 Preface of Sunshine Sketches I know no way in which a writer may more fittingly introduce his work to the public than by giving a brief account of who and what he is. By this means, some of the blame for what he has done is very properly shifted to the extenuating circumstances of his life. I was born at Swanmoore, Hans, England, on December 30th, 1869. I am not aware that there was any particular conjunction of the planets at the time, but should think it extremely likely. My parents migrated to Canada in 1876, and I decided to go with them. My father took up a farm near Lake Simcoe in Ontario. This was during the hard times of Canadian farming, and my father was just able by great diligence to pay the hired men, and in years of plenty, to raise enough grain to have seed for the next year's crop without buying any. By this process my brothers and I were inevitably driven off the land, and have become professors, businessmen, and engineers, instead of being able to grow up as farm labourers. Yet I saw enough of farming to speak exuberantly in political addresses of the joy of early rising, and the deep sleep, both of body and intellect, that is induced by honest manual toil. I was educated at Upper Canada College, Toronto, of which I was head boy in 1887. From there I went to the University of Toronto, where I graduated in 1891. At the University I spent my entire time in the acquisition of languages, living, dead, and half dead, and knew nothing of the outside world. In this diligent pursuit of words I spent about sixteen hours of each day. Very soon after graduation I had forgotten the languages, and found myself intellectually bankrupt. In other words I was what is called a distinguished graduate, and as such I took to school teaching as the only trade I could find that need neither experience nor intellect. I spent my time from 1891 to 1899 on the staff of Upper Canada College, an experience which has left me with a profound sympathy for the many gifted and brilliant men who are compelled to spend their lives in the most dreary, the most thankless and the worst paid profession in the world. I have noted that of my pupils, those who seem the laziest and the least enamoured of books are now rising to eminence at the bar, in business and in public life. The really promising boys who took all the prizes are now able with difficulty to earn the wages of a clerk in a summer hotel, or a deck hand on a canal boat. In 1899 I gave up school teaching and discussed, borrowing enough money to live upon for a few months, and went to the University of Chicago to study economics and political science. I was soon appointed to a fellowship in political economy, and by means of this and some temporary employment by McGill University I survived until I took the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 1903. The meaning of this degree is that the recipient of instruction is examined for the last time in his life and is pronounced completely full. After this no new ideas can be imparted to him. From this time and since my marriage which had occurred at this period I have belonged to the staff of McGill University, first as lecturer in political science, and later as head of the Department of Economics and Political Science. As this position is one of the prizes of my profession I am able to regard myself as singularly fortunate. The emolument is so high as to place me distinctly above the policemen, postmen, streetcar conductors, and other salaried officials of the neighborhood, while I am able to mix with the poorer of the businessmen of the city on terms of something like equality. In point of leisure I enjoy more in the four corners of a single year than a businessman knows in his whole life. I thus have what the businessman can never enjoy, an ability to think, and what is still better to stop thinking altogether for months at a time. I have written a number of things in connection with my college life, a book on political science, and many essays, magazine articles, and so on. I belong to the Political Science Association of America, to the Royal Colonial Institute, and to the Church of England. These things surely are a proof of respectability. I have had some small connection with politics and public life. A few years ago I went all round the British Empire delivering addresses on imperial organization. When I state that these lectures were followed almost immediately by the Union of South Africa, the Banana Riots in Trinidad, and the Turco-Italian War, I think the reader can form some idea of their importance. In Canada I belong to the Conservative Party, but as yet I have failed entirely in Canadian politics, never having received a contract to build a bridge, or make a wharf, nor to construct even the smallest section of the Transcontinental Railway. This, however, is a form of national ingratitude to which one becomes accustomed in this dominion. Apart from my college work I have written two books, one called Literary Lapses and the other Nonsense Novels. Each of these is published by John Lane, London and New York, and either of them can be obtained, absurd though it sounds, for the mere sum of three shillings and sixpence. Any reader of this preface, for example, ridiculous though it appears, could walk into a bookstore and buy both of these books for seven shillings. Yet these works are of so humorous a character that for many years it was found impossible to print them. The compositors fell back from their tasks suffocated with laughter and gasping for air. Nothing but the intervention of the linotype machine, or rather of the kind of men who operate it, made it possible to print these books. Even now people have to be very careful in circulating them, and the books should never be put into the hands of persons not in robust health. Many of my friends are under the impression that I write these humorous nothings in idle moments when the wearied brain is unable to perform the serious labours of the economist. My own experience is exactly the other way. The writing of solid instructive stuff fortified by facts and figures is easy enough. There is no trouble in writing a scientific treatise on the folklore of central China, or a statistical enquiry into the declining population of Prince Edward Island. But to write something out of one's own mind worth reading for its own sake is an arduous contrivance only to be achieved in fortunate moments, few and far between. Personally I would sooner have written Alice in Wonderland than the whole encyclopedia Britannica. In regard to the present work I must disclaim at once all intentions of trying to do anything so ridiculously easy as writing about a real place in real people. Mariposa is not a real town. On the contrary it is about seventy or eighty of them. You may find them all the way from Lake Superior to the Sea, with the same square streets and the same maple trees, and the same churches and hotels, and everywhere the sunshine of the land of hope. Similarly the Reverend Mr. Drone is not one person but about eight or ten. To make him I clapped the gators of one ecclesiastic round the legs of another, added the sermons of a third and the character of a fourth, and so let him start on his way in the book to pick up such individual attributes as he might find for himself. Mullins and Bagshawn judge pepperly in the rest are, it is true, personal friends of mine. But I have known them in such a variety of forms, with such alternations of tall and short, dark and fair, that individually I should have much to do to know them. Mr. Pupkin is found wherever a Canadian bank opens a branch in a county town and needs a teller. As for Mr. Smith, with his 280 pounds, his horse voice, his loud checksuit, his diamonds, the roughness of his address, and the goodness of his heart, all of this is known by everybody to be a necessary and universal adjunct to the hotel business. The inspiration of the book, a land of hope and sunshine where little town spread their square streets and their trim maple trees beside placid lakes almost within echo of the primeval forest, is large enough. If it fails in its portrayal of the scenes in the country that it depicts, the fault lies rather with an art that is deficient than in an affection that is wanting. Stephen Leacock, McGill University, June 1912. End of Preface. Chapter 1 The Hostelry of Mr. Smith I don't know whether you know Mariposa. If not, it is of no consequence for if you know Canada at all, you are probably well acquainted with a dozen towns just like it. There it lies in the sunlight, sloping up from the little lake that spreads out at the foot of the hillside on which the town is built. There is a wharf beside the lake and lying alongside of it a steamer that is tied to the wharf with two ropes of about the same size as they use on the Lusitania. The steamer goes nowhere in particular for the lake is landlocked and there is no navigation for the Mariposa bell except to run trips on the 1st of July in the Queen's birthday and to take excursions of the Knights of Pythias and the Sons of Temperance to and from the local option townships. In point of geography, the lake is called Lake Wissanadi and the river running out of it, the Ossawippy, just as the main street of Mariposa is called Missinaba Street and the county Missinaba County. But these names do not really matter. Nobody uses them. People simply speak of the lake and the river and the main street much in the same way as they always call the continental hotel Pete Robinson's and the pharmaceutical hall Elliot's Drugstore. But I suppose this is just the same in everyone else's town as in mine so I need laying no stress on it. The town I say has one broad street that runs up from the lake commonly called the main street. There is no doubt about its width. When Mariposa was laid out there was none of that shortsightedness which is seen in the cramped dimensions of Wall Street and Piccadilly. Missinaba Street is so wide that if you were to roll Jeff Thorpe's barbershop over on its face it wouldn't reach halfway across. Up and down the main street are telegraph poles of cedar of colossal thickness standing at a variety of angles and carrying rather more wires than are commonly seen in a transatlantic cable station. On the main street itself are a number of buildings of extraordinary importance. Smith's Hotel and the Continental and the Mariposa House and the two banks, the Commercial and the Exchange, to say nothing of McCarthy's block erected in 1878 and Glover's Hardware Store with the Oddfellows Hall above it. Then on the cross street that intersects Missinaba Street at the main corner there's the Post Office and the Fire Hall and the Young Men's Christian Association and the Office of the Mariposa News Packet. In fact to the eye of discernment a perfect jostle of public institutions comparable only to Threadneedle Street or lower Broadway. On all the side streets there are maple trees and broad sidewalks, trim gardens with upright calla lilies, houses with verandas which are here and there being replaced by residences with piazzas. To the careless eye the scene on the main street of a summer afternoon is one of deep and unbroken peace. The empty street sleeps in the sunshine. There is a horse and buggy tied to the hitching post in front of Glover's Hardware Store. There is usually and commonly the burly figure of Mr. Smith, proprietor of Smith's Hotel, standing in his checkered waistcoat on the steps of his hostelry and perhaps further up the street lawyer McCartney going for his afternoon mail or the Reverend Mr. Drone, the rural dean of the Church of England Church, going home to get his fishing rod after a mother's auxiliary meeting. But this quiet is mere appearance. In reality, and to those who know it, the place is a perfect hive of activity. While at Netley's Butcher Shop, established in 1882, there are no less than four men working on the sausage machines in the basement. At the news packet office there are as many more job printing. There is a long-distance telephone with four distracting girls on high stools wearing steel caps and talking incessantly. In the offices in McCarthy's block are dentists and lawyers with their coats off, ready to work at any moment. And from the big planning factory down beside the lake where the railroad siding is, you may hear all through the hours of the summer afternoon the long-drawn music of the running saw. Busy? Well, I should think so. Ask any of its inhabitants if Mariposa isn't a busy, hustling, thriving town. Ask Mullins, the manager of the exchange bank, who comes hustling over to his office from the Mariposa house every day at 10.30, and has scarcely time all morning to go out and take a drink with the manager of the commercial, or ask, well, for the matter of that, ask any of them if they ever knew a more Russian go-ahead town than Mariposa. Of course, if you come to the place fresh from New York, you are deceived. Your standard of vision is all astray. You do think the place is quiet. You do imagine that Mr. Smith is asleep merely because he closes his eyes as he stands. But live in Mariposa for six months or a year and then you will begin to understand it better. The buildings get higher and higher. The Mariposa house grows more and more luxurious. McCarthy's block towers to the sky. The buses roar and hum to the station. The trains shriek. The traffic multiplies. The people move faster and faster. A dense crowd swirls to and fro in the post office in the 5 and 10 cent store. And amusements. Well now. La Crosse. Baseball. Excursions. Dances. The fireman's ball every winter in the Catholic picnic every summer. And music. The town banned in the park every Wednesday evening. And the oddfellows brass band on the street every other Friday. The Mariposa quartet. The Salvation Army. Why after a few months residents you begin to realize that the place is a mere mad round of gaiety. In point of population if one must come down to figures the Canadian census puts the numbers every time at something around 5,000. But it is very generally understood in Mariposa that the census is largely the outcome of malicious jealousy. It is usual that after the census the editor of the Mariposa news packet makes a careful re-estimate based on the data of relative non-payment of subscriptions and brings the population up to 6,000. After that the Mariposa Times Herald makes an estimate that runs the figure up to 6,500. Then Mr. Gingham the undertaker who collects the vital statistics for the provincial government makes an estimate from the number of what he calls the demise as compared with the less interesting persons who are still alive and brings the population to 7,000. After that somebody else works it out that it's 7,500. Then the man behind