, and remained silent.

“Are gaming, drinking, and other vices of this luxurious and licentious age, gentlemanly habits? Can you hope to win such a prize as Fanny Moyle, with no better credentials to her hand than these? Oh, my dear brother! be wise in time: listen to the voice of a true friend. Change but your dangerous habits of life; discard your dissipated associates; and my purse, like my heart, shall be open to all your wants.”

Captain Digby’s heart was touched. The mention of his father had carried him back at once to a time, when he felt that his moral nature was better than it was now. The magic of that name had called up a crowd of early images, still dear to memory; and a host of good resolutions, all too much neglected: and the last words of his brother caused an involuntary tear to start to his eye, as he said in a voice trembling with emotion:

“Ah Carrol! my dear fellow! I know that you are my only real friend: I know that well. I feel that your advice is perfectly correct; and what is more, I intend to try hard whether I cannot follow it.”

“Do that, dear Jack; only do that,” said Sir Carrol, with an affectionate earnestness in his tone and manner; “and you will make me one of the happiest men living. I have no uneasiness, no anxiety in the world at present, thank God! about any thing but yourself. But your prospects and your welfare are very, very dear to me.”

While he was yet speaking, the baronet drew a sheet of paper from the portfolio, which lay upon the table, and commenced writing a few lines. When he had finished, he rose, approached his brother, who was still pacing the room with agitated steps; and taking his hand, placed in it a cheque upon his banker’s, for two hundred pounds, at the same time saying: — ” There, my dear fellow! let that remove your difficulties for the present; and be assured of the real delight I feel, in having it in my power to remove them.”

The captain’s arms rose involuntarily to his brother’s neck, his head drooped and rested upon his shoulder, and the gay, bold, dashing, dragoon officer, sobbed there audibly for the space of half a minute, before he had the power to check himself. When nature had thus had her way, Sir Carrol took his brother’s hand, and after pressing it warmly, drew him a step in the direction of the seat which he had just before occupied, and then quietly resumed his own.

After a brief pause, the baronet said, “you dine with your friend O’Reilly to morrow, don’t you, Jack?”

“Yes, I engaged myself to meet O’Sullivan, on his return to Ireland, and a few other friends. I think you promised him your company, too, Carrol; did you not?”

“Why yes, I did partly promise; but I hardly know what to say about it. Who is likely to be there, have you any idea? I don’t suppose that I know any of them; and I am not fond of forming new acquaintances indiscriminately, as you are aware.”

“Well, but / shall be there, and you know me: and you know O’Reilly, of course, the founder of the feast. He’s a real good fellow: one, I mean, that you yourself think so. And then there will be O’Sullivan, and he is a man after your own heart. I am very anxious that you should know more of him; more particularly as he will be a good deal down at Castle Cormack; and it’s pleasant, you know, to be neighbourly in the country, especially where neighbours are few.”

“You are right, Jack. Independently of the last consideration, Captain O’Sullivan, from all that I have heard of him, is a man that I should like to know. I’ll make up my mind at once, to join the party. If you will look in here on your way to-morrow at five o’clock, I shall be ready to go with you. Do you think Sir Monk Moyle will be there V”

“No, I don’t suppose he will. It’s not exactly the sort of thing for him.”

“How, Jack? If that be so, I’m afraid it’s hardly the sort of thing for me.”

“Oh! that’s quite another question, Carrol. I only mean that the party will be chiefly young men, like ourselves, and almost entirely military. Sir Monk was in the army in his younger days; but he quitted it early, to reside upon his family estate, and he is now quite the old country gentleman. From all that I have heard O’Sullivan say, he would not like to be put out of his regular quiet habits.”

“I have heard a good deal about Sir Monk, myself, from his connection with Castle Cormack, in our own immediate neighbourhood: and report speaks most favourably of him. Many fine traits of character have travelled from Wales to Ireland, by agents and others, who have come over from time to time on matters of business.”

“But you should hear my friend O’Sullivan talk about the old baronet, if you would know more about his real character. I don’t think that O’Sullivan could love and respect him more, if he were his own father.”

