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+Project Gutenberg Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, by Stephen Leacock
+#2 in our series by Stephen Leacock
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+Title: Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town
+
+Author: Stephen Leacock
+
+Release Date: November, 2002  [Etext #3533]
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+
+Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town
+
+by Stephen Leacock, 1869-1944
+
+
+
+
+     Preface
+
+I    The Hostelry of Mr. Smith
+II   The Speculations of Jefferson Thorpe
+III  The Marine Excursion of the Knights of Pythias
+IV   The Ministrations of the Rev. Mr. Drone
+V    The Whirlwind Campaign in Mariposa
+VI   The Beacon on the Hill
+VII  The Extraordinary Entanglement of Mr. Pupkin
+VIII The Fore-ordained Attachment of Zena Pepperleigh and Peter Pupkin
+IX   The Mariposa Bank Mystery
+X    The Great Election in Missinaba County
+XI   The Candidacy of Mr. Smith
+XII  L'Envoi. The Train to Mariposa
+
+
+
+Preface
+
+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 Swanmoor, Hants, England, on December 30, 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, business men, 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 seemed 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 in disgust, 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, street-car conductors, and other salaried
+officials of the neighbourhood, while I am able to mix with the
+poorer of the business men 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 business man knows in his whole life. I thus have
+what the business man 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 task 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 folk-lore 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 Encyclopaedia
+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 and 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 gaiters 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
+Bagshaw and Judge Pepperleigh and 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 ado to know them. Mr. Pupkin is
+found whenever a Canadian bank opens a branch in a county town and
+needs a teller. As for Mr. Smith, with his two hundred and eighty
+pounds, his hoarse voice, his loud check suit, 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 of the
+hotel business.
+
+The inspiration of the book,--a land of hope and sunshine where
+little towns 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 and 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.
+
+
+
+ONE
+
+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 Belle except to "run trips" on the first of July and 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 Wissanotti and the
+river running out of it the Ossawippi, 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, "Eliot's Drug Store." But I
+suppose this is just the same in every one else's town as in mine, so
+I need lay 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 barber shop over on its face it wouldn't reach half way
+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 at 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 is the Post
+Office and the Fire Hall and the Young Men's Christian Association
+and the office of the Mariposa Newspacket,--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 verandahs, 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 chequered waistcoat on the steps of his hostelry, and perhaps,
+further up the street, Lawyer Macartney going for his afternoon mail,
+or the Rev. Mr. Drone, the Rural Dean of the Church of England
+Church, going home to get his fishing rod after a mothers' auxiliary
+meeting.
+
+But this quiet is mere appearance. In reality, and to those who know
+it, the place is a perfect hive of activity. Why, 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 Newspacket
+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 planing 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 rushing go-a-head 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 and the five and ten cent store--and amusements!
+well, now! lacrosse, baseball, excursions, dances, the Fireman's Ball
+every winter and the Catholic picnic every summer; and music--the
+town band in the park every Wednesday evening, and the Oddfellows'
+brass band on the street every other Friday; the Mariposa Quartette,
+the Salvation Army--why, after a few months' residence 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 round five
+thousand. 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 Newspacket makes a
+careful reestimate (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 figures 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 "demised" 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 townsman 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 Ossawippi. 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 neighbours 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 seventeen 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
+and 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 and 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 power house on the lower Ossawippi nineteen miles
+away. But, somehow, though it starts off as electricity from the
+Ossawippi 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 shanty-men come down from the lumber
+woods and lie round drunk on the sidewalk outside of Smith's
+Hotel--and that's spring time. Mariposa is then a fierce, dangerous
+lumber town, calculated to terrorize the soul of a newcomer who does
+not understand that this also is only an appearance and that
+presently the rough-looking shanty-men will change their clothes and
+turn back again into farmers.
+
+Then the sun shines warmer and the maple trees come out and Lawyer
+Macartney puts on his tennis trousers, and that's summer time. 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 Belle churns the waters of the Wissanotti into
+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 Pythias
+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 naphtha lamp 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
+half way down the Main Street--or, if you like, half way 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 (two hundred
+and eighty pounds as tested on Netley's scales). It is not merely his
+costume, though the chequered waistcoat of dark blue with a flowered
+pattern forms, with his shepherd's plaid trousers, his grey spats and
+patent-leather boots, a colour 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 over-dressed
+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 as 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 are 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? "JOS. SMITH,
+PROP." Nothing more, and yet the thing was a flash of genius. Other
+men who had had the hotel before Mr. Smith had called it by such
+feeble names as the Royal Hotel and the Queen's and the Alexandria.
+Every one of them failed. When Mr. Smith took over the hotel he
+simply put up the sign with "JOS. SMITH, PROP.," and then stood
+underneath in the sunshine as a living proof that a man who weighs
+nearly three hundred 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 adviser who had 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 as beside the decisions of
+the License Commissioners of Missinaba 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 Pepperleigh, the district judge in Missinaba County,
+outside of it? The more so inasmuch 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
+Pepperleigh, the judge of the court, and Macartney, the prosecuting
+attorney, were both safely in the bar, or the bar parlour, did the
+proprietor venture to close up. Yet on this fatal night Pepperleigh
+and Macartney 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 adviser.
+
+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 that 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 parlour."
+
+The voice of Mr. Smith is of a deep guttural such as Plancon or
+Edouard de Reske 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 hotelkeeper
+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
+effected in the history of licensed liquor. When I say that it was
+out of the agitation of this situation that Smith's Ladies' and
+Gent's 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 and the
+cigar case in it, and so to the bar and thence 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.
+
+To-day 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 Mullins and George Duff, the two bank managers, were both
+present. Mullins is a rather short, rather round, smooth-shaven man
+of less than forty, 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 a bank 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. Diston, 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.
+Diston 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. Diston.
+
+Still more noticeable, perhaps, was the quiet, sallow looking man
+dressed in black, with black gloves and with black silk hat heavily
+craped and placed hollow-side-up on a chair. This was Mr. Golgotha
+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, as 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 will have to
+quit. I've got an idee that I think's good every time."
+
+"Could you run a hotel in the city?" asked Mullins.
+
+"I could," said Mr. Smith. "I'll tell you. There's big things doin'
+in the hotel business right now, big chances if you go into it right.
+Hotels in the city is branching out. Why, you take the dining-room
+side of it," continued Mr. Smith, looking round at the group,
+"there's thousands in it. The old plan's all gone. Folks won't eat
+now in an ordinary dining-room with a high ceiling and windows. You
+have to get 'em 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 'em Rats' Coolers. And
+for light meals they want a Caff, a real French Caff, 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 to the city that's the kind of place I mean
+to run. What's yours, Gol? 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 in 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
+navvies 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 VII., 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 two hundred and eighty 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, bet it 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 charwomen, turned into the hotel,
+scrubbed it from top to bottom. A vacuum cleaner, the first seen in
+Mariposa, hissed and screamed in the corridors. Forty brass beds were
+imported from the city, not, of course, for the guests to sleep in,
+but to keep them out. A bar-tender 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 serge, light as gossamer; chequered
+waistcoats with a pattern for every day in the week; fedora hats
+light as autumn leaves; four-in-hand ties of saffron and myrtle green
+with a diamond pin the size of a hazel nut. On his fingers there were
+as many gems as would grace a native prince of India; across his
+waistcoat lay a gold watch-chain in 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 ten men to the bar every evening.
+
+Every morning Mr. Smith was shaved by Jefferson Thorpe, across the
+way. All that art could do, all that Florida water could effect, was
+lavished on his person.
+
+Mr. Smith became a local character. Mariposa was at his feet. All the
+reputable business-men drank at Mr. Smith's bar, and in the little
+parlour 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 askance at the blazing lights and the surging
+crowd of Mr. Smith's saloon. They preached against him. When the Rev.
+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 "Lo what now
+doeth Abiram in the land of Melchisideck Kings Eight and Nine?" and it
+was perfectly plain that what was meant was, "Lo, 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 whirled 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 d'you charge 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 whirled 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 forty 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
+Oddfellow, a Forester, A Knight of Pythias 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 Oddfellows held their annual banquet at Smith's
+Hotel and the Oyster Supper of the Knights of Pythias 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 Pepperleigh 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 in
+to the "rotunda" 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 honour. It was too much for him to feel
+that Judge Pepperleigh might be out on the sidewalk thirsty at
+midnight, that the night hands of the Times-Herald on Wednesday 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 Golgotha
+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 Pepperleigh learned that Mr. Smith had
+subscribed a hundred dollars for the Liberal party and at once fined
+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 ten 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 close down till I'm ready to
+close down. I've got an idee. You wait and I'll show you."
+
+And beyond that, not another word did Mr. Smith say on the subject.
+
+But within forty-eight 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 blue prints
+in his hand. There was an engineer taking the street level with a
+theodolite, and a gang of navvies with shovels digging like fury as
+if to dig out the back foundations of the hotel.
+
+"That'll fool 'em," said Mr. Smith.