the bar of the Mariposa house offers to bet the whole room that there are 9,000 people in Mariposa. That settles it and the population is well on the way to 10,000 when down swoops the federal census taker on his next round and the town has to begin all over again. Still it is a thriving town and there is no doubt of it. Even the transcontinental railways as any townsmen will tell you run through Mariposa. It is true that the trains mostly go through at night and don't stop. But in the wakeful silence of the summer night you may hear the long whistle of the through train for the west as it tears through Mariposa, rattling over the switches and past the semaphores and ending in a long sullen roar as it takes the trestle bridge over the Ossah Whippy. Or better still on a winter evening about eight o'clock you will see the long row of the Pullmans and diners of the night express going north to the mining country, the windows flashing with brilliant light and within them a vista of cut glass and snow white table linen, smiling negroes and millionaires with napkins at their chins whirling past in the driving snowstorm. I can tell you the people of Mariposa are proud of the trains even if they don't stop. The joy of being on the main line lifts the Mariposa people above the level of their neighbors in such places as Tecumseh and Nichols Corners into the cosmopolitan atmosphere of through traffic and the larger life. Of course they have their own train too, the Mariposa local made up right there in the station yard and running south to the city a hundred miles away. That of course is a real train with a box stove on end in the passenger car fed with cordwood upside down and with 17 flat cars of pine lumber set between the passenger car and the locomotive so as to give the train its full impact when shunting. Outside of Mariposa there are farms that begin well but get thinner and meaner as you go on and end sooner or later in bush and swamp in the rock of the north country and beyond that again as the background of it all though it's far away you are somehow aware of the great pine woods of the lumber country reaching endlessly into the north. Not that the little town is always gay or always bright in the sunshine there never was such a place for changing its character with the season dark enough in dull it seems of a winter night the wooden sidewalks creaking with the frost and the lights burning dim behind the shop windows in olden times the lights were coal oil lamps now of course they are or are supposed to be electricity brought from the powerhouse on the lower asa wippy 19 miles away but somehow though it starts off as electricity from the asa wippy rapids by the time it gets to Mariposa and filters into the little bulbs behind the frosty windows of the shops it has turned into coal oil again as yellow and bleared as ever after the winter the snow melts and the ice goes out of the lake the sun shines high and the shantyman come down from the lumber woods and lie round drunk on the sidewalk outside of smith's hotel in that springtime Mariposa is then a fierce dangerous lumber town calculated to terrorize the soul of a newcomer who does not understand that this is also only an appearance and that presently the rough-looking shantyman will change their clothes and turn back again into farmers then the sun shines warmer and the maple trees come out and lawyer mccartney puts on his tennis trousers and that's summertime the little town changes to a sort of summer resort there are visitors up from the city every one of the seven cottages along the lake is full the Mariposa bell churns the waters of the wisinadian to foam as she sails out from the wharf in a cloud of flags the band playing and the daughters and sisters of the knights of pithias dancing gaily on the deck that changes too the days shorten the visitors disappear the golden rod beside the meadow droops and withers on its stem the maples blaze in glory and die the evening closes dark and chill and in the gloom of the main corner of Mariposa the Salvation Army around a napfalant lift up the confession of their sins and that is autumn thus the year runs its round moving and changing in Mariposa much as it does in other places if then you feel that you know the town well enough to be admitted into the inner life and movement of it walk down this june afternoon halfway down the main street or if you like halfway up from the wharf to where mr smith is standing at the door of his hostelry you will feel as you draw near that it is no ordinary man that you approach it is not alone the huge bulk of mr smith 280 pounds is tested on netley scales it is not merely his costume though the checkered waistcoat of dark blue with a flower pattern forms with his shepherd's plaid trousers his gray spats and patent leather boots a color scheme of no mean order nor is it merely mr smith's finely mottled face the face no doubt is a notable one solemn inexpressible unreadable the face of the heaven born hotel keeper it is more than that it is the strange dominating personality of the man that somehow holds you captive i know nothing in history to compare with the position of mr smith among those who drink over his bar except though in a lesser degree the relation of the emperor napoleon to the imperial guard when you meet mr smith first you think he looks like an overdressed pirate then you begin to think him a character you wonder at his enormous bulk then the utter hopelessness of knowing what smith is thinking by merely looking at his features gets on your mind and makes the Mona Lisa seem an open book and the ordinary human countenance is superficial as a puddle in the sunlight after you have had a drink in mr smith's bar and he has called you by your christian name you realize that you were dealing with one of the greatest minds in the hotel business take for instance the big sign that sticks out into the street above mr smith's head as he stands what is on it joshua smith proprietor nothing more and yet the thing was a flash of genius other men who have had the hotel before mr smith had called it by such feeble names as the royal hotel and the queens and the alexandria every one of them failed when mr smith took over the hotel he simply put up the sign with joshua smith proprietor and then stood underneath in the sunshine as a living proof that a man who weighs nearly 300 pounds is the natural king of the hotel business but on this particular afternoon in spite of the sunshine and deep peace there was something as near to profound concern and anxiety as the features of mr smith were ever known to express the moment was indeed an anxious one mr smith was awaiting a telegram from his legal advisor who at that day journeyed to the county town to represent the proprietor's interest before the assembled license commissioners if you know anything of the hotel business at all you will understand that is beside the decisions of the licensed commissioners of misanomic county the opinions of the lords of the privy council are mere trifles the matter in question was very grave the mariposa court had just fined mr smith for the second time for selling liquors after hours the commissioners therefore were entitled to cancel the license mr smith knew his fault and acknowledged it he had broken the law how he had come to do so it passed his imagination to recall crime always seems impossible in retrospect by what sheer madness of the moment could he have shut up the bar on the night in question and shut judge pepperly the district judge in misanomic county outside of it the more so in as much as the closing up of the bar under the rigid license law of the province was a matter that the proprietor never trusted to any hands but his own punctually every night at 11 o'clock mr smith strolled from the desk of the rotunda to the door of the bar if it seemed properly full of people and all was bright and cheerful then he closed it if not he kept it open a few minutes longer till he had enough people inside to warrant closing but never never unless he was assured that pepperly the judge of the court and mccartney the prosecuting attorney were both safely in the bar or the bar parlor did the proprietor venture to close up yet on this fatal night pepperly and mccartney had been shut out actually left on the street without a drink and compelled to hammer and beat at the street door of the bar to gain admittance this was the kind of thing not to be tolerated either a hotel must be run decently or quit an information was laid next day and mr smith convicted in four minutes his lawyers practically refusing to plead the mariposa court when the presiding judge was cold sober and it had the force of public opinion behind it was a terrible engine of retributive justice so no wonder that mr smith awaited with anxiety the message of his legal advisor he looked alternately up the street and down it again hauled out his watch from the depths of his embroidered pocket and examined the hour hand and the minute hand and the second hand with frowning scrutiny then wearily and as one mindful at a hotel man is ever the servant of the public he turned back into the hotel billy he said to the desk clerk if a wire comes bring it into the bar parlor the voice of mr smith is of a deep guttural such as plank on or edward dorreski might have obtained had they had the advantages of the hotel business and with that mr smith as was his custom in off moments joined his guests in the back room his appearance to the untrained eye was merely that of an extremely stout hotel keeper walking from the rotunda to the back bar in reality mr smith was on the eve of one of the most brilliant and daring strokes ever affected in the history of licensed liquor when i say that it was out of the agitation of the situation that smith's ladies and gents cafe originated anybody who knows mariposa will understand the magnitude of the moment mr smith then moved slowly from the doorway of the hotel through the rotunda or more simply the front room with the desk in the cigar case in it and so to the bar and then to the little room or back bar behind it in this room as i have said the brightest minds of mariposa might commonly be found in the quieter part of a summer afternoon today there was a group of four who looked up as mr smith entered somewhat sympathetically and evidently aware of the perplexities of the moment henry mollins and george duff the two bank managers were both present mollins is a rather short rather round smooth shaven man of less than 40 wearing one of those round banking suits of pepper and salt with a round banking hat of hard straw and with the kind of gold tie pin and heavy watch chain and seals necessary to inspire confidence in matters of foreign exchange duff is just as round and just as short and equally smoothly shaven while his seals and straw hat are calculated to prove that the commercial is just as sound as the exchange from the technical point of view of the banking business neither of them had any objection to being in smith's hotel or to taking a drink as long as the other was present this of course was one of the cardinal principles of mariposa banking then there was mr distan the high school teacher commonly known as the one who drank none of the other teachers ever entered a hotel unless accompanied by a lady or protected by a child but as mr distan was known to drink beer on occasions and to go in and out of the mariposa house and smith's hotel he was looked upon as a man whose life was a mere wreck whenever the school board raised the salaries of the other teachers fifty or sixty dollars per annum at one lift it was well understood that public morality wouldn't permit of an increase for mr distan still more noticeable perhaps was the quiet sallow looking man dressed in black with black gloves and with black silk hat heavily crept and placed hollow side up on a chair this was mr golgatha gingham the undertaker of mariposa and his dress was due to the fact that he had just come from what he called an interment mr gingham had the true spirit of his profession and such words as funeral or coffin or hearse never passed his lips he spoke always of interments of caskets and coaches using terms that were calculated rather to bring out the majesty and sublimity of death than to parade its horrors to be present at the hotel was in accord with mr gingham's general conception of his business no man had ever grasped the true principles of undertaking more thoroughly than mr gingham i have often heard him explain that to associate with the living uninteresting though they appear is the only way to secure the custom of the dead get to know people really well while they are alive said mr gingham be friends with them close friends and then when they die you don't need to worry you'll get the order every time so naturally is the moment was one of sympathy it was mr gingham who spoke first what'll you do josh he said if the commissioners go against you boys said mr smith i don't rightly know if i have to quit the next move is to the city but i don't reckon that i'll have to quit i've got an idea that i think's good every time could you run a hotel in the city asked mollins i could said mr smith i'll tell you there's big things doing in the hotel business right now big chances if you go into it right hotels in the city is branching out while you take the dining room side of it continued mr smith looking around at the group there's thousands in it the old plans all gone folks won't eat now in an ordinary dining room with a high ceiling and windows you have to get them down underground in a room with no windows and lots of sawdust round and waiters that can't speak english i seen them places last time i was in the city they call them rats coolers and for light meals they want a calf a real french calf and for folks that come in late another place that they call a girl room that don't shut up at all if i go into the city that's the kind of place i mean to run what's yours gall it's on the house and it was just at the moment when mr smith said this that billy the desk clerk entered the room with the telegram in his hand but stop it is impossible for you to understand the anxiety with which mr smith and his associates awaited the news from the commissioners without first realizing the astounding progress of mr smith in the three past years and the pinnacle of public eminence to which he had attained mr smith had come down from the lumber country of the spanish river where the divide is toward the hudson bay back north as they called it mariposa he had been it was said a cook in the lumber shanties to this day mr smith can fry an egg on both sides with a lightness of touch that is the despair of his own help after that he had run a river