“That’s very delightful! were it not for Sir Monk’s own sake, I could almost wish that he had had no Welsh estate, that so he might have been constantly resident at Castle Cormack. Poor Ireland has much more need of such a man, than Wales. The pleasure and advantage of having a neighbour like Sir Monk, though great, are with me a secondary because a purely personal consideration. He would have been carrying out projects for the real and permanent benefit of the tenants and dependants on that estate; and far more efficiently, I dare say, than I have been able to do on mine. What an advantage I should have had, in arranging my plans in conjunction with Sir Monk, and in profiting by his experience.”

“I know that’s your hobby, Carrol; and I wish with all my heart, that every landed proprietor was like you. Poor old Ireland would be a very different country, I believe, from what she now is. I don’t pretend to be much either of a political economist, or a philosopher: that’s out of my line. But I do happen to know that two and two make four: and I think that a great many happy and prosperous portions of a country, only add and multiply them often enough, would go far to make up one happy and prosperous whole. That’s how / spell it out.”

“And you spell uncommonly well, Jack, for a beginner:” rejoined Sir Carrol, his eye sparkling with pleasure. “If your lot had not been cast in the army, I believe you would have become an accomplished scholar in my line. The fact is, that by far the greater part of what is called political economy is a pack of heartless humbug and mystification, calculated only to make wise men laugh, and good men weep. It is founded, like state policy, far too much on what is, or rather what is blunderingly thought to be, expedient, and far too little on what is right or just. The just and the expedient, contrary to the maxims of our modern philosophers and politicians, ought always to be considered as convertible terms. Truth in all her relations and bearings, public as well as private, is a much more simple thing than such sophists as these are disposed to admit: and what is only temporarily expedient, without being permanently right and just, is never true.”

“Ah Carrol! I know that you have studied all these things wall, which, of course, I don’t pretend to: and what is more, you are carrying them out upon your own estate, to a practical result, which seems to have promoted the comfort and happiness of scores of poor families. I was surprised and delighted, at the change I saw, when I went round amongst them, the last time I visited you. But how is it, can you tell me, Carrol, that the Castle Cormack estate belongs to the Misses Movie, and not to my friend O’Sullivan?”

“Oh! it was in this way: did you never hear the story?”

“I have heard some strange romance about it,” said the captain, “but I never could rightly understand it.”

“Well, it was in this way:” continued the baronet. “The castle belonged many years ago, before our time, to an old maiden lady, Miss Cormack, an aunt of the half-blood to Major O’Sullivan, the captain’s father. She took offence, as rich old maiden ladies are apt to do, at something the major said, or did, once, when he was on a visit to her. By the bye, I think he happened to tread upon a pet lap-dog, or a tom-cat, I forget which; and on being rather sharply reproved by the old lady, for his carelessness, he failed to express sufficient contrition. The consequence was, that she sent for her lawyer that very day, and altered her will.”

“Then it seems that in kicking the tom-cat, the major kicked down his own fortune in a moment, without being aware of it.”

“He did indeed: for she left the estate to the major’s sister, who married Mr. Moyle, Sir Monk’s only son; and a legacy of five July, 1847. Vol. Xlix.—No. exev. A A

thousand pounds, which she had originally intended for Mrs. Moyle, was all she bequeathed to the major.”

“That was a hard blow for him, any how.”

“So hard, that it was said he never thoroughly recovered his spirits afterwards. But the strangest part of the story remains to be told. After Miss Cormack died, no will at all could be found, and it was thought the estate would escheat to the crown, for want of heirs, as the half-blood could not inherit. The lawyer declared that he had drawn a new, will up, at the time the old one was destroyed; and at last it was found in a rather remarkable way. An elderly woman, Katty Shea, who lived close to the castle, and had been a good deal employed there during the old lady’s last illness, said that she had dreamed a dream, and she thought she could throw some light upon the mystery of its disappearance. No attention was paid to her at first, till she declared that she had dreamt the same dream a second and a third time. This coming to the major’s ears, he questioned her upon the subject. She told him as much as she thought fit; and then stipulated that if her dream should prove correct, so as to be the means of discovering the will, she should have a certain sum of money, I think it was a hundred pounds.”