+
+Half the town was gathered round the hotel crazy with excitement. But
+not a word would the proprietor say. Great dray loads of square
+timber, and two-by-eight pine joists kept arriving from the planing
+mill. There was a pile of matched spruce sixteen 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 were
+they. Below it, you could see the basement shaping itself, with a low
+ceiling like a vault and big beams running across, dressed, smoothed,
+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
+seventeenth 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 caff--like what they have in the
+city--a ladies' and gent's caff, and that underneath (what's yours,
+Mr. Mullins?) is a Rats' 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
+caff 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 stationery was changed. The place was now Smith's Summer
+Pavilion. It was advertised in the city as Smith's Tourists'
+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 maskinonge (piscis
+mariposis) of Lake Wissanotti.
+
+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 caff! that, of course, was the crowning glory of the thing,
+that and the Rats' 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 saturnine countenance, and a moustache and imperial that
+recalled the late Napoleon III. No one knew where Mr. Smith got him.
+Some people in the town said he was a French marquis. Others said he
+was a count and explained the difference.
+
+No one in Mariposa had ever seen anything like the caff. 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 to the broiling iron; you could watch a buckwheat pancake
+whirled into existence under your eyes and see fowls' legs devilled,
+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 to-day, 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, "Voila, m'sieu,
+la carte du jour."
+
+Mr. Smith, by the way, encouraged the use of the French language in
+the caff. He viewed it, of course, solely in its relation to the
+hotel business, and, I think, regarded it as a recent invention.
+
+"It's comin' in all the time in the city," he said, "and y'aint
+expected to understand it."
+
+Mr. Smith would take the carte between his finger and thumb and stare
+at it. It was all covered with such devices as Potage la
+Mariposa--Filet Mignon a la proprietaire--Cotellete a la Smith, and
+so on.
+
+But the greatest thing about the caff were the prices. Therein
+lay, as everybody saw at 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 caff for a quarter.
+
+"No, sir," Mr. Smith said stoutly, "I ain't going to try to raise no
+prices on the public. The hotel's always been a quarter and the
+caff's a quarter."
+
+Full? Full of people?
+
+Well, I should think so! From the time the caff opened at 11 till it
+closed at 8.30, you could hardly find a table. Tourists, visitors,
+travellers, and half the people of Mariposa crowded at the little
+tables; crockery rattling, glasses tinkling on trays, 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 gay from morning to night, and even noisy in its
+hilarity.
+
+Noisy, yes; but if you wanted 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 Rats' 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 Amontillado Fino
+done in gilt on a black ground, tall steins filled with German beer
+soft as moss, and a German waiter noiseless as moving foam. He who
+entered the Rats' Cooler at three of a summer afternoon was buried
+there for the day. Mr. Golgotha 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 caff and the
+Rats' Cooler, Mr. Smith would say:
+
+"Billy, just wait till I get the license renood, and I'll close 
+up this damn caff so tight they'll never know what hit her.
+What did that lamb cost? Fifty cents a pound, was it? I figure it,
+Billy, that every one of them hogs eats about a dollar's worth a grub
+for every twenty-five cents they pay on it. As for Alf--by gosh, I'm
+through with him."
+
+But that, of course, was only a confidential matter as 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 twenty 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 license 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 caff 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 Newspacket. I suppose there
+wasn't a greater temperance advocate in town. Yet Alphonse queered
+him with an Omelette a la License in one meal.
+
+Or take Pepperleigh himself, the judge of the Mariposa court. He was
+put to the bad with a game pie,--pate normand aux fines herbes--the
+real thing, as good as a trip to Paris in itself. After eating it,
+Pepperleigh 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 Ossawippi.
+
+Three members of the town council were converted with a Dindon farci
+a la Josh Smith.
+
+And then, finally, Mr. Diston 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, every one knew that the license question was practically
+settled. The petition was all over the town. It was printed in
+duplicate at the Newspacket and you could see it lying on the counter
+of every shop in Mariposa. Some of the people signed it twenty or
+thirty times.
+
+It was the right kind of document too. It began--"Whereas in the
+bounty of providence the earth putteth 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 three thousand 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 ten 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 caff 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 caff and the
+Rats' Cooler and start counting up the books."
+
+And Billy said: "Will I write the letters for the palms and the
+tables and the stuff to go back?"
+
+And Mr. Smith said: "Get 'em 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 realised
+that the hotel business formed the 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'em up. I ain't going to do it. It
+ain't right and I won't do it. They got me the license for to keep
+the caff and I'm going to keep the caff. I don't need to close her.
+The bar's good for anything from forty to a hundred a day now, with
+the Rats' Cooler going good, and that caff will stay right here."
+
+And stay it did.
+
+There it stands, mind you, to this day. You've only to step round the
+corner of Smith's Hotel on the side street and read the sign: LADIES'
+AND GENT'S CAFE, just as large and as imposing as ever.
+
+Mr. Smith said that he'd keep the caff, and when he saida thing he
+meant it!
+
+Of course there were changes, small changes.
+
+I don't say, mind you, that the fillet de beef that you get there now
+is perhaps quite up to the level of the filet de boeufs aux
+champignons of the days of glory.
+
+No doubt the lamb chops in Smith's Caff are often very much the same,
+nowadays, as the lamb chops of the Mariposa House or the Continental.
+
+Of course, things like Omelette aux Trufles 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 "Alf had to go back to his folks in the
+old country."
+
+So, too, when Alf left, the use of the French language, as such, fell
+off tremendously in the caff. Even now they use it to some extent.
+You can still get fillet de beef, and saucisson au juice, 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 caff 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. Every one 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.
+
+
+
+TWO
+
+The Speculations of Jefferson Thorpe
+
+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 Thorpe reached what you
+might call public importance in Mariposa.
+
+Of course everybody knew Jeff and his little barber shop that stood
+just across the street from Smith's Hotel. Everybody knew him and
+everybody got shaved there. From early morning, when the commercial
+travellers off the 6.30 express got shaved into the resemblance of
+human beings, there were always people going in and out of the barber
+shop.
+
+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 and the Florida water and the double extract of hyacinth,
+the little shop seemed multi-coloured and luxurious enough for the
+annex of a Sultan's harem.
+
+But what I mean is that, till the mining boom, Jefferson Thorpe never
+occupied a position of real prominence in Mariposa. You couldn't, for
+example, have compared him with a man like Golgotha Gingham, who, as
+undertaker, stood in a direct relation to life and death, or to
+Trelawney, 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 "clean up" 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
+head set 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
+Thorpe with his little black scull 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 pigeon holes with individual shaving mugs. There
+must be ever so many of them, fifteen or sixteen. 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 has been
+no bath inside the partition for twenty years--only old newspapers
+and a mop. 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, $1.00.
+
+They said commonly in Mariposa that Jeff made money out of the barber
+shop. 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 hair-cut fifteen (or the two, if 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 twenty-five 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 customerand talked to him in a soft 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 drowse of conversation.
+
+At such hours, the Mariposa barber shop 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 Newspacket 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's shave than you
+get in days of laborious research in an encyclopaedia. 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 stropped the razor, and in whose ear he would whisper:
+"I see where Saint 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 Squirl' run a dead heat for the King's Plate."
+
+To a humble intellect like mine he would explain in full the
+relations of the Keesar to the German Rich Dog.
+
+But first and foremost, Jeff's specialty in the way of conversation
+was finance and 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 "clean up." 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 barber shop,--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 at a cent apiece 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 wheat on margin and turn it over
+in twenty-four hours. He did it too. Only somehow when it was turned
+over it came upside down on top of the hens.
+
+After that the hen house 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 Yukon.
+
+So you can understand that when the mining boom struck Mariposa,
+Jefferson Thorpe 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 knew
+Rockefeller or Carnegie or anyone might be on it! Here was the
+wealth of Calcutta, as the Mariposa Newspacket 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 ten
+drinks to the pound.
+
+The fever just caught the town and ran through it! Within a fortnight
+they put a partition down Robertson's Coal and Wood Office and opened
+the Mariposa Mining Exchange, and just about every man on the Main
+Street started buying scrip. Then presently young Fizzlechip, who had
+been teller in Mullins's Bank and that everybody had thought a
+worthless jackass before, came back from the Cobalt country with a
+fortune, and loafed round in the Mariposa House in English khaki and
+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 Eliot mortgaged the inside of the drug store
+and jammed it into Twin Tamagami. Pete Glover at the hardware store
+bought Nippewa stock at thirteen cents and sold it to his brother at
+seventeen and bought it back in less than a week at nineteen. They
+didn't care! They took a chance. Judge Pepperleigh put the rest of
+his wife's money into Temiskaming Common, and Lawyer Macartney got
+the fever, too, and put every cent that his sister possessed into
+Tulip Preferred.
+
+And even when young Fizzlechip 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 Monte Carlo 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 and the north country. He knew what it was to eat flour-baked
+dampers under the lee side of a canoe propped among the underbrush,
+and to drink the last drop of whiskey within fifty miles. Mr. Smith
+had mighty little use for the north. But what he did do, was to buy
+up enough early potatoes to send fifteen carload lots into Cobalt at
+a profit of five dollars a bag.