driver's boarding house after that he had taken a food contract for a gang of railroad navies on the transcontinental after that of course the whole world was open to him he came down to mariposa and bought out the inside of what had been the royal hotel those who are educated understand that by the inside of a hotel is meant everything except the four outer walls of it the fittings the furniture the bar billy the desk clerk the three dining room girls and above all the license granted by king edward the seventh and ratified further by king george for the sale of intoxicating liquors till then the royal had been a mere nothing as smith's hotel it broke into a blaze of effulgence from the first mr smith as a proprietor was a wild rapturous success he had all the qualifications he weighed 280 pounds he could haul two drunken men out of the bar each by the scruff of the neck without the faintest anger or excitement he carried money enough in his trousers pockets to start a bank and spent it on anything bedded on anything and gave it away in handfuls he was never drunk and as a point of chivalry to his customers never quite sober anybody was free of the hotel who cared to come in anybody who didn't like it could go out drinks of all kinds cost five cents or six for a quarter meals and beds were practically free any persons foolish enough to go to the desk and pay for them mr smith charged according to the expression of their faces at first the loafers and the shanty men settled down on the place in a shower but that was not the trade that mr smith wanted he knew how to get rid of them an army of char woman turned into the hotel scrubbed it from top to bottom a vacuum cleaner the first scene in mariposa hissed and screamed in the corridors 40 brass beds were imported from the city not of course for the guests to sleep in but to keep them out a bartender with a starched coat and wicker sleeves was put behind the bar the loafers were put out of business the place had become too high toned for them to get the high class trade mr smith set himself to dress the part he wore wide cut coats of filmy surge light as gossamer checkered waistcoats with a pattern for every day in the week fedora hats light as autumn leaves foreign hand ties of saffron and myrtle green with a diamond pin the size of a hazelnut on his fingers there were as many gems as would grace a native prince of india across his waistcoat lay a gold watch chain and huge square links and in his pocket a gold watch that weighed a pound and a half and marked minutes seconds and quarter seconds just to look at josh smith's watch brought at least 10 men to the bar every evening every morning mr smith was shaved by jefferson thork across the way all that art could do all that florida water could affect was lavished on his person mr smith became a local character mariposa was at his feet all the reputable businessmen drank at mr smith's bar and in the little parlor behind it you might find at any time a group of the brightest intellects in the town not but what there was opposition at first the clergy for example who accepted the mariposa house and the continental as a necessary and useful evil looked to scans at the blazing lights and surging crowd of mr smith saloon they preached against him when the reverend dean drone led off with a sermon on the text lord be merciful even unto this publican matthew six it was generally understood as an invitation to strike mr smith dead in the same way the sermon at the presbyterian church the week after was on the text low what now do with the birum in the land of melchizedek kings eight and nine and it was perfectly plain that what was meant was low what is josh smith doing in mariposa but this opposition had been countered by a wide and sagacious philanthropy i think mr smith first got the idea of that on the night when the steam merry-go-round came to mariposa just below the hostelry on an empty lot it world and whistled steaming forth its tunes on the summer evening while the children crowded round it in hundreds down the street strolled mr smith wearing a soft fedora to indicate that it was evening what are you charged for a ride boss said mr smith two for a nickel said the man take that said mr smith handing out a ten dollar bill from a roll of money and ride the little folks free all evening that night the merry-go-round world madly till after midnight freighted to capacity with mariposa children while up in smith's hotel parents friends and admirers as the news spread were standing four deep along the bar they sold 40 dollars worth of lager alone that night and mr smith learned if he had not already suspected it the blessedness of giving the uses of philanthropy went further mr smith subscribed to everything joined everything gave to everything he became an odd fellow a forester a night of pithius and a workman he gave a hundred dollars to the mariposa hospital and a hundred dollars to the young men's christian association he subscribed to the ball club the lacrosse club the curling club to anything in fact and especially to all those things which needed premises to meet in and grew thirsty in their discussions as a consequence the odd fellows held their annual banquet at smith's hotel and the oyster supper of the nights of pithius was celebrated in mr smith's dining room even more effective perhaps were mr smith's secret benefactions the kind of giving done by stealth of which not a soul in town knew anything often for a week after it was done it was in this way that mr smith put the new font in dean drone's church and handed over a hundred dollars to judge pepperly for the unrestrained use of the conservative party so it came about that little by little the antagonism had died down smith's hotel became an accepted institution in mariposa even the temperance people were proud of mr smith as a sort of character who added distinction to the town there were moments in the earlier quiet of the morning when dean drone would go so far as to step into the retunda and collect a subscription as for the salvation army they ran in and out all the time unreproved on only one point difficulty still remained that was the closing of the bar mr smith could never bring his mind to it not as a matter of profit but as a point of honor it was too much for him to feel that judge pepperly might be out on the sidewalk thirsty at midnight that the night hands of the times herald on wednesday night might be compelled to go home dry on this point mr smith's moral code was simplicity itself do what is right and take the consequences so the bar stayed open every town i suppose has its meaner spirits in every genial bosom some snake is warmed or as mr smith put it to golgoth a gingham there are some fellers even in this town skunks enough to inform at first the mariposa court quashed all indictments the presiding judge with his spectacles on and a pile of books in front of him threatened the informer with the penitentiary the whole bar of mariposa was with mr smith but by sheer iteration the informations had proved successful judge pepperly learned that mr smith had subscribed a hundred dollars for the liberal party and it once find him for keeping open after hours that made one conviction on the top of this had come the untoward incident just mentioned and that made two beyond that was the deluge this then was the exact situation when billy the desk clerk entered the back bar with the telegram in his hand here's your wire sir he said what does it say said mr smith he always dealt with written documents with a fine air of detachment i don't suppose there were 10 people in mariposa who knew that mr smith couldn't read billy opened the message and read commissioners give you three months to close down let me read it said mr smith that's right three months to close down there was dead silence when the message was read everybody waited for mr smith to speak mr gingham instinctively assumed the professional air of hopeless melancholy as it was afterwards recorded mr smith stood and studied with the tray in his hand for at least four minutes then he spoke boys he said i'll be darned if i closed down till i'm ready to close down i've got an id you wait and i'll show you and beyond that not another word did mr smith say on the subject but within 48 hours the whole town knew that something was doing the hotel swarmed with carpenters bricklayers and painters there was an architect up from the city with a bundle of blueprints in his hand there was an engineer taking the street level with a theodolite and a gang of navies with shovels digging like fury as if to dig out the back foundations of the hotel that'll fool him said mr smith half the town was gathered around the hotel crazy with excitement but not a word would the proprietor say great dray loads of square timber and two by eight pine joist kept arriving from the planing mill there was a pile of match spruce 16 feet high lying by the sidewalk then the excavation deepened and the dirt flew and the beams went up and the joists across and all the day from dawn till dusk the hammers of the carpenters clattered away working overtime at time and a half it don't matter what it costs said mr smith get it done rapidly the structure took form it extended down the side street joining the hotel at a right angle spacious and graceful it looked as it reared its uprights into the air already you could see the place where the row of windows was to come a veritable palace of glass it must be so wide and commodious worthy below it you could see the basement shaping itself with a low ceiling like a vault and big beams running across dressed smooth and ready for staining already in the street there were seven crates of red and white awning and even then nobody knew what it was and it was not till the 17th day that mr smith in the privacy of the back bar broke the silence and explained i tell you boys he says it's a calf like what they have in the city a ladies and gents calf and that underneath what's yours mr mullins is a rat's cooler and when i get her started i'll hire a french chief to do the cooking and for the winter i will put in a girl room like what they have in the city hotels and i'd like to see who's going to close her up then within two more weeks the plan was in operation not only was the calf built but the very hotel was transformed awnings had broken out in a red and white cloud upon its face its every window carried a box of hanging plants and above in glory floated the union jack the very stationary was changed the place was now smith's summer pavilion it was advertised in the city is smith's tourist emporium and smith's northern health resort mr smith got the editor of the times herald to write up a circular all about ozone and the mariposa pine woods with illustrations of the maskinange pisus mariposa of lake wisanati the saturday after that circular hit the city in july there were men with fishing rods and landing nets pouring in on every train almost too fast to register and if in the face of that a few little drops of whiskey were sold over the bar who thought of it but the calf that of course was the crown and glory of the thing that and the rat's cooler below light and cool with swinging windows open to the air tables with marble tops palms waiters in white coats it was the standing marvel of mariposa not a soul in the town except mr smith who knew it by instinct ever guessed that waiters and palms and marble tables can be rented over the long-distance telephone mr smith was as good as his word he got a french chief with an aristocratic saturdayan countenance and a mustache and imperial that recalled the late napoleon the third no one knew where mr smith got him some people in the town said he was a french marquis other said he was a count and explained the difference no one in mariposa had ever seen anything like the calf all down the side of it were the grill fires with great pewter dish covers that went up and down on a chain and you could walk along the row and actually pick out your own cutlet and then see the french marquis throw it on the broiling iron you could watch a buckwheat pancake world into existence under your eyes and see fouls legs deviled peppered grilled and tormented till they lost all semblance of the original mariposa chicken mr smith of course was in his glory what have you got today alf he would say as he strolled over to the marquis the name of the chief was i believe alphonse but alf was near enough for mr smith the marquis would extend to the proprietor the menu voilà monsieur la carte du jour mr smith by the way encouraged the use of the french language in the calf he viewed it of course solely in its relation to the hotel business and i think regarded it as a recent invention it's coming in all the time in the city he said and he ain't expected to understand it mr smith would take the cart between his finger and thumb and stare at it it was all covered with such devices as potage la mariposa filet mignon à la proprietaire cutlet à la smith and so on but the greatest thing about the calf were the prices therein lay as everybody saw it once the hopeless simplicity of mr smith the prices stood fast at 25 cents a meal you could come in and eat all they had in the calf for a quarter no sir mr smith said stoutly i ain't going to try to raise no prices on the public the hotel has always been a quarter and the calf's a quarter full full of people well i should think so from the time the calf opened at 11 till it closed to date 30 you could hardly find a table tourists visitors travelers and half the people of mariposa crowded at the little tables crockery rattling glasses tinkling entrees corks popping the waiters in their white coats flying to and fro alphonse whirling the cutlets and pancakes into the air and in and through it all mr smith in a white flannel suit and a broad crimson sash about his waist crowded and gave from morning to night and even noisy in its hilarity noisy yes but if you want a deep quiet and cool if you wanted to step from the glare of a canadian august to the deep shadow of an enchanted glade walk down below into the rat's cooler there you had it dark old beams who could believe they were put there a month ago great casks set on end with legends such as amontilato fino done in guilt on a black ground tall steins filled with german beer soft as moss and a german waiter noiseless is moving foam he who entered the rat's cooler at three of a summer afternoon was buried there for the day mr golgoth the gingham spent anything from four to seven hours there of every day in his mind the place had all the quiet charm of an interment with none of its sorrows but at night when mr smith and billy the desk clerk opened up the cash register and figured out the combined