“Well, and what was the result? Did she find the will?”

“You shall hear. Katty went to the castle on the following morning, and all its inmates were on the tiptoe of expectation. Accompanied by the major, and one of the men-servants, she went up a winding staircase, along two or three remote galleries, and at last stopped at the door of a room which had been shut up for years. That, she said, was the place she had dreamed of: and as no key could be found, and there was no locksmith at hand, the major put his shoulder to the door, and burst it in. The chamber, on entering it, appeared to be quite empty; but in a sort of dressing room which communicated with it, in a deep recess under the window, they found an antique oak chest; on lifting up the lid of which, a few old useless parchments were discovered, and under these the missing will. The wonder was, how it had come there, as this was a room of which the key had been lost for many years, that part of the building having been long uninhabited, and neither Miss Cormack, nor any one else, was ever known to enter the chamber.”

“It’s an odd kind of story, Carrol: I don’t know what to make of it. The old woman’s dream must have been, of course, all nonsense; and yet, how could she point out the room where the will was? and how the devil did it get there?”

“Ah! that’s the question. Some of the ignorant peasantry said she was a witch, and had conveyed it there herself through the key-hole. But others, more learned in diablerie, alleged that

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The Myrtle, Volume 22
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324 – 328

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[graphic][graphic]
The Chickadee.

Here is a little bird, children.
That lights upon a tree.
And perks his little head, and sings,
t’ Chickadee-dee, chickadee-dee!”

In the very coldest winter

This little bird you’ll see, Hopping round your door, and singing, 11 Chickadee-dee, chickadee-dee I”

In spring he makes a little nest

In a hole in an apple-tree; And to his brooding mate he sings, 11 Chickadee-dee, chickadee-dee V

And I hope that all the boys and girls

This little rhyme who see Will dearly love the bird who sings, 11 Chickadee-dee, chickadee-dee!”

And love the God who made him,—

Who made him gay and free. And taught him how to sing his song, 11 Chickadee-dee, chickadee-dee!”

— Th4 Nurttry.

‘Put Your Hands behind You.”

DEAR little curly-headed girl, a year and a half old, likes to climb up in a chair by my sewing machine whenever I am running it. If there is no chair near by, she will run for one, and push it with all her little “vim” till she gets it to the right place. Then up she climbs, almost as quick as a kitten would; and oh, how her bright eyes sparkle, and her little fingers work in intense longing to seize the thread, or the top of the needle-bar that Hies up and down so fast!

“Put your hands behind you, Lucy,” I say, for 1 don’t want my thread broken; and, much more, 1 do not want those dear little fat fingers bruised in the machine, or pierced through with the needle.

Back go the little hands in a twinkling, and clasp each other behind; and there she stands, looking demure and roguish enough, and watches the machine. I grieve to add, that when it stops her hands sometimes come forward on a sudden, and unthread the needle, or do some oiher mischief. But “Put your hands behind you” sends them back, and I start the machine again. 1 wish older children were always as ready to put their hands behind them when tempted to mischief. It would be a great safeguard.

Put your hands behind you, children, whenever you are looking at pretty things which you know you are not allowed to handle.

Put your hands behind you when other children try to tempt you into miscaief.

Put your hands behind you when you see green apples and pears, which mamma knows are so very unhealthy, and does not allow you to eat.

Put your hands behind you whenever you covet the smallest thing which is not your own. and think you can easily take it and not be found out.

The hands are capable of doing a world of mischief; but clasped behind you they will not be apt to do much. So, whenever you are tempted to wrong-doing, put them behind you, and keep them there.— Well Spring.

‘Little moments make an hour;

Little thoughts a book; Little seeds a tree or flower,

Water drops a brook. Little deeds of faith and love Make a home for you above.”

“Boys, which is the right side of a publichouse for you?” asked a gentleman at a large meeting of children. “The outside, sir,” a thousand voices answered at once.