+
+Mr. Smith, I say, hung back. But Jeff Thorpe was in the mining boom
+right from the start. He bought in on the Nippewa mine even before
+the interim prospectus was out. He took a "block" of 100 shares of
+Abbitibbi Development at fourteen cents, and he and Johnson, the
+livery stablekeeper next door, formed a syndicate and got a thousand
+shares of Metagami Lake at 3 1/4 cents and then "unloaded" them on
+one of the sausage men at Netley's butcher shop at a clear cent per
+cent advance.
+
+Jeff would open the little drawer below the mirror in the barber shop
+and show you all kinds and sorts of Cobalt country mining
+certificates,--blue ones, pink ones, green ones, with outlandish and
+fascinating names on them that ran clear from the Mattawa 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 feller 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, what's two hundred 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 capitalists not to make money when they
+might, till I heard the accounts of Jeff's different mines. Take the
+case of Corona Jewel. There was a good mine, 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'd take a look at the pink and blue certificates of the Corona
+Jewel and slam the drawer on them in 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 from
+making a fortune for its holders.
+
+"The only trouble with that mine," said Jeff, "is they won't go deep
+enough. They followed the vein down to where it kind o' thinned out
+and then they quit. If they'd just go right into her good, they'd 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 thirty-two, and she stayed right there
+tight, like she was stuck. Then a bunch of these fellers in the city
+started to drive her down and they got her pushed down to
+twenty-four, and I held on to her and they shoved her down to
+twenty-one. This morning they've got her down to sixteen, 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 boughten in Johnson's shares, and the whole of
+Netley's, 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 at his 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 Newspacket, that they had struck a
+vein of silver in the Northern Star as thick as a sidewalk, and that
+the stock had jumped to seventeen 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 scrip
+in his hand that was worth forty thousand dollars!
+
+Excitement! It was all over the town in a minutes. They ran off a
+news extra at the Mariposa Newspacket, and in less than no time there
+wasn't standing room in the barber shop, 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 caff, with speeches, and the
+Mariposa band outside.
+
+And the queer thing was that the very next afternoon was the funeral
+of young Fizzlechip, 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'd
+said to himself--a perfect Iliad--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 Ed Moore's studio (upstairs
+over Netley's). 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 meant 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 all so separate and so
+different--not a bit like the people in the cities--that 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 barber shop in a hat at least six inches wider than what they
+wear 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 recognised 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 travellers would
+stand round in the Exchange calling up all sorts of impossible
+villages, and waiting about so pleasant and genial!--it made one
+realize how naturally good-tempered men are. And then when Myra would
+go off duty and Miss Cleghorn, 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
+Cleghorn, 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 Methodist Social! Simply genius!
+And when she acted Portia 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 coloured 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 and 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 Carnegie or Rockefeller 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 as 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 business men in America, and that touches
+you. No, they asked no guarantee. Just send the money whether by
+express order or by bank draft or cheque, 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 insurrectos. You could
+see it all there in the pictures--tobacco plants and the
+insurrectos--everything. They made no rash promises, just admitted
+straight out that the enterprise might realise 400 per cent. or might
+conceivably make less. There was no hint of more.
+
+So within a month, everybody in Mariposa knew that Jeff Thorpe was
+"in Cuban lands" and would probably clean up half a million by New
+Year's. You couldn't have failed to know it. All round the little
+shop there were pictures of banana groves and the harbour of Habana,
+and Cubans in white suits and scarlet sashes, smoking cigarettes in
+the sun and too ignorant to know that you can make four hundred per
+cent. 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 five
+hundred 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 Thorpe had sold out of Cobalts 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've
+felt it about people that you know. Anyhow, they asked him about the
+climate, and yellow fever and what the negroes were like and all that
+sort of thing.
+
+"This Cubey, 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 lands should form the goal of his thought when,
+if he knew it, the little shop and the sunlight of Mariposa was so
+much better.
+
+In fact, I had perhaps borne him a grudge for what seemed to me his
+perpetual interest in the great capitalists. He always had some item
+out of the paper about them.
+
+"I see where this here Carnegie has 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's 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 through 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 door as
+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 chequered 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 favourite 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 'em," 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, to those as don't want it, every time. They give it to these
+professors and to this research and 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 Cubey, I'd give it straight to the poor, yes, sir--divide
+it 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 ahold 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 draw up
+a document that was to give an acre of banana land in Cuba to every
+idiot in Missinaba 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 forty thousand 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 and the oyster supper and the Mariposa band. It is strange how
+quiet these things look, the other way round.
+
+You remember the Cuban Land frauds in New York and Porforio Gomez
+shooting the detective, and him and Maximo Morez getting clear away
+with two hundred thousand? No, of course you don't; why, even in the
+city papers it only filled an inch or two of type, and anyway 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 shop's open
+till eleven every night now, and Jeff is shaving away to pay back
+that five hundred that Johnson, the livery man, 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's caff 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 in the
+barber shop you couldn't hear his name for the cackling.
+
+
+
+THREE
+
+The Marine Excursions of the Knights of Pythias
+
+Half-past six on a July morning! The Mariposa Belle is at the wharf,
+decked in flags, with steam up ready to start.
+
+Excursion day!
+
+Half past six on a July morning, and Lake Wissanotti lying in the sun
+as calm as glass. The opal colours of the morning light are shot from
+the surface of the water.
+
+Out on the lake the last thin threads of the mist are 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 Wissanotti 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 in peaked 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 Delhi Durbar. Don't! I wouldn't look at them. I'd shut
+my eyes! For light and colour give me every time an excursion out of
+Mariposa down the lake to the Indian's Island out of sight in the
+morning mist. Talk of your Papal Zouaves and your Buckingham Palace
+Guard! I want to see the Mariposa band in uniform and the Mariposa
+Knights of Pythias 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 at 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 Netley's, 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 caff with another basket--indubitably lager beer; and behind him,
+the bar-tender 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
+Hussell the editor of the Newspacket, wearing a blue ribbon on his
+coat, for the Mariposa Knights of Pythias are, by their constitution,
+dedicated to temperance; and there's Henry Mullins, the manager of
+the Exchange Bank, also a Knight of Pythias, with a small flask of
+Pogram's 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 bass as lie among the rocks
+at Indian's Island), and with a trolling line in case of maskinonge,
+and a landing net in case of pickerel, and with his eldest daughter,
+Lilian Drone, in case of young men. There never was such a fisherman
+as the Rev. Rupert Drone.
+
+
+Perhaps I ought to explain that when I speak of the excursion as
+being of the Knights of Pythias, the thing must not be understood in
+any narrow sense. In Mariposa practically everybody belongs to the
+Knights of Pythias 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 seventeenth 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 heartiness 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 Bryan and the Philippine
+Islands. Then you learn for the first time that Jeff Thorpe's 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 is Mariposa,--on the fourth of July.
+
+But wait, just wait, if you feel anxious about the solidity of the
+British connection, till the twelfth of the month, when everybody is
+wearing an orange streamer in his coat and the Orangemen (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 Pythias
+and the Masons and Oddfellows, just as they all belong to the Snow
+Shoe Club and the Girls' Friendly Society.
+
+And meanwhile the whistle of the steamer has blown again for a
+quarter to seven:--loud and long this time, for any one not here now
+is late for certain; unless he should happen to come down in the last
+fifteen 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
+marvellous thing about the Mariposa Belle.
+
+I don't know,--I have never known,--where the steamers like the
+Mariposa Belle come from. Whether they are built by Harland and Wolff
+of Belfast, or whether, on the other hand, they are not built by
+Harland and Wolff of Belfast, is more than one would like to say
+offhand.
+
+The Mariposa Belle 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 snowdrift against the windows of the pilot
+house, she looks a pathetic little thing the size of a butternut.
+But in the summer time, 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 Belle and the Lusitania.
+Each one is a big steamer and that's all you can say.
+
+Nor do her measurements help you much. She draws about eighteen
+inches forward, and more than that,--at least half an inch more,
+astern, and when she's loaded down with an excursion crowd she draws
+a 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 water line, is the place
+where the crew sleep. What with steps and stairs and passages and
+piles of cordwood for the engine,--oh no, I guess Harland and Wolff
+didn't build her. They couldn't have.
+
+Yet even with a huge boat like the Mariposa Belle, 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 Bank are both there standing side by
+side. But one of them,--the one with the cameo pin and the long face
+like a horse,--is going, and the other,--with the other cameo pin and
+the face like another horse,--is not. In the same way, Hussell of the
+Newspacket is going, but his brother, beside him, isn't. Lilian 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 Belle 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 Oddfellows' 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 Nippewa and Tecumseh Streets (he indicated the very
+spot) and asked: "Are you going to take in the excursion to-morrow?"
+and he had said, just as simply as he was talking when narrating it:
+"No." And ten minutes after that, at the corner of Dalhousie and
+Brock Streets (he offered to lead a party of verification to the
+precise place) somebody else had stopped him and asked: "Well, are
+you going on the steamer trip to-morrow?" Again he had answered:
+"No," apparently almost in the same tone as before.