losses of the calf and the rat's cooler mr smith would say billy just wait till i get the license renewed and i'll close up this damn calf so tight that they'll never know what hit her what did that lamb cost 50 cents a pound was it i figure at billy that every one of them hogs eats about a dollar's worth of grub for every 25 cents they pay on it as for alph by gosh i'm through with him but that of course was only a confidential matter is between mr smith and billy i don't know at what precise period it was that the idea of a petition to the license commissioners first got about the town no one seemed to know just who suggested it but certain it was that public opinion began to swing strongly towards the support of mr smith i think it was perhaps on the day after the big fish dinner that alphonse cooked for the mariposa canoe club at 20 cents a head that the feeling began to find open expression people said it was a shame that a man like josh smith should be run out of mariposa by three licensed commissioners who were the license commissioners anyway why look at the license system they had in sweden yes and in finland and in south america or for the matter of that look at the french and italians who drink all day and all night aren't they all right aren't they a musical people take napoleon and victor hugo drunk half the time and yet look what they did i quote these arguments not for their own sake but merely to indicate the changing temper of public opinion in mariposa men would sit in the calf at lunch perhaps for an hour and a half and talk about the license question in general and then go down into the rats cooler and talk about it for two hours more it was amazing the way the light broke in in the case of particular individuals often the most unlikely and quelled their opposition take for example the editor of the news packet i suppose there wasn't a greater temperance advocate in town yet alphonse queered him with a omelette à la license in one meal or take pepperly himself the judge of the mariposa court he was put to the bad with a game pie pate normand au fine herb the real thing is good as a trip to paris in itself after eating it pepperly had the common sense to realize that it was sheer madness to destroy a hotel that could cook a thing like that in the same way the secretary of the school board was silenced with a stuffed duck a la osso wippy three members of the town council were converted with a dandan farcy à la joche smith and then finally mr distan persuaded dean drone to come and as soon as mr smith and alphonse saw him they landed him with a fried flounder that even the apostles would have appreciated after that everyone knew that the license question was practically settled the petition was all over the town it was printed in duplicate at the news packet and you could see it lying on the counter of every shop in mariposa some of the people signed it 20 or 30 times it was the right kind of document too it began whereas in the bounty of providence the earth put forth her luscious fruits and her vineyards for the delight and enjoyment of mankind it made you thirsty just to read it any man who read that petition over was wild to get to the rats cooler when it was all signed up they had nearly 3000 names on it then nivens the lawyer and mr gingham as a provincial official took it down to the county town and by three o'clock that afternoon the news had gone out from the long-distance telephone office that smith's license was renewed for three years rejoicings well i should think so everybody was down wanting to shake hands with mr smith they told him that he had done more to boom mariposa than any 10 men in town some of them said he ought to run for the town council and others wanted to make him the conservative candidate for the next dominion election the calf was a mere babel of voices and even the rats cooler was almost floated away from its moorings and in the middle of it all mr smith found time to say to billy the desk clerk take the cash registers out of the calf and the rats cooler and start counting up the books and billy said well i write the letters for the palms and the tables and the stuff to go back and mr smith said get him written right away so all evening the laughter and the chatter and the congratulations went on and it wasn't till long after midnight that mr smith was able to join billy in the private room behind the rotunda even when he did there was a quiet and a dignity about his manner that had never been there before i think it must have been the new halo of the conservative candidacy that already radiated from his brow it was i imagine at this very moment that mr smith first realized that the hotel business formed a natural and proper threshold of the national legislature here's the account of the cash registers said billy let me see it said mr smith and he studied the figures without a word and here's the letters about the palms and here's alphonse up to yesterday and then an amazing thing happened billy said mr smith tear him up i ain't gonna do it it ain't right and i won't do it they got me the license for to keep the calf and i'm going to keep the calf i don't need to close her the bar is good for anything from 40 to 100 a day now with the rat's cooler going good and that calf will stay right here and stay it did there it stands mind you to this day you've only to step around the corner of smith's hotel on the side street and read the sign ladies and gents cafe just as large and as imposing as ever mr smith said that he'd keep the calf and when he said a thing he meant it of course there were changes small changes i don't say mind you that the filet de beef that you get there now is perhaps quite up to the level of the filet de bouffe au champignon of the days of glory no doubt the lamb chops in smith's calf are often very much the same nowadays as the lamb chops of the mariposa house or the continental of course things like omelette or truffles practically died out when alphonse went and naturally the leaving of alphonse was inevitable no one knew just when he went or why but one morning he was gone mr smith said that alph had to go back to his folks in the old country so too when alph left the use of the french language as such fell off tremendously in the calf even now they use it to some extent you can still get filet de beef and saucie sans au jus but billy the desk clerk has considerable trouble with the spelling the rats cooler of course closed down or rather mr smith closed it for repairs and there is every likelihood that it will hardly open for three years but the calf is there they don't use the grills because there's no need to with the hotel kitchen so handy the girl room i may say was never opened mr smith promised it it is true for the winter and still talks of it but somehow there's been a sort of feeling against it everyone in town admits that every big hotel in the city has a girl room and that it must be all right still there's a certain well you know how sensitive opinion is in a place like mariposa end of chapter one chapter two of sunshine sketches this is a libra vox recording all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libra vox dot org this reading is by dave ranson sunshine sketches of a little town by steven leacock chapter two the speculations of jefferson thorp it was not until the mining boom at the time when everybody went simply crazy over the cobalt and porcupine mines of the new silver country near the hudson bay that jefferson thorp reached what you might call public importance in mariposa of course everybody knew jeff and his little barbershop that stood just across the street from smith's hotel everybody knew him and everybody got shaved there from early morning when the commercial travelers off the 630 express got shaved into the resemblance of human beings there were always people going in and out of the barbershop mullins the manager of the exchange bank took his morning shave from jeff as a form of resuscitation with enough wet towels laid on his face to stew him and with jeff moving about in the steam razor in hand as grave as an operating surgeon then as i think i said mr smith came in every morning and there was a tremendous outpouring of florida water and rums essences and revivers and renovators regardless of expense what with jeff's white coat and mr smith's flowered waistcoat and the red geranium in the window in the florida water and the double extract of hyacinth the little shop seemed multicolored and luxurious enough for the annex of a sultan's harem but what i mean is that till the mining boom jefferson thorp never occupied a position of real prominence in mariposa you couldn't for example have compared him with a man like golgatha gingham who as undertaker stood in a direct relation to life and death or to trillani the postmaster who drew money from the federal government of canada and was regarded as virtually a member of the dominion cabinet everybody knew jeff and liked him but the odd thing was that till he made money nobody took any stock in his ideas at all it was only after he made the cleanup that they came to see what a splendid fellow he was level headed i think was the term indeed in the speech of mariposa the highest form of endowment was to have the headset on horizontally as with a theodolite as i say it was when jeff made money that they saw how gifted he was and when he lost it but still there's no need to go into that i believe it's something the same in other places too the barber shop you will remember stands across the street from smith's hotel and stares at it face to face it is one of those wooden structures i don't know whether you know them with a false front that sticks up above its real height and gives it an air at once rectangular and imposing it is a form of architecture much used in mariposa and understood to be in keeping with the pretentious and artificial character of modern business there is a red white and blue post in front of the shop and the shop itself has a large square window out of proportion to its little flat face painted on the panes of the window is the remains of a legend that once spelt barber shop executed with the flourishes that prevailed in the golden age of sign painting in mariposa through the window you can see the geraniums in the window shelf and behind them jeff thork with his little black skull cap on and his spectacles drooped upon his nose as he bends forward in the absorption of shaving as you open the door it sets in violent agitation a coiled spring up above and a bell that almost rings inside there are two shaving chairs of the heavier or electrocution pattern with mirrors in front of them and pigeonholes with individual shaving mugs there must be ever so many of them 15 or 16 it is the current supposition of each of jeff's customers that everyone else but himself uses a separate mug one corner of the shop is partitioned off and bears the sign hot and cold baths 50 cents there's been no bath inside the partition for 20 years only old newspapers in a mob still it lends distinction somehow just as do the faded cardboard signs that hang against the mirror with the legends turkish shampoo 75 cents and roman massage one dollar they say commonly in mariposa that jeff made money out of the barbershop he may have and it may have been that that turned his mind to investment but it's hard to see how he could a shave cost five cents and a haircut 15 or the two of you liked for a quarter and at that it is hard to see how he could make money even when he had both chairs going and shaved first in one and then in the other you see in mariposa shaving isn't the hurried perfunctory thing that it is in the city a shave is looked upon as a form of physical pleasure and lasts anywhere from 25 minutes to three quarters of an hour in the morning hours perhaps there was a semblance of haste about it but in the long quiet of the afternoon as jeff leaned forward towards the customer and talked to him in a slow confidential monotone like a portrait painter the razor would go slower and slower and pause and stop move and pause again till the shave died away into the mere drows of conversation at such hours the mariposa barbershop would become a very palace of slumber and as you waited your turn in one of the wooden arm chairs beside the wall what with the quiet of the hour and the low drone of jeff's conversation the buzzing of the flies against the window pane and the measured tick of the clock above the mirror your head sank dreaming on your breast and the mariposa news packet rustled unheeded on the floor it makes one drowsy just to think of it the conversation of course was the real charm of the place you see jefferson's forte or specialty was information he could tell you more things within the compass of a half hour shave than you get in days of laborious research and in encyclopedia where he got it all i don't know but i am inclined to think it came more or less out of the newspapers in the city people never read the newspapers not really only little bits and scraps of them but in mariposa it's different there they read the whole thing from cover to cover and they build up on it in the course of years a range of acquirement that would put a college president to the blush anybody who has ever heard henry mullins and peter glover talk about the future of china will know just what i mean and of course the peculiarity of jeff's conversation was that he could suit it to his man every time he had a kind of divination about it there was a certain kind of man that jeff would size up sideways as he stopped the razor and in whose ear he would whisper i see where st louis has took four straight games off chicago and so hold him fascinated to the end in the same way he would say to mr smith i see where it says that this flying squirrel run a dead heat for the king's plate to a humble intellect like mine he would explain in full the relations of the kisar to the german rich dog but first and foremost jeff's specialty in the way of conversation was finance in the money market the huge fortunes that a man with the right kind of head could make i've known jefferson to pause in his shaving with the razor suspended in the air as long as five minutes while he described with his eye half closed exactly the kind of a head a man needed in order to make a haul or a cleanup it was evidently simply a matter of the head and as far as one could judge jeff's own was the very type required i don't know just at what time or how jefferson first began his speculative enterprises it was probably in him from the start there is no doubt that the very idea of such things as traction stock and amalgamated asbestos went to his head and whenever he spoke of mr carnegie and mr rockefeller the