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For the Myrtle.

The Album.

: ID you ever see a Friend-
ship Album ?’* said Mary
to her cousin Kate.
“No,” said Kate, ” but
1 have heard so much about
those old-fashioned things
I should really like to see
one.”

“Well, I’ll show you my mother’s. She keeps it laid away in a trunk in her room, with the rest of her school-girl mementos. She only lets me take it out and look at it when I’m very good,” said May, laughing.

“Or when you have company,” said Kate.

“Yes,” said Mary, ” I think I might take it to entertain my company with.”

So they went up into Mary’s mother’s room, and pulled the great trunk out of its hiding place in the window-recess. Then they sat down on the floor, schoolgirl fashion, to examine its contents. There in a little corner box was the Friendship Album, done up carefully in its wrappings of tissue paper.

It was bound in red leather covers with a great deal of gilt ornament, a bunch of flowers with a humming bird and butterflies in the middle of one cover, and a Cupid with bow and arrows on the other, and on the back of it in flowery gilt letters, “Sacred to Friendship and Love.”

The leaves were of different colored paper in delicate tints, blue, pink, green, buff, pearl and lavender; and every little way was a steel-engraved picture, with a tissue paper cover for it. The first of these bore the name of Mary’s mother, “Caroline,” and represented a maiden with a great profusion of curls and a little rosebud mouth, sitting in a bower and holding in one hand a pink ribbon that was tied into the collar of her little white lap-dog, while with the other she clasped an open letter to her heart.

“I wonder if my mother ever looked so much like a simpleton as that!” said Mary, while they both laughed gaily at the sentimental maiden.

Then they turned to the verses. They began at the dedication, that itself began

”May pence and happiness be thine,
My ever dear, my Caroline, —’

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and read it all through. Now and then might be heard a laugh as they came to something a little funnier or more sentimental than the rest, though it was all funny to Kate.

“How very original this is!” said Mary,

“When this you see
Remember me”—

it comes on about every other page, and is signed with all sorts of names. Here is some more to it:

“When this you »ee
Remember me,
When this you look upon.
Wrote by my hand
And it will stand
When I am dead and gone.”

That is signed ‘Abigail.’ That was dear old ‘Aunt Nabby.’ She has been ‘dead and gone’ these many years, and here it stands.”

“And this we ‘ look uppon’ as she spells it,” said Kate, smiling, but not without a sense of the sadness of it after all.

“When in distant lauds I roam
Fat away from friends or home,
Perchance beyond the deep blue sea.
Then, dearest friend, remember me.”

“‘Original, by Lucia.’ Do you know who that is, Kate?”

“No, I’m sure I don’t.”

“Well, it’s Dr. Baldwin’s wife, the missionary to India. Isn’t it strange how her ‘perchance’ has come to piss?”

“I should think it was,” said Kate. “It’s just like a story-book. I should like to know who ‘Nellie’ is, that writes this,—’ Keep a warm corner in your heart for—Nellie.’ I should like her, I know.’

“Well, I can tell yon,”said Mary, laughing; “it’s Nell Bradford’s fat mother, that you think is so horrid.”

“That great, fat, wheezy old woman ever talking about little corners of her heart, and signing herself with an ‘ie,'” said Kate. “It’s too funny!” and she laughed at the thought; “but oh, dear! maybe we shall be fat and wheezy as we certainly shall be old some day. I dare say we shall.”

“And some young girl who isn’t born now will laugh over our school girl ‘remains’ just as much.”

“Oh,” said Kate, “let’s burn them all up so they can’t.'”

“Just hear this,” said Kate again.

“When our school days are past and o’er,
And we can go to school no more,
Then how painful will be the thought
If we have spent our time in ought.”

“‘ In ought, poor child,” cried Mary, laughing; “she meant to say in nought, I suppose; but at the very worst, why didn’t she spell it with an a.”

“Oh, pshaw, I could do better than that, myself,” cried Kate.