+
+He said afterwards that when he heard the rumour of the accident it
+seemed like the finger of Providence, and fell on his knees in
+thankfulness.
+
+There was the similar case of Morison (I mean the one in Glover's
+hardware store that married one of the Thompsons). 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 Lusitania 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 Morison 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 fire bell 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 Mackinaw life-boat go plunging out into the lake
+with seven sweeps to a side and the foam clear to the gunwale with
+the lifting stroke of fourteen men!
+
+But, dear me, I am 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 all so 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 Newspacket
+said: "The boat will leave sharp at seven;" and the advertising
+posters on the telegraph poles on Missinaba Street that began "Ho,
+for Indian's 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 Belle sailed off
+in her cloud of flags, and the band of the Knights of Pythias, timing
+it to a nicety, broke into the "Maple Leaf for Ever!"
+
+I suppose that all excursions when they start are much the same.
+Anyway, on the Mariposa Belle 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 seemed 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 round 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 and the coils of rope.
+
+And upstairs on the after deck there were Lilian Drone and
+Miss Lawson, the high school teacher, with a book of German
+poetry,--Gothey I think it was,--and the bank teller and the
+younger men.
+
+In the centre, 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. Golgotha 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 or professional
+suit, but a soft clinging effect as of 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 knowed that you went on to the water at all, Gol," said Mr.
+Smith, breaking in.
+
+"Ah, not now," explained 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 keep him in shape."
+
+"Was you camping?" asked Mr. Smith.
+
+"We camped at night," assented 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
+Belle. They passed Poplar 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 Champlain had landed there with his French
+explorers three hundred 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
+that 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 Belle steamed on down the
+lake, they passed the Old Indian Portage where the great grey 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 that it was just here that a party of five hundred
+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 that it reminded him of Xenophon leading his ten thousand
+Greeks over the hill passes of Armenia down to the sea. Dr.
+Gallagher said the he had often wished he could have seen and spoken
+to Champlain, and Dean Drone said how much he regretted to have never
+known Xenophon.
+
+And then after that they fell to 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 arrow heads 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 some time
+between the Infant Class and the Mothers' 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
+Champlain crossing the rock divide.
+
+Mr. Smith turned his head and looked at the divide for half a second
+and then said he had crossed a worse one up north back of the
+Wahnipitae and that the flies were Hades,--and then went on playing
+freezeout poker with the two juniors in 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 Henry Mullins 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 and the sun rose higher and higher, and the
+freshness of the morning changed into the full glare of noon, and
+they went on to where the lake began to narrow in at its foot, just
+where the Indian's Island is, all grass and trees and with a log
+wharf running into the water: Below it the Lower Ossawippi runs out
+of the lake, and quite near are the rapids, and you can see down
+among the trees the red brick of the power house and hear the roar of
+the leaping water.
+
+The Indian's 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 all so quiet and still and unbroken, that Miss
+Cleghorn,--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 and 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 Pepperleigh gave such
+offence by bringing in Conservative politics that a man called
+Patriotus Canadiensis 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
+thirteen and girls over nineteen and all that sort of thing. Sports
+are generally conducted on that plan in Mariposa. It is realized that
+a woman of sixty has an unfair advantage over a mere child.
+
+Dean Drone managed the races and decided the ages and gave out the
+prizes; the Wesleyan 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 lager 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 Belle had floated out on to the lake again and headed
+for the town, twenty 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 Belle. They sat there on
+the benches and the deck chairs in 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 dusk 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 or 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 thud 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 in long-drawn melody:
+"O--Can-a-da--O--Can-a-da."
+
+You may talk as you will about the intoning choirs of your European
+cathedrals, but the sound of "O--Can-a-da," borne 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:
+"O--Can-a-da," 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 Belle 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 Macartney,
+the lawyer, that the boat was sinking, and Macartney said that he
+doubted it very much.
+
+Then somebody came to Judge Pepperleigh and woke him up and said that
+there was six inches of water in the steamer and that she was
+sinking. And Pepperleigh 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 round the boat and everywhere the people
+gathered in groups and talked about it in the angry and excited way
+that people have when a steamer is sinking on one of the lakes like
+Lake Wissanotti.
+
+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 Wissanotti? 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 Wissanotti.
+
+But what does happen is that the Mariposa Belle sinks every now and
+then, and sticks there on the bottom till they get things
+straightened up.
+
+On the lakes round Mariposa, if a person arrives late anywhere and
+explains that the steamer sank, everybody understands the situation.
+
+You see when Harland and Wolff built the Mariposa Belle, 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 Belle must be properly corked,--I think that is 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 that they might be stuck out there on a shoal or a
+mud-bank 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 trained sailors and stewards. But
+out on Lake Wissanotti,--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
+Wissanotti.
+
+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 steamer sank, and seen them bringing up
+all the women on to 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'd had a
+steamer "sink on him" on Lake Nipissing and a still bigger one, a
+side-wheeler, sink on him in Lake Abbitibbi.
+
+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 Belle safe
+and tight on a reed bank.
+
+Really, it made one positively laugh! It seemed so queer and, anyway,
+if a man has a sort of natural courage, danger makes him laugh.
+Danger! pshaw! fiddlesticks! everybody scouted the idea. Why, it is
+just the little things like this that give zest to a day on the
+water.
+
+Within half a minute they were all running round looking for
+sandwiches and cracking jokes and talking of making coffee over the
+remains of the engine fires.
+
+
+I don't need to tell at length how it all happened after that.
+
+I suppose the people on the Mariposa Belle would have had to 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 Belle with
+lanterns that threw the light as they let her down, and the glare
+fell on the water and 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 round 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 marline 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 Mackinaw
+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 Belle.
+
+I suppose that when they put her in the water the lifeboat touched it
+for the first time since the old Macdonald Government placed her on
+Lake Wissanotti.
+
+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 rowers pause for that.
+
+By the time they were half-way 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 fool boat like that for years, rowing takes
+it out of you), the rowers 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 steamer's 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 Mariposa 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 signalling for help and that Miss Lawson was sending up
+rockets,--rushed for a row boat, grabbed an oar (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 Belle 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 marline, and if you turn ten
+bandsmen of the Mariposa band on to 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 Belle, 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 Temiscaming 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 Belle? So there she steams safe and sound to the town wharf!
+
+Look at the lights and 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,--
+
+"O CAN-A-DA!"
+
+
+
+FOUR
+
+The Ministrations of the Rev. Mr. Drone
+
+The Church of England in Mariposa is on a side street, where the
+maple trees are thickest, a little up the hill from the heart of the
+town. The trees above the church and the grass plot that was once the
+cemetery, till they made the new one (the Necropolis, over the brow
+of the hill), fill out the whole corner. Down behind the church, with
+only the driving shed and a lane between, is the rectory. It is a
+little brick house with odd angles. There is a hedge and a little
+gate, and a weeping ash tree with red berries.
+
+At the side of the rectory, churchward, is a little grass lawn with
+low hedges and at the side of that two wild plum trees, that are
+practically always in white blossom. Underneath them is a rustic
+table and chairs, and it is here that you may see Rural Dean Drone,
+the incumbent of the Church of England Church, sitting, in the
+chequered light of the plum tress that is neither sun nor shadow.
+Generally you will find him reading, and when I tell you that at the
+end of the grass plot where the hedge is highest there is a yellow
+bee hive with seven bees that belong to Dean Drone, you will realize
+that it is only fitting that the Dean is reading in the Greek. For
+what better could a man be reading beneath the blossom of the plum
+trees, within the very sound of the bees, than the Pastorals of
+Theocritus? The light trash of modern romance might put a man to
+sleep in such a spot, but with such food for reflection as
+Theocritus, a man may safely close his eyes and muse on what he reads
+without fear of dropping into slumber.
+
+Some men, I suppose, terminate their education when they leave their
+college. Not so Dean Drone. I have often heard him say that if he
+couldn't take a book in the Greek out on the lawn in a spare half
+hour, he would feel lost. It's a certain activity of the brain that
+must be stilled somehow. The Dean, too, seemed to have a native
+feeling for the Greek language. I have often heard people who might
+sit with him on the lawn, ask him to translate some of it. But he
+always refused. One couldn't translate it, he said. It lost so much
+in the translation that it was better not to try. It was far wiser
+not to attempt it. If you undertook to translate it, there was
+something gone, something missing immediately. I believe that many
+classical scholars feel this way, and like to read the Greek just as
+it is, without the hazard of trying to put it into so poor a medium
+as English. So that when Dean Drone said that he simply couldn't
+translate it, I believe he was perfectly sincere.
+
+Sometimes, indeed, he would read it aloud. That was another matter.
+Whenever, for example, Dr. Gallagher--I mean, of course, old Dr.
+Gallagher, not the young doctor (who was always out in the country in
+the afternoon)--would come over and bring his latest Indian relics
+to show to the Dean, the latter always read to him a passage or two.
+As soon as the doctor laid his tomahawk on the table, the Dean would
+reach for his Theocritus. I remember that on the day when Dr.