yearning tone of his voice made it as soft as lathered soap i suppose the most rudimentary form of his speculation was the hens that was years ago he kept them out at the back of his house which itself stood up a grass plot behind and beyond the barbershop and in the old days jeff would say with a certain note of pride in his voice that the woman had sold as many as two dozen eggs in a day to the summer visitors but what with reading about amalgamated asbestos and consolidated copper and all that the hens began to seem pretty small business and in any case the idea of two dozen eggs a descent to peace almost makes one blush i suppose a good many of us have felt just as jeff did about our poor little earnings anyway i remember jeff telling me one day that he could take the whole lot of the hens and sell them off and crack the money into chicago weed on margin and turn it over in 24 hours he did it too only somehow when it was turned over it came upside down on top of the hens after that the henhouse stood empty and the woman had to throw away chicken feed every day at a dead loss of perhaps a shave and a half but it made no difference to jeff for his mind had floated away already on the possibilities of what he called displacement mining on the ucon one so you can understand that when the mining boom struck mariposa jefferson thork was in it right from the very start why no wonder it seemed like the finger of providence here was this great silver country spread out to north of us where people had thought there was only a wilderness and right at our very doors you could see as i saw the night express going north every evening for all one new rockefeller or carnage or anyone might be on it here was the wealth of calcutta as the mariposa news packet put it poured out at our very feet so no wonder the town went wild all day in the street you could hear men talking of veins and smelters and dips and deposits and faults the town hummed with it like a geology class on examination day and there were men about the hotels with mining outfits and theodolites and dunnage bags and at smith's bar they would hand chunks of rock up and down some of which would run as high as 10 drinks to the pound the fever just caught the town and ran through it within a fortnight they put a partition down robertsons coal and wood office and opened the mariposa mining exchange and just about every man on the main street started buying script then presently young fizzle chip who had been a teller in mullins's bank and that everybody had thought a worthless jackass before came back from the cobalt country with a fortune and loved round in the mariposa house in english cocky in a horizontal hat drunk all the time and everybody holding him up as an example of what it was possible to do if you tried they all went in jim elliot mortgaged the inside of the drug store and jammed it into twin tomogamy pete glover at the hardware store bought nipple wall stock at 13 cents and sold it to his brother at 17 and bought it back in less than a week at 19 they didn't care they took a chance judge pepperly put the rest of his wife's money into tomiskaming common and lawyer mccartney got the fever too and put every cent that his sister possessed into tulip preferred and even when young fizzle chip shot himself in the back room of the mariposa house mr gingham buried him in a casket with silver handles and it was felt that there was a montecarlo touch about the whole thing they all went in or all except mr smith you see mr smith had come down from there and he knew all about rocks and mining and canoes in the north country he knew what it was to eat flour bake dampers under the lee side of a canoe propped among the underbrush and to drink the last drop of whiskey within 50 miles mr smith had mighty little use for the north but what he did do was to buy up enough early potatoes to send 15 carload lots into cobalt at a profit of five dollars a bag mr smith i say hung back but jeff thork was in the mining boom right from the start he bought in on the nipple wall mine even before the interim prospectus was out he took a block of a hundred shares of abitibi development at 14 cents and he and johnson the livery stable keeper next door formed a syndicate and got a thousand shares of metogamy lake at three and a quarter cents and then unloaded them on one of the sausage men at netleys butcher shop at a clear cent percent advance jeff would open the little drawer below the mirror in the barbershop and show you all kinds and sorts of cobalt country mining certificates blue ones pink ones green ones without landish and fascinating names on them that ran clear from the matawad to the hudson bay and right from the start he was confident of winning there ain't no difficulty to it he said there's lots of silver up there in that country and if you buy some here and some there you can't fail to come out somewhere i don't say he used to continue with the scissors open and ready to cut that some of the greenhorns won't get bit but if a fella knows the country and keeps his head level he can't lose jefferson had looked at so many prospectuses and so many pictures of mines and pine trees and smelters that i think he'd forgotten that he'd never been in the country anyway let's 200 miles to an onlooker it certainly didn't seem so simple i never knew the meanness the trickery of the mining business the sheer obstinate determination of the bigger capitalist not to make money when they might till i heard the accounts of jeff's different minds take the case of corona jewel there was a good mind simply going to ruin for lack of common sense she ain't been developed jeff would say there's silver enough in her so you could dig it out with a shovel she's full of it but they won't get at her and work her then he take a look at the pink and blue certificates of the corona jewel and slam the drawer on them and disgust worse than that was the silent pine a clear case of stupid incompetence utter lack of engineering skill was all that was keeping the silent pine for making a fortune for its holders the only trouble with that mine said jeff is they won't go deep enough they follow the vein down to where it kind of thinned out and then they quit if they just go right into her good they get it again she's down there all right but perhaps the meanest case of all was the northern star that always seemed to me every time i heard of it a straight case for the criminal law the thing was so evidently a conspiracy i bought her said jeff at 32 and she stayed right there tight like she was stuck then a bunch of these fellas in the city started to drive her down and they got her pushed down to 24 and i held on to her and they shoved her down to 21 this morning they've got her down to 16 but i don't mean to let go no sir in another fortnight they shoved her the same unscrupulous crowd down to nine cents and jefferson still held on they're working her down he admitted but i'm holding her no conflict between vice and virtue was ever grimmer she's at six said jeff but i've got her they can't squeeze me a few days after that the same criminal gang had her down further than ever they've got her down to three cents said jeff but i'm with her yes sir they think they can shove her clean off the market but they can't do it i've bought in johnson shares and the whole of netleys and i'll stay with her till she breaks so they shoved and pushed and clawed her down that unseen nefarious crowd in the city and jeff held on to her and they writhed and twisted it as grip and then and then well that's just the queer thing about the mining business why sudden as a flash of lightning it seemed the news came over the wire to the mariposa news packet that they had struck a vein of silver in the northern star as thick as a sidewalk and that the stock had jumped to 17 dollars a share and even at that you couldn't get it and jeff stood there flushed and half staggered against the mirror of the little shop with a bunch of mining script in his hand that was worth 40 thousand dollars excitement it was all over the town in a minute they ran off a news extra at the mariposa news packet and in less than no time there wasn't standing room in the barbershop and over in smith's hotel they had three extra barkeepers working on the lager beer pumps they were selling mining shares on the main street in mariposa that afternoon and people were just clutching for them then at night there was a big oyster supper in smith's calf with speeches and the mariposa band outside and the queer thing was that the very next afternoon was the funeral of young fizzle chip and dean drone had to change the whole text of his sunday sermon at two days notice for fear of offending public sentiment but i think what jeff liked best of it all was the sort of public recognition that it meant he'd stand there in the shop hardly bothering to shave and explain to the men in the arm chairs how he held her and they shoved her and he clung to her and what he said to himself a perfect eliad while he was clinging to her the whole thing was in the city papers a few days after with a photograph of jeff taken specially at edmore's studio upstairs over netleys it showed jeff sitting among palm trees as all mining men do with one hand on his knee and a dog one of those regular mining dogs at his feet and a look of piercing intelligence in his face that would easily account for forty thousand dollars i say that the recognition met a lot to jeff for its own sake but no doubt the fortune meant quite a bit to him too on account of myra did i mention myra jeff's daughter perhaps not that's the trouble with the people in mariposa they're also separate and so different not a bit like the people in the cities then unless you hear about them separately and one by one you can't for a moment understand what they're like myra had golden hair and a greek face and would come bursting through the barbershop and had at least six inches wider than what they were in paris as you saw her swinging up the street to the telephone exchange in a suit that was straight out of the delineator and brown american boots there was style written all over her the kind of thing that mariposa recognized and did homage to and to see her in the exchange she was one of the four girls that i spoke of on her high stool with a steel cap on jabbing the connecting plugs in and out as if electricity cost nothing well all i mean is that you could understand why it was that the commercial travelers would stand round in the exchange calling up all sorts of impossible villages and waiting about so pleasant genial it made one realize how naturally good tempered men are and then when myra would go off duty and miss klegghorn who was sallow would come on the commercial men would be off again like autumn leaves it just shows the difference between people there was myra who treated lovers like dogs and would slap them across the face with a banana skin to show her utter independence and there was miss klegghorn who was sallow and who bought a forty cent ancient history to improve herself and yet if she'd hit any man in mariposa with a banana skin he'd have had her arrested for assault mind you i don't mean that myra was merely flippant and worthless not at all she was a girl with any amount of talent you should have heard her recite the raven at the method is social simply genius and when she acted Porsche in the trial scene of the merchant of Venice at the high school concert everybody in mariposa admitted that you couldn't have told it from the original so of course as soon as Jeff made the fortune myra had her resignation in next morning and everybody knew that she was to go to a dramatic school for three months in the fall and become a leading actress but as i said the public recognition counted a lot for Jeff the moment you begin to get that sort of thing it comes in quickly enough brains you know are recognized right away that was why of course within a week from this jeff received the first big packet of stuff from the cuban land development company with colored pictures of cuba and fields of bananas and haciendas and insurrectos with machetes and heaven knows what they heard of him somehow it wasn't for a modest man like jefferson to say how after all the capitalists of the world are just one in the same crowd if you're in it you're in it that's all jeff realized why it is that of course men like carnage or rocket feller and morgan all know one another they have to for all i know this cuban stuff may have been sent from morgan himself some of the people in mariposa said yes others said no there was no certainty anyway they were fair and straight this cuban crowd that wrote to jeff they offered him to come right in and be one of themselves if a man's got the brains you may as well recognize it straight away just as well write him to be a director now is wait and hesitate till he forces his way into it anyhow they didn't hesitate these cuban people that wrote to jeff from cuba or from a post office box in new york it's all the same thing because cuba being so near to new york the mail is all distributed from there i suppose in some financial circles they might have been slower wanted guarantees of some sort and so on but these cubans you know have got a sort of spanish warmth of heart that you don't see in businessmen in america and that touches you no they ask no guarantee just send the money whether by express order or by bank draft or check they left that entirely to oneself as a matter between cuban gentlemen and they were quite frank about their enterprise bananas and tobacco in the plantation district reclaimed from the insurrecto's you could see it all there in the pictures tobacco plants in the insurrecto's everything they made no rash promises just admitted straight out that the enterprise might realize 400 percent or might conceivably make less there was no hint of more so within a month everybody in mariposa knew that jeff thorp was in cuban lands and would probably clean up half a million by new years you couldn't have failed to know it all around the little shop there were pictures of banana groves in the harbor of habana and cubans in white suits and scarlet sashes smoking cigarettes in the sun and too ignorant to know that you can make 400 percent by planting a banana tree i liked it about jeff that he didn't stop shaving he went on just the same even when johnson the livery stable man came in with 500 dollars and asked him to see if the cuban board of directors would let him put it in jeff laid it in the drawer and then shaved him for five cents in the same old way of course he must have felt proud when a few days later he got a letter from the cuban people from new york accepting the money straight off without a single question