“Then the thought will be full of pain
If we have spent our time in vain”

“Quite a poet,” said Mary’s mother, who was just coming in. “Perhaps you would like to write in my album yourself, if I’d ask you to.”

“Oh, mother, may we?” cried Mary; “just write something on the last pages ‘ from the next generation?”

“No, indeed,’- said her mother. “You’d make fun of it, just as you would of certain old daguerreotypes if I should show them to you. But they are worth more to me than all your new things, after all, and they are not to be made fun of.”

“Oh, mother,” said Mary, ” why you think so very, very much of all these old things, I can’t see.”

“Of course not,” said her mother; “but you will see, sometime, — all too soon.”

H. A. B.
Pet’s Early Morning Call.

«wo little feet I hear.
Pattering on the floor
Softly;
Two little eyes there are
Peeping through the door
Slyly;

Birds are piping morning song—
Cautiously he moves along,
Lest he wake me.

Two little hands 1 feel.
Resting on the spread

Slightly;
Two little steps he takes.
O’er me—on the bed—

Lightly:
In his snowy white night-gown—
Carelully he lays him down,

Lest he wake me.

Two little lips are soon
Pressing my lips down

Sweetly;
Two little arms are there,
Twisting my neck round

Gently;
Roguishly his eyes meet mine—
Laughingly he says ’tis time

I should wake me.

—Protestant Churchman.

“WilliB, why were you gone so long for the water?” ssked the teacher of a little boy.

“We spilled it, and had to go back and fill the bucket again,” was the prompt reply; but the bright, noble face was a shade less bright, less noble than usual, and the eyes dropped beneath the teacher’s gaze.

The teacher crossed the room and stood by another, who had been Willie’s companion.

“Freddy, were you not gone lor the water longer than was necessary?”

For an instant Freddy’s eyes were fixed on the floor, and his face wore a troubled look. But it was only for an instant—he looked frankly up to his teacher’s face.

“Yes ma’am,” he bravely answered; “we met little Harry Baden and stopped to play with him, and then we spilled the water and had to go back.”

Little friends, which one of them do you think the teacher trusted more fully after that?

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What are You?

Young reader, tt is is a great question. Look at it; think of it. What are you? The question is not, Where are you? or, what of learning, or wealth, or mental ability have you? Nor, in what kind of a house do you live? who are your relations? what kind of clothing do you wear? None of these questions are so importaut as this one, what are you? as you know yourself, and as you are known by him whose eye “is in every place, beholding the evil and the good.”

It is what we have within us that constitutes our real worth. If we have good and obedient hearts, we are greater than all outward things can make us. Some very poor kind of people live in splendid houses, and wear elegant dresses, and make much show in the world. Jesus had “not where to lay his head.” He “was despised and rejected of men.” But hs was accepted and honored of God. Let us seek to be like him; then shall we be able to give the best answer that can be given to the question, what are you?

The Fiji Islands.

Tears ago, we used to read of the Fiji Islands, and some of the hardest stories about their inhabitants, too. They were among the worst of savages, and woe to the poor mariners who were wrecked on their shores and taken prisoners by them. But these islands have realized a change for the better. Christian missionaries have been there and carried the Bible, and the people have become better. One of the latest accounts tells us that the “Fiji Times,” an eight page semi-weekly paper published in the islands that but a short time ago were inhabited only by barbarous savages, records the proceedings of the first sessions of the Supreme Court. It has recently been established, and the business was conducted with perfect decorum, after the forms of the English courts. White judges and Fijians sat together on the bench, and white men and Fijians in the jury box and as officials of the court. The gospel is constantly widening the area of civilization.

Going Halves.

A gentleman gave a little boy a gold dollar. “Now you must keep that,” said he.

“Oh, no/ said the little boy, “I shall halve it first. Maybe I shall keep my half.”

*’Vervr half?*’ said the gentleman; “why it is all yours.”

“No,” answered the child, with a shake of the head, “it is not all mine. I always go halves with God. Half I shall keep, and half I shall give to him.”