+Gallagher brought over the Indian skull that they had dug out of the
+railway embankment, and placed it on the rustic table, the Dean read
+to him so long from Theocritus that the doctor, I truly believe,
+dozed off in his chair. The Dean had to wait and fold his hands with
+the book across his knee, and close his eyes till the doctor should
+wake up again. And the skull was on the table between them, and from
+above the plum blossoms fluttered down, till they made flakes on it
+as white as Dr. Gallagher's hair.
+
+I don't want you to suppose that the Rev. Mr. Drone spent the
+whole of his time under the trees. Not at all. In point of fact, the
+rector's life was one round of activity which lie himself might
+deplore but was powerless to prevent. He had hardly sat down beneath
+the trees of an afternoon after his mid-day meal when there was the
+Infant Class at three, and after that, with scarcely an hour between,
+the Mothers' Auxiliary at five, and the next morning the Book Club,
+and that evening the Bible Study Class, and the next morning the
+Early Workers' Guild at eleven-thirty. The whole week was like that,
+and if one found time to sit down for an hour or so to recuperate it
+was the most one could do. After all, if a busy man spends the little
+bit of leisure that he gets in advanced classical study, there is
+surely no harm in it. I suppose, take it all in all, there wasn't a
+busier man than the Rural Dean among the Anglican clergy of the
+diocese.
+
+If the Dean ever did snatch a half-day from his incessant work, he
+spent it in fishing. But not always that, for as likely as not,
+instead of taking a real holiday he would put in the whole afternoon
+amusing the children and the boys that he knew, by making kites and
+toys and clockwork steamboats for them.
+
+It was fortunate for the Dean that he had the strange interest and
+aptitude for mechanical advices which he possessed, or otherwise this
+kind of thing would have been too cruel an imposition. But the Rev.
+Mr. Drone had a curious liking for machinery. I think I never heard
+him preach a better sermon than the one on Aeroplanes (Lo, what now
+see you on high Jeremiah Two).
+
+So it was that he spent two whole days making a kite with Chinese
+wings for Teddy Moore, the photographer's son, and closed down the
+infant class for forty-eight hours so that Teddy Moore should not
+miss the pleasure of flying it, or rather seeing it flown. It is
+foolish to trust a Chinese kite to the hands of a young child.
+
+In the same way the Dean made a mechanical top for little Marjorie
+Trewlaney, the cripple, to see spun: it would have been unwise to
+allow the afflicted girl to spin it. There was no end to the things
+that Mr. Drone could make, and always for the children. Even when he
+was making the sand-clock for poor little Willie Yodel (who died, you
+know) the Dean went right on with it and gave it to another child
+with just the same pleasure. Death, you know, to the clergy is a
+different thing from what it is to us. The Dean and Mr. Gingham used
+often to speak of it as they walked through the long grass of the new
+cemetery, the Necropolis. And when your Sunday walk is to your wife's
+grave, as the Dean's was, perhaps it seems different to anybody.
+
+The Church of England Church, I said; stood close to the rectory, a
+tall, sweeping church, and inside a great reach of polished cedar
+beams that ran to the point of the roof. There used to stand on the
+same spot the little stone church that all the grown-up people in
+Mariposa still remember, a quaint little building in red and grey
+stone. About it was the old cemetery, but that was all smoothed out
+later into the grass plot round the new church, and the headstones
+laid out flat, and no new graves have been put there for ever so
+long. But the Mariposa children still walk round and read the
+headstones lying flat in the grass and look for the old ones,--
+because some of them are ever so old--forty or fifty years back.
+
+Nor are you to think from all this that the Dean was not a man with
+serious perplexities. You could easily convince yourself of the
+contrary. For if you watched the Rev. Mr. Drone as he sat reading in
+the Greek, you would notice that no very long period every passed
+without his taking up a sheet or two of paper that lay between the
+leaves of the Theocritus and that were covered close with figures.
+
+And these the Dean would lay upon the rustic table, and he would add
+them up forwards and backwards, going first up the column and then
+down it to see that nothing had been left out, and then down it again
+to see what it was that must have been left out.
+
+Mathematics, you will understand, were not the Dean's forte. They
+never were the forte of the men who had been trained at the little
+Anglican college with the clipped hedges and the cricket ground,
+where Rupert Drone had taken the gold medal in Greek fifty-two years
+ago. You will see the medal at any time lying there in its open box
+on the rectory table, in case of immediate need. Any of the Drone
+girls, Lilian, or Jocelyn, or Theodora, would show it to you. But, as
+I say, mathematics were not the rector's forte, and he blamed for it
+(in a Christian spirit, you will understand) the memory of his
+mathematical professor, and often he spoke with great bitterness. I
+have often heard him say that in his opinion the colleges ought to
+dismiss, of course in a Christian spirit, all the professors who are
+not, in the most reverential sense of the term, fit for their jobs.
+
+No doubt many of the clergy of the diocese had suffered more or less
+just as the Dean had from lack of mathematical training. But the Dean
+always felt that his own case was especially to be lamented. For you
+see, if a man is trying to make a model aeroplane--for a poor family
+in the lower part of the town--and he is brought to a stop by the
+need of reckoning the coefficient of torsion of cast-iron rods, it
+shows plainly enough that the colleges are not truly filling their
+divine mission.
+
+
+But the figures that I speak of were not those of the model
+aeroplane. These were far more serious. Night and day they had been
+with the rector now for the best part of ten years, and they grew, if
+anything, more intricate.
+
+If, for example, you try to reckon the debt of a church--a large
+church with a great sweep of polished cedar beams inside, for the
+special glorification of the All Powerful, and with imported tiles on
+the roof for the greater glory of Heaven and with stained-glass
+windows for the exaltation of the All Seeing--if, I say, you try to
+reckon up the debt on such a church and figure out its interest and
+its present worth, less a fixed annual payment, it makes a pretty
+complicated sum. Then if you try to add to this the annual cost of
+insurance, and deduct from it three-quarters of a stipend, year by
+year, and then suddenly remember that three-quarters is too much,
+because you have forgotten the boarding-school fees of the littlest
+of the Drones (including French, as an extra--she must have it, all
+the older girls did), you have got a sum that pretty well defies
+ordinary arithmetic. The provoking part of it was that the Dean knew
+perfectly well that with the help of logarithms he could have done
+the thing in a moment. But at the Anglican college they had stopped
+short at that very place in the book. They had simply explained that
+Logos was a word and Arithmos a number, which at the time, seemed
+amply sufficient.
+
+So the Dean was perpetually taking out his sheets of figures, and
+adding them upwards and downwards, and they never came the same. Very
+often Mr. Gingham, who was a warden, would come and sit beside the
+rector and ponder over the figures, and Mr. Drone would explain that
+with a book of logarithms you could work it out in a moment. You
+would simply open the book and run your finger up the columns (he
+illustrated exactly the way in which the finger was moved), and there
+you were. Mr. Gingham said that it was a caution, and that logarithms
+(I quote his exact phrase) must be a terror.
+
+Very often, too, Nivens, the lawyer, who was a sidesman, and Mullins,
+the manager of the Exchange Bank, who was the chairman of the vestry,
+would come and take a look, at the figures. But they never could make
+much of them, because the stipend part was not a matter that one
+could discuss.
+
+Mullins would notice the item for a hundred dollars due on fire
+insurance and would say; as a business man, that surely that couldn't
+be fire insurance, and the Dean would say surely not, and change it:
+and Mullins would say surely there couldn't be fifty dollars for
+taxes, because there weren't any taxes, and the Dean would admit that
+of course it couldn't be for the taxes. In fact, the truth is that
+the Dean's figures were badly mixed, and the fault lay indubitably
+with the mathematical professor of two generations back.
+
+It was always Mullins's intention some day to look into the finances
+of the church, the more so as his father had been with Dean Drone at
+the little Anglican college with the cricket ground. But he was a
+busy man. As he explained to the rector himself, the banking business
+nowadays is getting to be such that a banker can hardly call even his
+Sunday mornings his own. Certainly Henry Mullins could not. They
+belonged largely to Smith's Hotel, and during the fishing season they
+belonged away down the lake, so far away that practically no one,
+unless it was George Duff of the Commercial Bank, could see them.
+
+But to think that all this trouble had come through the building of
+the new church.
+
+That was the bitterness of it.
+
+For the twenty-five years that Rural Dean Drone had preached in the
+little stone church, it had been his one aim, as he often put it in
+his sermons, to rear a larger Ark in Gideon. His one hope had been to
+set up a greater Evidence, or, very simply stated, to kindle a
+Brighter Beacon.
+
+After twenty-five years of waiting, he had been able at last to
+kindle it. Everybody in Mariposa remembers the building of the
+church. First of all they had demolished the little stone church to
+make way for the newer Evidence. It seemed almost a sacrilege, as
+the Dean himself said, to lay hands on it. Indeed it was at first
+proposed to take the stone of it and build it into a Sunday School,
+as a lesser testimony. Then, when that provided impracticable, it was
+suggested that the stone be reverently fashioned into a wall that
+should stand as a token. And when even that could not be managed, the
+stone of the little church was laid reverently into a stone pile;
+afterwards it was devoutly sold to a building contractor, and, like
+so much else in life, was forgotten.