and without knowing anything more of johnson except that he was a friend of jeff's they wrote most handsomely any friends of jeff's were friends of cuba all money they might send would be treated just as jeff's would be treated one reason perhaps why jeff didn't give up shaving was because it allowed him to talk about cuba you see everybody knew in mariposa that jeff thorp had sold out of kobalts and had gone into cuban renovated lands and that spread round him a kind of halo of wealth and mystery and outlandishness oh something spanish perhaps you felt it about people that you know anyhow they asked them about the climate and yellow fever and what the negros were like and all that sort of thing this cuba it appears is an island jeff would explain of course everybody knows how easily islands lend themselves to making money and for fruit they say it comes up so fast you can't stop it and then he would pass into details about the hash enders and the resurrectos and technical things like that till it was thought a wonder how he could know it still it was realized that a man with money has got to know these things look at morgan and rockefeller and all the men that make a pile they know just as much as jeff did about the countries where they make it it stands to reason did i say that jeff shaved in the same old way not quite there was something even dreamier about it now and a sort of new element in the way jeff fell out of his monotone into lapses of thought that i for one misunderstood i thought that perhaps getting so much money well you know the way it acts on people in the larger cities it seemed to spoil one's idea of jeff that copper and asbestos and banana land should form the goal of his thought when if he knew it the little shop in the sunlight of mariposa was so much better in fact i had perhaps borne a grudge for what seemed to me as perpetual interest in the great capitalists he always had some item out of the paper about them i see where this here carnage is give fifty thousand dollars for one of them observatories he would say and another day he would pause in the course of shaving and almost whisper did you ever see this rockefeller it was only by a sort of accident that i came to know that there was another side to jefferson speculation that no one in mariposa ever knew or will ever know now i knew it because i went in to see jeff in his house one night the house i think i said it stood out behind the barber shop you went out of the back door of the shop and threw a grass plot with petunias beside it and the house stood at the end you could see the light of the lamp behind the blind and through the screen doors you came along and it was here that jefferson used to sit in the evenings when the shop got empty there was a round table that the woman used to lay for supper and after supper there used to be a checkered cloth on it and a lamp with a shade and beside it jeff would sit with his spectacles on and the paper spread out reading about carnegie and rockefeller near him but away from the table was the woman doing needlework and myra when she wasn't working in the telephone exchange was there too with her elbows on the table reading marie corelli only now of course after the fortune she was reading the prospectuses of dramatic schools so this night i don't know just what it was in the paper that caused it jeff laid down what he was reading and started to talk about carnegie this carnegie i bet you would be worth said jeff closing up his eyes in calculation as much as perhaps two million dollars if you was to sell him up and this rockefeller and this morgan either of them to sell them up clean would be worth another couple of million i may say in parentheses that it was a favorite method in mariposa if you wanted to get at the real worth of a man to imagine him clean sold up put up for auction as it were it was the only way to test him and now look at him jeff went on they make their money and what do they do with it they give it away and who do they give it to why do those just don't want it every time they give to these professors and to this research in that and do the poor get any of it not a cent and never will i tell you boys continued jeff there were no boys present but in mariposa all really important speeches are addressed to an imaginary audience of boys i tell you if i was to make a million out of this cubie i'd give it straight to the poor yes sir divided up into a hundred lots of a thousand dollars each and give it to the people that hadn't nothing so always after that i knew just what those bananas were being grown for indeed after that though jefferson never spoke of his intentions directly he said a number of things that seemed to bear on them he asked me for instance one day how many blind people it would take to fill one of these blind homes and how a feller could get a hold of them and at another time he asked whether if a feller advertised for some of these incurables a feller could get enough of them to make a showing i know for a fact that he got nivens the lawyer to drop a document that was to give an acre of banana land in cuba to every idiot in misson oba county but still what's the use of talking of what jeff meant to do nobody knows or cares about it now the end of it was bound to come even in mariposa some of the people must have thought so else how was it that henry mullins made such a fuss about selling a draft for 40 000 on new york and why was it that mr smith wouldn't pay billy the desk clerk his back wages when he wanted to put it into cuba oh yes some of them must have seen it and yet when it came it seemed so quiet ever so quiet not a bit like the northern star mine in the oyster supper in the mariposa band it is strange how quiet these things look the other way around you remember the cuban lands frauds in new york and perferio gomez shooting the detective and him and maximo more is getting clear away with 200 000 no of course you don't why even in the city papers it only filled an inch or two of type in any way the names were hard to remember that was jeff's money part of it mullins got the telegram from a broker or someone and he showed it to jeff just as he was going up the street with an estate agent to look at a big empty lot on the hill behind the town the very place for these incurables and jeff went back to the shop so quiet have you ever seen an animal that is stricken through how quiet it seems to move well that's how he walked and since that though it's quite a little while ago the shops open till 11 every night now and jeff is shaving away to pay back that 500 that johnson the liveryman sent to the cubans and pathetic tut tut you don't know mariposa jeff has to work pretty late but that's nothing nothing at all if you've worked hard all your lifetime and myra is back at the telephone exchange they were glad enough to get her and she says now that if there's one thing she hates it's the stage and she can't see how the actresses put up with it anyway things are not so bad you see it was just at this time that mr smith calf opened and mr smith came to jeff's woman and said he wanted seven dozen eggs a day and wanted them handy and so the hens are back and more of them and they exult so every morning over the eggs they lay that if you wanted to talk of rockefeller and the barbershop you couldn't hear his name for the cackling end of chapter two chapter three of sunshine sketches this is a libra vox recording all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libra vox dot org this reading is by dave ranson sunshine sketches of a little town by steven leacock chapter three the marine excursions of the knights of pithias half past six on a july morning the mariposa bell is at the wharf decked in flags with steam up ready to start excursion day half past six on a july morning and lake wissanati lying in the sun as calm as glass the opal colors of the morning light are shot from the surface of the water out on the lake the last thin threads of the mr clearing away like flecks of cotton wool the long call of the loon echoes over the lake the air is cool and fresh there is in it all the new life of the land of the silent pine and the moving waters lake wissanati in the morning sunlight don't talk to me of the italian lakes or the tyrol or the swiss alps take them away move them somewhere else i don't want them excursion day at half past six of a summer morning with the boat all decked in flags and all the people in mariposa on the wharf and the band and peak caps with big cornets tied to their bodies ready to play at any minute i say don't tell me about the carnival of venice and the deli durber don't i wouldn't look at them i'd shut my eyes for light and color give me every time an excursion out of mariposa down the lake to the indians island out of sight in the morning mist talk of your papal zoos and your buckingham palace guard i want to see the mariposa band in uniform and the mariposa nights of pithias with their aprons and their insignia and their picnic baskets and their five-cent cigars half past six in the morning and all the crowd on the wharf and the boat due to leave in half an hour notice it in half an hour already she's whistled twice at six and at six fifteen and any minute now christie johnson will step into the pilot house and pull the string for the warning whistle that the boat will leave in half an hour so keep ready don't think of running back to smith's hotel for the sandwiches don't be fool enough to try to go up to the greek store next to netleys and buy fruit you'll be left behind for sure if you do never mind the sandwiches and the fruit anyway here comes mr smith himself with a huge basket of provender that would feed a factory there must be sandwiches in that i think i can hear them clinking and behind mr smith is the german waiter from the calf with another basket indubitably lager beer and behind him the bartender of the hotel carrying nothing as far as one can see but of course if you know mariposa you will understand that why he looks so nonchalant and empty-handed is because he has two bottles of rye whiskey under his linen duster you know i think the peculiar walk of a man with two bottles of whiskey in the inside pockets of a linen coat in mariposa you see to bring beer to an excursion is quite in keeping with public opinion but whiskey well one has to be a little careful do i say that mr smith is here why everybody's here there's a sell the editor of the news packet wearing a blue ribbon on his coat for the mariposa knights of pithias are by their constitution dedicated to temperance and there's henry mullins the manager of the exchange bank also a knight of pithias with a small flask of pogrom special in his hip pocket as a sort of amendment to the constitution and there's dean drone the chaplain of the order with a fishing rod you never saw such green basses lie among the rocks at indians island and with a trolling line in case of maskinange and a landing net in case of picrel and with his eldest daughter lily and drone in case of young men there never was such a fisherman as the reverend rupert drone perhaps i ought to explain that when i speak of the excursion as being of the knights of pithias the thing must not be understood in any narrow sense in mariposa practically everybody belongs to the knights of pithias just as they do to everything else that's the great thing about the town and that's what makes it so different from the city everybody is in everything you should see them on the 17th of march for example when everybody wears a green ribbon and they're all laughing and glad you know what the Celtic nature is and talking about home rule on st andrew's day every man in town wears a thistle and shakes hands with everybody else and you see the fine old scotch honesty beaming out of their eyes and on st george's day well there's no hardiness like the good old english spirit after all why shouldn't a man feel glad that he's an englishman then on the fourth of july there are stars and stripes flying over half the stores in town and suddenly all the men are seen to smoke cigars and to know all about roosevelt and brian and the philippine islands then you learn for the first time that jeff torps people came from massachusetts and that his uncle fought at bunker hill it must have been bunker hill anyway jefferson will swear it was in dakota all right enough and you find that george duff has a married sister in rochester and that her husband is all right in fact george was down there as recently as eight years ago oh it's the most american town imaginable as mariposa on the fourth of july but wait just wait if you feel anxious about the solidity of the british connection till the 12th of the month when everybody is wearing an orange streamer in his coat and the orange man every man in town walk in the big procession allegiance well perhaps you remember the address they gave to the prince of wales on the platform of the mariposa station as he went through on his tour to the west i think that pretty well settled that question so you will easily understand that of course everybody belongs to the knights of pithias and the masons and odd fellows just as they all belong to the snowshoe club and the girls friendly society and meanwhile the whistle of the steamer has blown again for a quarter to seven long and loud this time for anyone not here now is late for certain unless he should happen to come down in the last 15 minutes what a crowd upon the wharf and how they pile on to the steamer it's a wonder that the boat can hold them all but that's just the marvelous thing about the mariposa bell i don't know i have never known where the steamers like the mariposa bell come from whether they are built by harland and wolf of bellfast or whether on the other hand they are not built by harland and wolf of bellfast is more than one would like to say offhand the mariposa bell always seems to me to have some of those strange properties that distinguish mariposa itself i mean her size seems to vary so if you see her there in the winter frozen in the ice beside the wharf with a snow drift against the windows of the pilot house she looks a pathetic little thing the size of a butternut but in the summertime especially after you've been in mariposa for a month or two and have paddled alongside of her in a canoe she gets larger and taller and with a great sweep of black sides till you see no difference between the mariposa bell and the lucetania each one is a big steamer and that's all you can say nor do her measurements help you much she draws about 18 inches forward and more than that at least half an inch more a stern and when she's loaded down with an excursion crowd she draws it good two inches more and above the water why look at all