“But,” said the gentleman, “God owns the world; he does not want your gift; the silver and the gold and the cattle upon a thousand hills belong to him.”

The little boy look puzzled. Could he answer the gentleman? Presently he said,

“It seems to me that God halves with us, and oughtn’t wc to give him back his part f*

Sunday Schools in Wales.

The following reasons are stated in an English paper to account for the general prosperity of Sunday Schools in Wales:

“They do not depend upon libraries for success. The Sunday Schools of Wales have no libraries.

The Bible is the only text book.

The Bible is studied by all the helps at command.

The Sunday School is made the subject of prayer.

It is made an object of congregational interest.

One-third of ever)’ Lord’s day is devoted to the study ot the Bible,

Every ecclesiastical organization fosteis Sunday Schools.

Every quarter the whole day is given to the school. Questions are proposed, and briefly argued. The people have great regard for the Bible.”

Love for Everybody.

Somebody once said. “A Ilniversalist Christian, of course, ought to love everybody.” Verily so; nothing can be truer than this. And why? Because he believes that God loves all his children, and all of God’s children are his brothers and sisters. “If God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.” This is what a Christian apostle tells us. There is a ereat world all around us to be loved. Although we cannot do for it all that we would, we can give it our love and good will. Our love should be like that of Jesus; he loved not his own familv or nation only, but all of our race. Miss Bremer says. “The human heart is like heaven; the more angels, the more room.’*

A Bad Mark.

“I’ve got a boy for you, sir.”

“Glad of it; who is he?’ asked the master-workman of a large establishment.

The man told the boy’s name and where he lived.

“Don’t want him,” said the master-workman, “he has got a bad mark.”

“A bad mark, sir! What r”

“I meet him every day with a cigar in his mouth; I don’t want smokers.’

The Light Within.

A poor Christian biind man once said, “I never saw till I was blind; nor did I ever know contentment when I had my eyesight, as I do now that I have lost it. I can truly say, though few know how to credit me, that I would on no account change my present situation and circumstances with anything that I ever enjoyed before I was blind.” He had learned the worth of religion after his eyesight was taken away, and realized joy where others would have seen only affliction.

God’s Will and not Man’s.

If all men were left to themselves, but few, if any, would find the way of truth and holiness, and be saved. But our kind Father in heaven does not intend to leave it altogether with his foolish and erring children, whether they will be saved or not. He is to have his will, and not leave them to theirs. And this is his will as the Christian apostle tell us: “God will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.”

Little things—what are little things? Little things are

the beginning of great things; little faults are simply young faults—baby faults. By and by, if we let them go on, they will grow into big giant faults, and most likely something worse, very troublesome to everybody connected with them.

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Life of the Saviour.

LESSON CXXIII.

EESUERECTION OP CHEIST.— FAET II.

“They would not believe, though one rose from the dead.’*

Scripture. — Matt, xxviii. 8-15; Mark xvi. 8-13; Luke xxiv. 9-35.

Question. — As the women went to tell the disciples of the strange things at the tomb, who met them?

Answer. — Matt, xxviii. 9.

Q. — What act of respect and fear did they give to him?

A. — Matt, xxviii. 9.

Q. — What did Jesus say to them?

A. — Matt, xxviii. 10.

Q. — When they told these things to the disciples, how did they regard them? A. — Luke xxiv. 11.

Q. — After the women left the sepulchre, what did some of the soldiers who were placed to guard the tomb, do?

A. — Matt, xxviii. 11.

Q. — What did they request the soldiers to do? A. — Matt, xxviii. 13.

Q. — What did they give them, to induce the soldiers to make such a report? A. — Matt, xxviii. 12.

Q. — When the soldiers reminded them that they were responsible by their lives, for the safe keeping of the tomb, what did the priests and scribes assure them?