+
+But the building of the church, no one, I think, will forget. The
+Dean threw himself into the work. With his coat off and his white
+shirt-sleeves conspicuous among the gang that were working at the
+foundations, he set his hand to the shovel, himself guided the
+road-scraper, urging on the horses; cheering and encouraging the men,
+till they begged him to desist. He mingled with the stone-masons,
+advising, helping, and giving counsel, till they pleaded with him to
+rest. He was among the carpenters, sawing, hammering, enquiring,
+suggesting, till they besought him to lay off. And he was night and
+day with the architect's assistants, drawing, planning, revising,
+till the architect told him to cut it out.
+
+So great was his activity, that I doubt whether the new church would
+ever have been finished, had not the wardens and the vestry men
+insisted that Mr. Drone must take a holiday, and sent him on the
+Mackinaw trip up the lakes,--the only foreign travel of the Dean's
+life.
+
+
+So in due time the New Church was built and it towered above the
+maple trees of Mariposa like a beacon on a hill. It stood so high
+that from the open steeple of it, where the bells were, you could see
+all the town lying at its feet, and the farmsteads to the south of
+it, and the railway like a double pencil line, and Lake Wissanotti
+spread out like a map. You could see and appreciate things from the
+height of the new church,--such as the size and the growing wealth of
+Mariposa,--that you never could have seen from the little stone
+church at all.
+
+Presently the church was opened and the Dean preached his first
+sermon in it, and he called it a Greater Testimony, and he said that
+it was an earnest, or first fruit of endeavour, and that it was a
+token or pledge, and he named it also a covenant. He said, too, that
+it was an anchorage and a harbour and a lighthouse as well as being a
+city set upon a hill; and he ended by declaring it an Ark of Refuge
+and notified them that the Bible Class would meet in the basement of
+it on that and every other third Wednesday.
+
+In the opening months of preaching about it the Dean had called the
+church so often an earnest and a pledge and a guerdon and a
+tabernacle, that I think he used to forget that it wasn't paid for.
+It was only when the agent of the building society and a
+representative of the Hosanna Pipe and Steam Organ Co. (Limited),
+used to call for quarterly payments that he was suddenly reminded of
+the fact. Always after these men came round the Dean used to preach a
+special sermon on sin, in the course of which he would mention that
+the ancient Hebrews used to put unjust traders to death,--a thing of
+which he spoke with Christian serenity.
+
+I don't think that at first anybody troubled much about the debt on
+the church. Dean Drone's figures showed that it was only a matter of
+time before it would be extinguished; only a little effort was
+needed, a little girding up of the loins of the congregation and they
+could shoulder the whole debt and trample it under their feet. Let
+them but set their hands to the plough and they could soon guide it
+into the deep water. Then they might furl their sails and sit every
+man under his own olive tree.
+
+Meantime, while the congregation was waiting to gird up its loins,
+the interest on the debt was paid somehow, or, when it wasn't paid,
+was added to the principal.
+
+I don't know whether you have had any experience with Greater
+Testimonies and with Beacons set on Hills. If you have, you will
+realize how, at first gradually, and then rapidly, their position
+from year to year grows more distressing. What with the building loan
+and the organ instalment, and the fire insurance,--a cruel charge,--
+and the heat and light, the rector began to realize as he added up
+the figures that nothing but logarithms could solve them. Then the
+time came when not only the rector, but all the wardens knew and the
+sidesmen knew that the debt was more than the church could carry;
+then the choir knew and the congregation knew and at last everybody
+knew; and there were special collections at Easter and special days of
+giving, and special weeks of tribulation, and special arrangements
+with the Hosanna Pipe and Steam Organ Co. And it was noticed that
+when the Rural Dean announced a service of Lenten Sorrow,--aimed more
+especially at the business men,--the congregation had diminished by
+forty per cent.
+
+I suppose things are just the same elsewhere,--I mean the peculiar
+kind of discontent that crept into the Church of England congregation
+in Mariposa after the setting up of the Beacon. There were those who
+claimed that they had seen the error from the first, though they had
+kept quiet, as such people always do, from breadth of mind. There
+were those who had felt years before how it would end, but their lips
+were sealed from humility of spirit. What was worse was that there
+were others who grew dissatisfied with the whole conduct of the
+church.
+
+Yodel, the auctioneer, for example, narrated how he had been to the
+city and had gone into a service of the Roman Catholic church: I
+believe, to state it more fairly, he had "dropped in,"--the only
+recognized means of access to such a service. He claimed that the
+music that he had heard there was music, and that (outside of his
+profession) the chanting and intoning could not be touched.
+
+Ed Moore, the photographer, also related that he had listened to a
+sermon in the city, and that if anyone would guarantee him a sermon
+like that he would defy you to keep him away from church. Meanwhile,
+failing the guarantee, he stayed away.
+
+The very doctrines were impeached. Some of the congregation began to
+cast doubts on eternal punishment,--doubts so grave as to keep them
+absent from the Lenten Services of Sorrow. Indeed, Lawyer Macartney
+took up the whole question of the Athanasian Creed one afternoon with
+Joe Milligan, the dentist, and hardly left a clause of it intact.
+
+All this time, you will understand, Dean Drone kept on with his
+special services, and leaflets, calls, and appeals went out from the
+Ark of Gideon like rockets from a sinking ship. More and more with
+every month the debt of the church lay heavy on his mind. At times he
+forgot it. At other times he woke up in the night and thought about
+it. Sometimes as he went down the street from the lighted precincts
+of the Greater Testimony and passed the Salvation Army, praying
+around a naphtha lamp under the open sky, it smote him to the heart
+with a stab.
+
+But the congregation were wrong, I think, in imputing fault to the
+sermons of Dean Drone. There I do think they were wrong. I can speak
+from personal knowledge when I say that the rector's sermons were not
+only stimulating in matters of faith, but contained valuable material
+in regard to the Greek language, to modern machinery and to a variety
+of things that should have proved of the highest advantage to the
+congregation.
+
+There was, I say, the Greek language. The Dean always showed the
+greatest delicacy of feeling in regard to any translation in or out
+of it that he made from the pulpit. He was never willing to accept
+even the faintest shade of rendering different from that commonly
+given without being assured of the full concurrence of the
+congregation. Either the translation must be unanimous and without
+contradiction, or he could not pass it. He would pause in his sermon
+and would say: "The original Greek is 'Hoson,' but perhaps you will
+allow me to translate it as equivalent to 'Hoyon.'" And they did. So
+that if there was any fault to be found it was purely on the side of
+the congregation for not entering a protest at the time.
+
+It was the same way in regard to machinery. After all, what better
+illustrates the supreme purpose of the All Wise than such a thing as
+the dynamo or the reciprocating marine engine or the pictures in the
+Scientific American?
+
+Then, too, if a man has had the opportunity to travel and has seen
+the great lakes spread out by the hand of Providence from where one
+leaves the new dock at the Sound to where one arrives safe and
+thankful with one's dear fellow-passengers in the spirit at the
+concrete landing stage at Mackinaw--is not this fit and proper
+material for the construction of an analogy or illustration? Indeed,
+even apart from an analogy, is it not mighty interesting to narrate,
+anyway? In any case, why should the church-wardens have sent the
+rector on the Mackinaw trip, if they had not expected him to make
+some little return for it?
+
+I lay some stress on this point because the criticisms directed
+against the Mackinaw sermons always seemed so unfair. If the rector
+had described his experiences in the crude language of the ordinary
+newspaper, there might, I admit, have been something unfitting about
+it. But he was always careful to express himself in a way that
+showed,--or, listen, let me explain with an example.
+
+"It happened to be my lot some years ago," he would say, "to find
+myself a voyager, just as one is a voyager on the sea of life, on the
+broad expanse of water which has been spread out to the north-west of
+us by the hand of Providence, at a height of five hundred and
+eighty-one feet above the level of the sea,--I refer, I may say, to
+Lake Huron." Now, how different that is from saying: "I'll never
+forget the time I went on the Mackinaw trip." The whole thing has a
+different sound entirely. In the same way the Dean would go on:
+
+"I was voyaging on one of those magnificent leviathans of the
+water,--I refer to the boats of the Northern Navigation Company,--and
+was standing beside the forward rail talking with a dear brother in
+the faith who was journeying westward also--I may say he was a
+commercial traveller,--and beside us was a dear sister in the spirit
+seated in a deck chair, while near us were two other dear souls in
+grace engaged in Christian pastime on the deck,--I allude more
+particularly to the game of deck billiards."
+
+I leave it to any reasonable man whether, with that complete and
+fair-minded explanation of the environment, it was not perfectly
+proper to close down the analogy, as the rector did, with the simple
+words: "In fact, it was an extremely fine morning."