the decks on her there's the deck you walk on to from the wharf all shut in with windows along it and the after cabin with the long table and above that the deck with all the chairs piled upon it and the deck in front where the band stand round in a circle and the pilot house is higher than that and above the pilot house is the board with the gold name and the flag pole and the steel ropes and the flags and fixed in somewhere on the different levels is the lunch counter where they sell the sandwiches and the engine room and down below the deck level beneath the waterline is the place where the crew sleep what was steps and stairs and passages and piles of cordwood for the engine oh no i guess harland and wolf didn't build her they couldn't have yet even with a huge boat like the mariposa bell it would be impossible for her to carry all of the crowd that you see in the boat and on the wharf in reality the crowd is made up of two classes all of the people in mariposa who are going on the excursion and all those who are not some come for the one reason and some for the other the two tellers of the exchange banker both they're standing side by side but one of them the one with the cameo pin in the long face like a horse is going and the other with the other cameo pin in the face like another horse is not in the same way has sell of the news packet is going but his brother beside him isn't lily and drone is going but her sister can't and so on all through the crowd and to think that things should look like that on the morning of a steamboat accident how strange life is to think of all these people so eager and anxious to catch the steamer and some of them running to catch it and so fearful that they might miss it the morning of a steamboat accident and the captain blowing his whistle and warning them so severely that he would leave them behind leave them out of the accident and everybody crowding so eagerly to be in the accident perhaps life is like that all through strangest of all to think in a case like this of the people who were left behind or in some way or other prevented from going and always afterwards told of how they had escaped being on board the mariposa bell that day some of the instances were certainly extraordinary nivens the lawyer escaped from being there merely by the fact that he was away in the city towers the tailor only escaped owing to the fact that not intending to go on the excursion he had stayed in bed till eight o'clock and so had not gone he narrated afterwards that waking up that morning at half past five he had thought of the excursion and for some unaccountable reason had felt glad that he was not going the case of yodel the auctioneer was even more inscrutable he had been to the odd fellows excursion on the train the week before and to the conservative picnic the week before that and had decided not to go on this trip in fact he had not the least intention of going he narrated afterwards how the night before someone had stopped him on the corner of nipawan to come to streets he indicated the very spot and asked are you going to take in the excursion tomorrow and he had said just as simply as he was talking when narrating it no and 10 minutes after that at the corner of dalhousie and brock streets he offered to lead a party of verification to the precise place someone else had stopped him and asked well are you going on the steamer trip tomorrow again he had answered no apparently almost in the same tone as before he said afterwards that when he heard the rumor of the accident it seemed like the finger of providence and fell on his knees in thankfulness there was the similar case of morrison i mean the one in glover's hardware store that married one of the thompson's he said afterwards that he had read so much in the papers about accidents lately mining accidents and aeroplanes and gasoline that he had grown nervous the night before his wife had asked him at supper are you going on the excursion he had answered no i don't think i feel like it and had added perhaps your mother might like to go and the next evening just at dusk when the news ran through the town he said the first thought that flashed through his head was mrs. thompson's on that boat he told this right as i say it without the least doubt or confusion he never for a moment imagined she was on the lucetania or the olympic or any other boat he knew she was on this one he said you could have knocked him down where he stood but no one had not even when he got halfway down on his knees and it would have been easier still to knock him down or kick him people do miss a lot of chances still as i say neither yodel nor morrison nor anyone thought about there being an accident until just after sundown when they well have you ever heard the long booming whistle of a steamboat two miles out on the lake in the dusk and while you listen and count and wonder seen the crimson rockets going up against the sky and then heard the firebell ringing right there beside you in the town and seen the people running to the town wharf that's what the people of mariposa saw and felt that summer evening as they watched the mackinac lifeboat go plunging out into the lake with seven sweeps to a side and the foam clear to the gunnel with the lifting stroke of 14 men but dear me i'm afraid that this is no way to tell a story i suppose the true art would have been to have said nothing about the accident till it happened but when you write about mariposa or hear of it if you know the place it's also vivid and real that a thing like the contrast between the excursion crowd in the morning and the scene at night leaps into your mind and you must think of it but never mind about the accident let us turn back again to the morning the boat was due to leave at seven there was no doubt about the hour not only seven but seven sharp the notice in the news packet said the boat will leave sharp at seven and the advertising posters on the telegraph poles on misa naba street that began ho for indians island ended up with the words boat leaves at seven sharp there was a big notice on the wharf that said boat leaves sharp on time so at seven right on the hour the whistle blew loud and long and then at seven fifteen three short peremptory blasts and at seven thirty one quick angry call just one and very soon after that they cast off the last of the ropes and the mariposa bell sailed off in her cloud of flags and the band of the knights of pithias timing it to a nicety broke into the maple leaf forever i suppose that all excursions when they start are much the same anyway on the mariposa bell everybody went running up and down all over the boat with deck chairs and camp stools and baskets and found places splendid places to sit and then got scared that there might be better ones and chased off again people hunted for places out of the sun and when they got them swore that they weren't going to freeze to please anybody and the people in the sun said that they hadn't paid fifty cents to be roasted others said that they hadn't paid fifty cents to get covered with cinders and there were still others who hadn't paid fifty cents to get shaken to death with the propeller still it was all right presently the people seem to get sorted out into the places on the boat where they belonged the women the older ones all gravitated into the cabin on the lower deck and by getting around the table with needlework and with all the windows shut they soon had it as they said themselves just like being at home all the young boys and the toughs and the men in the band got down on the lower deck forward where the boat was dirtiest and where the anchor was in the coils of rope and upstairs on the after deck there were lily and drone and miss lawson the high school teacher with a book of german poetry gothie i think it was and the bank teller and the younger men in the center standing beside the rail were dean drone and dr gallagher looking through binocular glasses at the shore up in front on the little deck forward of the pilot house was a group of the older men mullins and duff and mr smith in a deck chair and beside him mr golgatha gingham the undertaker of mariposa on a stool it was part of mr gingham's principles to take in an outing of this sort a business matter more or less for you never know what may happen at these water parties at any rate he was there in a neat suit of black not of course his heavier professional suit but a soft clinging effect as a burnt paper that combined gaiety and decorum to a nicety yes said mr gingham waving his black glove in a general way towards the shore i know the lake well very well i've been pretty much all over it in my time canoeing asked somebody no said mr gingham not in a canoe there seemed a peculiar and quiet meaning in his tone sailing i suppose said somebody else no said mr gingham i don't understand it i never know that you went on to the water at all gol said mr smith breaking in oh not now explain mr gingham it was years ago the first summer i came to mariposa i was on the water practically all day nothing like it to give a man an appetite and to keep him in shape was you camping asked mr smith we camped at night ascent of the undertaker but we put in practically the whole day on the water you see we were after a party that had come up here from the city on his vacation and gone out in a sailing canoe we were dragging we were up every morning at sunrise lit a fire on the beach and cooked breakfast and then we'd light our pipes and be off with the net for a whole day it's a great life concluded mr gingham wistfully did you get him asked two or three together there was a pause before mr gingham answered we did he said down in the reeds past horseshoe point but it was no use he turned blue on me right away after which mr gingham fell into such a deep reverie that the boat had steamed another half mile down the lake before anybody broke the silence again talk of this sort and after all what more suitable for a day on the water beguiled the way down the lake mile by mile over the calm water steamed the mariposa bell they passed popular point where the high sand banks are with all the swallows nests in them and dean drone and dr gallagher looked at them alternately through the binocular glasses and it was wonderful how plainly one could see the swallows and the banks and the shrubs just as plainly as with the naked eye and a little further down they passed the shingle beach and dr gallagher who knew canadian history said to dean drone that it was strange to think that shamplain had landed there with his french explorers 300 years ago and dean drone who didn't know canadian history said it was stranger still to think that the hand of the almighty had piled up the hills and rocks long before that and dr gallagher said it was wonderful how the french had found their way through such a pathless wilderness and dean drone said it was wonderful also to think that the almighty had placed even the smallest shrub in its appointed place dr gallagher said it filled him with admiration dean drone said it filled him with awe dr gallagher said he'd been full of it ever since he was a boy and dean drone said so had he then a little further as the mariposa bell steamed on down the lake they passed the old indian portage where the great gray rocks are and dr gallagher drew dean drone's attention to the place where the narrow canoe track wound up from the shore to the woods and dean drone said he could see it perfectly well without the glasses dr gallagher said it was just here that a party of 500 french had made their way with all their baggage and accoutrements across the rocks of the divide and down to the great bay and dean drone said it reminded him of xenophon leading his 10 000 greeks over the hill passes of armenia down to the sea dr gallagher said that he had often wished he could have seen and spoken to shamplain and dean drone said how much he regretted to have never known xenophon and then after that they felt a talking of relics and traces of the past and dr gallagher said that if dean drone would come round to his house some night he would show him some indian arrowheads that he had dug up in his garden and dean drone said that if dr gallagher would come round to the rectory any afternoon he would show him a map of xerxes invasion of greece only he must come sometime between the infant class and the mother's auxiliary so presently they both knew that they were blocked out of one another's houses for some time to come and dr gallagher walked forward and told mr smith who had never studied greek about shamplain crossing the rock divide mr smith turned his head and looked at the divide for half a second and then said he had crossed the worst one up north back of the one at petai and that the flies were hades and then went on playing frees out poker with the two juniors and duff's bank so dr gallagher realized that that's always the way when you try to tell people things and that as far as gratitude and appreciation goes one might as well never read books or travel anywhere or do anything in fact it was at this very moment that he made up his mind to give the arrows to the mariposa mechanics institute they afterwards became as you know the gallagher collection but for the time being the doctor was sick of them and wandered off round the boat and watched hannery mullen showing george duff how to make a john collins without lemons and finally went and sat down among the mariposa band and wished that he hadn't come so the boat steamed on in the sun rose higher and higher in the freshness of the morning changed into the full glare of noon and they went on to where the lake began to narrow in and its foot just where the indians island is all grass and trees and with a log warf running out into the water below it the lower osso wippy runs out of the lake and quite nearer the rapids and you can see down among the trees the red brick of the powerhouse and hear the roar of the leaping water the indians island itself is all covered with trees and tangled vines and the water about it is so still that it's all reflected double and looks the same either way up then when the steamer's whistle blows as it comes into the wharf you hear it echo among the trees of the island and reverberate back from the shores of the lake the scene is also quiet and still and unbroken that miss claghorn the sallow girl in the telephone exchange that i spoke of said she'd like to be buried there but all the people were so busy getting their baskets and gathering up their things that no one had time to attend to it i mustn't even try to describe the landing in the boat crunching against the wooden wharf and all the people running to the same side of the deck and christie johnson calling out to the