A. — Matt, xxviii. 14.

Q. — Did the soldiers take the money and make a false report?

A. — Matt, xxviii. 15.

Q. — To what place did two of the disciples go, on the day of the resurrection? A. — Luke xxiv. 13.

Q. — Who joined them and walked with them? A. — Luke xxiv. 15.

Note. These two disciples seem to have been earnestly dis

cussing the scripture doctrine of the Christ and the character of Jesus. It seemed to them that the scriptures uught that the Christ would never die. It had seemed clear to them also that Jesus was the Christ. But he was dead And it would ac«m that they had come to the conclusion that Jesus was not the Christ because he died, which to them appeared contrary to the Scriptures. Yet they were endeavoring to recencile these two things. It will be noticed that, in Luke xxiv. 19, they are careful not to call Jesus the Christ, but only a prophet. They believed that the great work of the Christ was to free the Jews from the dominion of all foreign powers, and their disappointment comes out in Luke xxiv. ai.

Q. — Were they still doubting Christ’s resurrection? A. — Luke xxiv. 25, 26. Q. — What did Jesus then do? A. — Luke xxiv. 27. Q. — Where did Jesus stop that night? A. — Luke xxiv. 29.

Q. — By what act of Jesus did they recognise him?

A. — Luke xxiv. 30, 31.

Doesn’t feel so American

I often suspected the real appeal Archie comics have in India (or Disney comics in Europe) has to do with romantic notions of Americana. If that’s really the case, this explains why some French philosophers associate Disney and America with hyperreality or artifice so convincing as to pass off as reality or the truth. (Indians might feel the same way with Archie or at least close to it.)

I mean Archie Andrews is in some regards closer to romantic ideas of All-American youth than any superhero ever would. Admittedly a good number of things as found in American media like popular kids and youth subcultures seem alien to an Asian (and African standpoint) in the sense of the latter being often stuck with school uniforms* until university arrives.

Where cliques arrive too. In the case with Peanuts, Garfield and Calvin and Hobbes, they’re generic enough to easily relate to them and forget that they’re American. Archie doesn’t elicit that same feeling whenever I think about it. (A European would’ve felt the same way with Disney.)

Comes to think of it, there’s a reason why superhero comics don’t resonate well either. Maybe not entirely or consistently so but there are ways superhero comics do defy romantic notions of America. DC Comics have cities so generic they could easily be anywhere outside of America.

Marvel’s got actual American cities but it’s so detached from romantic Americana that not even Captain America helps. There’s a reason why Canadians don’t consider Wolverine to be Canadian. He’s even caught dead dressing like a cowboy (an All-American symbol) and wasn’t even supposed to be Canadian.

Maybe not always exactly or consistently the case as Riverdale’s a fictious American town and Japan does seem to like superheroes a lot (but twisted beyond recognition when it came to its own take on Spider-Man and the like). I still get the impression that superhero comics don’t resonate much with Indian or European romantic notions of Americana well.

If because it gets too far removed from it that it doesn’t resonate well with them much to begin with save for some exceptions.

*For some reason, that’s why I relate to Jenny McCarthy well as she also got sent to a terrible religious school.

Yearning for a better America

Like I said in another post, Canada’s the America some wish it were. Admittedly I’m very in the dark about Canada and I sometimes assume some Canadian things to be American. Canada’s an uncanny valley America in the like manner, Ireland’s an uncanny valley Britain. They are but at the same time not quite. Let’s not forget that the Conservative/Republican movement’s a very vocal minority.

Even if a substantial number of Americans are Democratic (31%), the Republican party’s still a formidable demographic. Despite its numbers dropping, it’s got a big enough say especially during the Bush years where Fox News was used as a Conservative soapbox. Given this is the very same party that got Trump elected, they’re still going to exert power over America like they did in the 2000s.

Admittedly moving to Europe wouldn’t be any better for other reasons and I’d argue that dog poisoning and dogs being hunted by hunters are big deals in Central Europe and Italy. (Somebody like Retrieverman would probably be as disappointed as I’m about with others when it comes to idealisation and romanticism.)

Not to mention, a good number of Italians would prefer to move elsewhere and don’t trust Americans for wanting to move to Italy, given that country’s woes. Europe’s not without its own Conservatives and so is Canada. But there’s always a desire to move to greener pastures and a yearning for something idealised.