+
+Yet there were some people, even in Mariposa, that took exception and
+spent their Sunday dinner time in making out that they couldn't
+understand what Dean Drone was talking about, and asking one another
+if they knew. Once, as he passed out from the doors of the Greater
+Testimony, the rector heard some one say: "The Church would be all
+right if that old mugwump was out of the pulpit." It went to his
+heart like a barbed thorn, and stayed there.
+
+You know, perhaps, how a remark of that sort can stay and rankle, and
+make you wish you could hear it again to make sure of it, because
+perhaps you didn't hear it aright, and it was a mistake after all.
+Perhaps no one said it, anyway. You ought to have written it down at
+the time. I have seen the Dean take down the encyclopaedia in the
+rectory, and move his finger slowly down the pages of the letter M,
+looking for mugwump. But it wasn't there. I have known him, in his
+little study upstairs, turn over the pages of the "Animals of
+Palestine," looking for a mugwump. But there was none there. It must
+have been unknown in the greater days of Judea.
+
+
+So things went on from month to month, and from year to year, and the
+debt and the charges loomed like a dark and gathering cloud on the
+horizon. I don't mean to say that efforts were not made to face the
+difficulty and to fight it. They were. Time after time the workers of
+the congregation got together and thought out plans for the
+extinction of the debt. But somehow, after every trial, the debt grew
+larger with each year, and every system that could be devised turned
+out more hopeless than the last.
+
+They began, I think, with the "endless chain" of letters of appeal.
+You may remember the device, for it was all-popular in clerical
+circles some ten or fifteen years ago. You got a number of people to
+write each of them three letters asking for ten cents from three each
+of their friends and asking each of them to send on three similar
+letters. Three each from three each, and three each more from each!
+Do you observe the wonderful ingenuity of it? Nobody, I think, has
+forgotten how the Willing Workers of the Church of England Church of
+Mariposa sat down in the vestry room in the basement with a pile of
+stationery three feet high, sending out the letters. Some, I know,
+will never forget it. Certainly not Mr. Pupkin, the teller in the
+Exchange Bank, for it was here that he met Zena Pepperleigh, the
+judge's daughter, for the first time; and they worked so busily that
+they wrote out ever so many letters--eight or nine--in a single
+afternoon, and they discovered that their handwritings were awfully
+alike, which was one of the most extraordinary and amazing
+coincidences, you will admit, in the history of chirography.
+
+But the scheme failed--failed utterly. I don't know why. The letters
+went out and were copied broadcast and recopied, till you could see
+the Mariposa endless chain winding its way towards the Rocky
+Mountains. But they never got the ten cents. The Willing Workers
+wrote for it in thousands, but by some odd chance they never struck
+the person who had it.
+
+Then after that there came a regular winter of effort. First of all
+they had a bazaar that was got up by the Girls' Auxiliary and held in
+the basement of the church. All the girls wore special costumes that
+were brought up from the city, and they had booths, where there was
+every imaginable thing for sale--pincushion covers, and chair covers,
+and sofa covers, everything that you can think of. If the people had
+once started buying them, the debt would have been lifted in no time.
+Even as it was the bazaar only lost twenty dollars.
+
+After that, I think, was the magic lantern lecture that Dean Drone
+gave on "Italy and her Invaders." They got the lantern and the slides
+up from the city, and it was simply splendid. Some of the slides were
+perhaps a little confusing, but it was all there,--the pictures of
+the dense Italian jungle and the crocodiles and the naked invaders
+with their invading clubs. It was a pity that it was such a bad
+night, snowing hard, and a curling match on, or they would have made
+a lot of money out of the lecture. As it was the loss, apart from the
+breaking of the lantern, which was unavoidable, was quite trifling.
+
+
+I can hardly remember all the things that there were after that. I
+recollect that it was always Mullins who arranged about renting the
+hall and printing the tickets and all that sort of thing. His father,
+you remember, had been at the Anglican college with Dean Drone, and
+though the rector was thirty-seven years older than Mullins, he
+leaned upon him, in matters of business, as upon a staff; and though
+Mullins was thirty-seven years younger than the Dean, he leaned
+against him, in matters of doctrine, as against a rock.
+
+At one time they got the idea that what the public wanted was not
+anything instructive but something light and amusing. Mullins said
+that people loved to laugh. He said that if you get a lot of people
+all together and get them laughing you can do anything you like with
+them. Once they start to laugh they are lost. So they got Mr. Dreery,
+the English Literature teacher at the high school, to give an evening
+of readings from the Great Humorists from Chaucer to Adam Smith. They
+came mighty near to making a barrel of money out of that. If the
+people had once started laughing it would have been all over with
+them. As it was I heard a lot of them say that they simply wanted to
+scream with laughter: they said they just felt like bursting into
+peals of laughter all the time. Even when, in the more subtle parts,
+they didn't feel like bursting out laughing, they said they had all
+they could do to keep from smiling. They said they never had such a
+hard struggle in their lives not to smile.
+
+In fact the chairman said when he put the vote of thanks that he was
+sure if people had known what the lecture was to be like there would
+have been a much better "turn-out." But you see all that the people
+had to go on was just the announcement of the name of the lecturer,
+Mr. Dreery, and that he would lecture on English Humour All Seats
+Twenty-five Cents. As the chairman expressed it himself, if the
+people had had any idea, any idea at all, of what the lecture would
+be like they would have been there in hundreds. But how could they
+get an idea that it would be so amusing with practically nothing to
+go upon?
+
+
+After that attempt things seemed to go from bad to worse. Nearly
+everybody was disheartened about it. What would have happened to the
+debt, or whether they would have ever paid it off, is more than I can
+say, if it hadn't occurred that light broke in on Mullins in the
+strangest and most surprising way you can imagine. It happened that
+he went away for his bank holidays, and while he was away he happened
+to be present in one of the big cities and saw how they went at it
+there to raise money. He came home in such a state of excitement that
+he went straight up from the Mariposa station to the rectory, valise
+and all, and he burst in one April evening to where the Rural Dean
+was sitting with the three girls beside the lamp in the front room,
+and he cried out:
+
+"Mr. Drone, I've got it,--I've got a way that will clear the debt
+before you're a fortnight older. We'll have a Whirlwind Campaign in
+Mariposa!"
+
+But stay! The change from the depth of depression to the pinnacle of
+hope is too abrupt. I must pause and tell you in another chapter of
+the Whirlwind Campaign in Mariposa.
+
+
+
+FIVE
+
+The Whirlwind Campaign in Mariposa
+
+It was Mullins, the banker, who told Mariposa all about the plan of a
+Whirlwind Campaign and explained how it was to be done. He'd happened
+to be in one of the big cities when they were raising money by a
+Whirlwind Campaign for one of the universities, and he saw it all.
+
+He said he would never forget the scene on the last day of it, when
+the announcement was made that the total of the money raised was even
+more than what was needed. It was a splendid sight,--the business men
+of the town all cheering and laughing and shaking hands, and the
+professors with the tears streaming down their faces, and the Deans
+of the Faculties, who had given money themselves, sobbing aloud.
+
+He said it was the most moving thing he ever saw.
+
+So, as I said, Henry Mullins, who had seen it, explained to the
+others how it was done. He said that first of all a few of the
+business men got together quietly,--very quietly, indeed the more
+quietly the better,--and talked things over. Perhaps one of them
+would dine,--just quietly,--with another one and discuss the
+situation. Then these two would invite a third man,--possibly even a
+fourth,--to have lunch with them and talk in a general way,--even
+talk of other things part of the time. And so on in this way things
+would be discussed and looked at in different lights and viewed from
+different angles and then when everything was ready they would go at
+things with a rush. A central committee would be formed and
+sub-committees, with captains of each group and recorders and
+secretaries, and on a stated day the Whirlwind Campaign would begin.
+
+Each day the crowd would all agree to meet at some stated place and
+each lunch together,--say at a restaurant or at a club or at some
+eating place. This would go on every day with the interest getting
+keener and keener, and everybody getting more and more excited, till
+presently the chairman would announce that the campaign had succeeded
+and there would be the kind of scene that Mullins had described.
+
+So that was the plan that they set in motion in Mariposa.
+
+
+I don't wish to say too much about the Whirlwind Campaign itself. I
+don't mean to say that it was a failure. On the contrary, in many
+ways it couldn't have been a greater success, and yet somehow it
+didn't seem to work out just as Henry Mullins had said it would. It
+may be that there are differences between Mariposa and the larger
+cities that one doesn't appreciate at first sight. Perhaps it would
+have been better to try some other plan.
+
+Yet they followed along the usual line of things closely enough. They
+began with the regular system of some of the business men getting
+together in a quiet way.