crowd to keep to the starboard and nobody being able to find it everyone who has been on a mariposa excursion knows all about that nor can i describe the day itself and the picnic under the trees there were speeches afterwards and judge peperly gave such offense by bringing in conservative politics that a man named patriotus canna diensis wrote and asked for some of the invaluable space of the mariposa times herald and exposed it i should say that there were races too on the grass on the open side of the island graded mostly according to ages races for boys under 13 and girls over 19 and all that sort of thing sports are generally conducted on that plan in mariposa it is realized that a woman of 60 has an unfair advantage over a mere child dean drone managed the races and decided the ages and gave out the prizes the wesley and minister helped and he and the young student who was relieving in the presbyterian church held the string at the winning point they had to get mostly clergymen for the races because all the men had wandered off somehow to where they were drinking log or beer out of two kegs stuck on pine logs among the trees but if you've ever been on a mariposa excursion you know all about these details anyway so the day wore on and presently the sun came through the trees on a slant and the steamer whistle blew with a great puff of white steam and all the people came straggling down to the wharf and pretty soon the mariposa bell had floated out onto the lake again and headed for the town 20 miles away i suppose you have often noticed the contrast there is between an excursion on its way out in the morning and what it looks like on the way home in the morning everybody is so restless and animated and moves to and fro all over the boat and asks questions but coming home as the afternoon gets later and the sun sinks beyond the hills all the people seem to get so still and quiet and drowsy so it was with the people on the mariposa bell they sat there on the benches and the deck chairs and little clusters and listened to the regular beat of the propeller and almost dozed off asleep as they sat then when the sun set and the dust drew on it grew almost dark on the deck and so still that you could hardly tell there was anyone on board and if you had looked at the steamer from the shore from one of the islands you'd have seen the row of lights from the cabin windows shining on the water and the red glare of the burning hemlock from the funnel and you'd have heard the soft thought of the propeller miles away over the lake now and then too you could have heard them singing on the steamer the voices of the girls and the men blended into unison by the distance rising and falling and long drawn melody oh canada oh canada you may talk as you will about the intoning choirs of your european cathedrals but the sound of oh canada born across the waters of a silent lake at evening is good enough for those of us who know mariposa i think that it was just as they were singing like this oh canada that word went round that the boat was sinking if you have ever been in any sudden emergency on the water you will understand the strange psychology of it the way in which what is happening seems to become known all in a moment without a word being said the news is transmitted from one to the other by some mysterious process at any rate on the mariposa bell first one and then the other heard that the steamer was sinking as far as i could ever learn the first of it was that george duff the bank manager came very quietly to dr gallagher and asked him if he thought that the boat was sinking the doctor said no that he had thought so earlier in the day but that he didn't now think that she was after that duff according to his own account had said to mccartney the lawyer that the boat was sinking and mccartney said that he doubted it very much then somebody came to judge peperly and woke him up and said that there were six inches of water in the steamer and that she was sinking and peperly said it was perfect scandal and passed the news on to his wife and she said that they had no business to allow it and that if the steamer sank that was the last excursion she'd go on so the news went all around the boat and everywhere the people gathered in groups and talked about it in the angry and excited way that people have when the steamer is sinking on one of the lakes like lake wissanawdy dean drone of course and some others were quieter about it and said that one must make allowances and that naturally there were two sides to everything but most of them wouldn't listen to reason at all i think perhaps that some of them were frightened you see the last time but one that the steamer had sunk there had been a man drowned and it made them nervous what hadn't i explained about the depth of lake wissanawdy i had taken it for granted that you knew and in any case parts of it are deep enough though i don't suppose in this stretch of it from the big reed beds up to within a mile of the town wharf you could find six feet of water in it if you tried oh pshaw i was not talking about a steamer sinking in the ocean and carrying down its screaming crowds of people into the hideous depths of green water oh dear me no that kind of thing never happens on lake wissanawdy but what does happen is that the mariposa bell sinks every now and then and sticks there on the bottom till they get things straightened up on the lakes around mariposa if a person arrives late anywhere and explains that the steamer sank everybody understands the situation you see when harland and wolf built the mariposa bell they left some cracks in between the timbers that you fill up with cotton waste every sunday if this is not attended to the boat sinks in fact it is part of the law of the province that all the steamers like the mariposa bell must be properly corked i think that's the word every season there are inspectors who visit all the hotels in the province to see that it is done so you can imagine now that i've explained it a little straighter the indignation of the people when they knew that the boat had come uncorked and then they might be stuck out there on the shore or a mudbank half the night i don't say either that there wasn't any danger anyway it doesn't feel very safe when you realize that the boat is settling down with every hundred yards that she goes and you look over the side and see only the black water in the gathering night safe i'm not sure now that i come to think of it that it isn't worse than sinking in the atlantic after all in the atlantic there is wireless telegraphy and a lot of train sailors and stewards but out on lake wissanati far out so that you can only just see the lights of the town away off to the south when the propeller comes to a stop and you can hear the hiss of steam as they start to rake out the engine fires to prevent an explosion and when you turn from the red glare that comes from the furnace doors as they open them to the black dark that is gathering over the lake and there's a night wind beginning to run among the rushes and you see the men going forward to the roof of the pilot house to send up the rockets to rouse the town safe safe yourself if you like as for me let me once get back into mariposa again under the night shadow of the maple trees and this shall be the last last time i'll go on lake wissanati safe oh yes isn't it strange how safe other people's adventures seem after they happen but you'd have been scared too if you'd been there just before the steamers sank and seen them bringing up all the women onto the top deck i don't see how some of the people took it so calmly how mr smith for instance could have gone on smoking and telling how he had a steamer sink on him on lake nipissing and a still bigger one a sidewheeler sink on him in lake abitibi then quite suddenly with a quiver down she went you could feel the boat sink sink down down would it never get to the bottom the water came flush up to the lower deck and then thank heaven the sinking stopped and there was the mariposa bell safe and tight on a reed bank really it made one positively laugh it seems so queer and anyway if a man has a sort of natural courage danger makes him laugh danger jaw fiddle sticks everybody scouted the idea white is just the little things like this that give zest to a day on the water within half a minute they were all running around looking for sandwiches and cracking jokes and talking of making coffee over the remains of the engine fires i don't need to tell it length how it all happened after that i suppose the people on the mariposa bell would have had to say settle down there all night or till help came from the town but some of the men who had gone forward and were peering out into the dark said that it couldn't be more than a mile across the water to miller's point you could almost see it over there to the left some of them i think said off on the port bow because you know when you get mixed up in these marine disasters you soon catch the atmosphere of the thing so pretty soon they had the davits swung out over the side and were lowering the old lifeboat from the top deck into the water there were men leaning out over the rail of the mariposa bell with lanterns that threw the light as they let her down and the glare fell on the water in the reeds but when they got the boat lowered it looked such a frail clumsy thing as one saw it from the rail above that the cry was raised women and children first for what was the sense if it should turn out that the boat wouldn't even hold women and children of trying to jam a lot of heavy men into it so they put in mostly women and children and the boat pushed out into the darkness so freighted down it would hardly float in the bow of it was the presbyterian student who was relieving the minister and he called out that they were in the hands of providence but he was crouched and ready to spring out of them at the first moment so the boat went and was lost in the darkness except for the lantern in the bow that you could see bobbing on the water then presently it came back and they sent another load till pretty soon the decks began to thin out and everybody got impatient to be gone it was about the time that the third boat load put off that mr smith took a bet with mullins for twenty five dollars that he'd be home in mariposa before the people in the boats had walked around the shore no one knew just what he meant but pretty soon they saw mr smith disappear down below into the lowest part of the steamer with a mallet in one hand and a big bundle of marlin in the other they might have wondered more about it but it was just at this time that they heard the shouts from the rescue boat the big mackinac lifeboat that had put out from the town with fourteen men at the sweeps when they saw the first rockets go up i suppose there is always something inspiring about a rescue at sea or on the water after all the bravery of the lifeboat man is the true bravery expended to save life not to destroy it certainly they told for months after of how the rescue boat came out to the mariposa bell i suppose that when they put her in the water the lifeboat touched it for the first time since the old mcdonald government placed her on lake wisanati anyway the water poured in at every seam but not for a moment even with two miles of water between them and the steamer did the rovers pause for that by the time they were halfway there the water was almost up to the thwarts but they drove her on panting and exhausted for mind you if you haven't been in a full boat like that for years rowing takes it out of you the rovers stuck to their task they threw the ballast over and chucked into the water the heavy cork jackets and lifebelts that encumbered their movements there was no thought of turning back they were nearer to the steamer than the shore hang to it boys called the crowd from the steamers deck and hang they did they were almost exhausted when they got them men leaning from the steamer threw them ropes and one by one every man was hauled aboard just as the lifeboat sank under their feet saved by heaven saved by one of the smartest pieces of rescue work ever seen on the lake there's no use describing it you need to see rescue work of this kind by lifeboats to understand it nor were the lifeboat crew the only ones that distinguished themselves boat after boat and canoe after canoe had put out from their opposite to the help of the steamer they got them all pupkin the other bank teller with a face like a horse who hadn't gone on the excursion as soon as he knew that the boat was signaling for help and that miss lawson was sending up rockets rushed for a rowboat grabbed an ore two would have hampered him and paddled madly out into the lake he struck right out into the dark with the crazy skiff almost sinking beneath his feet but they got him they rescued him they watched him almost dead with exhaustion make his way to the steamer where he was hauled up with ropes saved saved they might have gone on that way half the night picking up the rescuers only at the very moment when the tenth load of people left for the shore just as suddenly and saucily as you please up came the mariposa bell from the mud bottom and floated floated why of course she did if you take a hundred and fifty people off a steamer that has sunk and if you get a man as shrewd as mr smith to plug the timber seams with mallet and marlin and if you turn ten bansmen of the mariposa band onto your hand pump on the bow of the lower decks float why what else can she do then if you stuff in hemlock into the embers of the fire that you were raking out till it hums and crackles under the boiler it won't be long before you hear the propeller thud thudding at the stern again and before the long roar of the steam whistle echoes over to the town and so the mariposa bell with all steam up again and with the long train of sparks careering from the funnel is heading for the town but no christie johnson at the wheel in the pilot house this time smith get smith is the cry can he take her in well now ask a man who has had steamers sink on him in half the lakes from to miscoming to the bay if he can take her in ask a man who has run a york boat down the rapids of the moose when the ice is moving if he can grip the steering wheel of the mariposa bell so there she steams safe and sound to the town wharf look at the lights in the crowd if only the federal census taker could count us now hear them calling and shouting back and forward from the deck to the shore listen there is the rattle of the shore ropes as they get them ready and there's the mariposa band actually forming in a circle on the upper deck just as she docks and the leader with his baton one two ready now oh canada end of chapter three