+
+First of all, for example, Henry Mullins came over quietly to Duff's
+rooms, over the Commercial Bank, with a bottle of rye whiskey, and
+they talked things over. And the night after that George Duff came
+over quietly to Mullins's rooms, over the Exchange Bank, with a
+bottle of Scotch whiskey. A few evenings after that Mullins and Duff
+went together, in a very unostentatious way, with perhaps a couple of
+bottles of rye, to Pete Glover's room over the hardware store. And
+then all three of them went up one night with Ed Moore, the
+photographer, to Judge Pepperleigh's house under pretence of having a
+game of poker. The very day after that, Mullins and Duff and Ed
+Moore, and Pete Glover and the judge got Will Harrison, the harness
+maker, to go out without any formality on the lake on the pretext of
+fishing. And the next night after that Duff and Mullins and Ed Moore
+and Pete Glover and Pepperleigh and Will Harrison got Alf Trelawney,
+the postmaster, to come over, just in a casual way, to the Mariposa
+House, after the night mail, and the next day Mullins and Duff and--
+
+But, pshaw! you see at once how the thing is worked. There's no need
+to follow that part of the Whirlwind Campaign further. But it just
+shows the power of organization.
+
+And all this time, mind you, they were talking things over, and
+looking at things first in one light and then in another light,--in
+fact, just doing as the big city men do when there's an important
+thing like this under way.
+
+So after things had been got pretty well into shape in this way, Duff
+asked Mullins one night, straight out, if he would be chairman of the
+Central Committee. He sprung it on him and Mullins had no time to
+refuse, but he put it to Duff straight whether he would be treasurer.
+And Duff had no time to refuse.
+
+
+That gave things a start, and within a week they had the whole
+organization on foot. There was the Grand Central Committee and six
+groups or sub-committees of twenty men each, and a captain for every
+group. They had it all arranged on the lines most likely to be
+effective.
+
+In one group there were all the bankers, Mullins and Duff and Pupkin
+(with the cameo pin), and about four others. They had their
+photographs taken at Ed Moore's studio, taken in a line with a
+background of icebergs--a winter scene--and a pretty penetrating
+crowd they looked, I can tell you. After all, you know, if you get a
+crowd of representative bank men together in any financial deal,
+you've got a pretty considerable leverage right away.
+
+In the second group were the lawyers, Nivens and Macartney and the
+rest--about as level-headed a lot as you'd see anywhere. Get the
+lawyers of a town with you on a thing like this and you'll find
+you've got a sort of brain power with you that you'd never get
+without them.
+
+Then there were the business men--there was a solid crowd for
+you,--Harrison, the harness maker, and Glover, the hardware man, and
+all that gang, not talkers, perhaps, but solid men who can tell you
+to a nicety how many cents there are in a dollar. It's all right to
+talk about education and that sort of thing, but if you want driving
+power and efficiency, get business men. They're seeing it every day
+in the city, and it's just the same in Mariposa. Why, in the big
+concerns in the city, if they found out a man was educated, they
+wouldn't have him,--wouldn't keep him there a minute. That's why the
+business men have to conceal it so much.
+
+Then in the other teams there were the doctors and the newspaper men
+and the professional men like Judge Pepperleigh and Yodel the
+auctioneer.
+
+
+It was all organized so that every team had its headquarters, two of
+them in each of the three hotels--one upstairs and one down. And it
+was arranged that there would be a big lunch every day, to be held in
+Smith's caff, round the corner of Smith's Northern Health Resort and
+Home of the Wissanotti Angler,--you know the place. The lunch was
+divided up into tables, with a captain for each table to see about
+things to drink, and of course all the tables were in competition
+with one another. In fact the competition was the very life of the
+whole thing.
+
+It's just wonderful how these things run when they're organized. Take
+the first luncheon, for example. There they all were, every man in
+his place, every captain at his post at the top of the table. It was
+hard, perhaps, for some of them to get there. They had very likely to
+be in their stores and banks and offices till the last minute and
+then make a dash for it. It was the cleanest piece of team work you
+ever saw.
+
+You have noticed already, I am sure, that a good many of the captains
+and committee men didn't belong to the Church of England Church.
+Glover, for instance, was a Presbyterian, till they ran the picket
+fence of the manse two feet on to his property, and after that he
+became a free-thinker. But in Mariposa, as I have said, everybody
+likes to be in everything and naturally a Whirlwind Campaign was a
+novelty. Anyway it would have been a poor business to keep a man out
+of the lunches merely on account of his religion. I trust that the
+day for that kind of religious bigotry is past.
+
+Of course the excitement was when Henry Mullins at the head of the
+table began reading out the telegrams and letters and messages. First
+of all there was a telegram of good wishes from the Anglican Lord
+Bishop of the Diocese to Henry Mullins and calling him Dear Brother
+in Grace the Mariposa telegraph office is a little unreliable and it
+read: "Dear Brother in grease," but that was good enough. The Bishop
+said that his most earnest wishes were with them.
+
+Then Mullins read a letter from the Mayor of Mariposa Pete Glover was
+mayor that year--stating that his keenest desires were with them: and
+then one from the Carriage Company saying that its heartiest good
+will was all theirs; and then one from the Meat Works saying that its
+nearest thoughts were next to them. Then he read one from himself, as
+head of the Exchange Bank, you understand, informing him that he had
+heard of his project and assuring him of his liveliest interest in
+what he proposed.
+
+At each of these telegrams and messages there was round after round
+of applause, so that you could hardly hear yourself speak or give an
+order. But that was nothing to when Mullins got up again, and beat on
+the table for silence and made one of those crackling speeches--just
+the way business men speak--the kind of speech that a college man
+simply can't make. I wish I could repeat it all. I remember that it
+began: "Now boys, you know what we're here for, gentlemen," and it
+went on just as good as that all through. When Mullins had done he
+took out a fountain pen and wrote out a cheque for a hundred dollars,
+conditional on the fund reaching fifty thousand. And there was a
+burst of cheers all over the room.
+
+Just the moment he had done it, up sprang George Duff,--you know the
+keen competition there is, as a straight matter of business, between
+the banks in Mariposa,--up sprang George Duff, I say, and wrote out a
+cheque for another hundred conditional on the fund reaching seventy
+thousand. You never heard such cheering in your life.
+
+And then when Netley walked up to the head of the table and laid down
+a cheque for a hundred dollars conditional on the fund reaching one
+hundred thousand the room was in an uproar. A hundred thousand
+dollars! Just think of it! The figures fairly stagger one. To think
+of a hundred thousand dollars raised in five minutes in a little
+place like Mariposa!
+
+And even that was nothing! In less than no time there was such a
+crowd round Mullins trying to borrow his pen all at once that his
+waistcoat was all stained with ink. Finally when they got order at
+last, and Mullins stood up and announced that the conditional fund
+had reached a quarter of a million, the whole place was a perfect
+babel of cheering. Oh, these Whirlwind Campaigns are wonderful
+things!
+
+
+I can tell you the Committee felt pretty proud that first day. There
+was Henry Mullins looking a little bit flushed and excited, with his
+white waistcoat and an American Beauty rose, and with ink marks all
+over him from the cheque signing; and he kept telling them that he'd
+known all along that all that was needed was to get the thing started
+and telling again about what he'd seen at the University Campaign and
+about the professors crying, and wondering if the high school
+teachers would come down for the last day of the meetings.
+
+Looking back on the Mariposa Whirlwind, I can never feel that it was
+a failure. After all, there is a sympathy and a brotherhood in these
+things when men work shoulder to shoulder. If you had seen the
+canvassers of the Committee going round the town that evening
+shoulder to shoulder from the Mariposa House to the Continental and
+up to Mullins's rooms and over to Duffs, shoulder to shoulder, you'd
+have understood it.
+
+I don't say that every lunch was quite such a success as the first.
+It's not always easy to get out of the store if you're a busy man,
+and a good many of the Whirlwind Committee found that they had just
+time to hurry down and snatch their lunch and get back again. Still,
+they came, and snatched it. As long as the lunches lasted, they came.
+Even if they had simply to rush it and grab something to eat and
+drink without time to talk to anybody, they came.
+
+No, no, it was not lack of enthusiasm that killed the Whirlwind
+Campaign in Mariposa. It must have been something else. I don't just
+know what it was but I think it had something to do with the
+financial, the book-keeping side of the thing.
+
+It may have been, too, that the organization was not quite correctly
+planned. You see, if practically everybody is on the committees, it
+is awfully hard to try to find men to canvass, and it is not
+allowable for the captains and the committee men to canvass one
+another, because their gifts are spontaneous. So the only thing that
+the different groups could do was to wait round in some likely
+place--say the bar parlour of Smith's Hotel--in the hope that
+somebody might come in who could be canvassed.
+
+You might ask why they didn't canvass Mr. Smith himself, but of
+course they had done that at the very start, as I should have said.
+Mr. Smith had given them two hundred dollars in cash conditional on
+the lunches being held in the caff of his hotel; and it's awfully
+hard to get a proper lunch I mean the kind to which a Bishop can
+express regret at not being there--under a dollar twenty-five. So
+Mr. Smith got back his own money, and the crowd began eating into the
+benefactions, and it got more and more complicated whether to hold
+another lunch in the hope of breaking even, or to stop the campaign.
+
+It was disappointing, yes. In spite of all the success and the
+sympathy, it was disappointing. I don't say it didn't do good. No
+doubt a lot of the men got to know one another better than ever they
+had before. I have myself heard Judge Pepperleigh say that after the
+campaign he knew all of Pete Glover that he wanted to. There was a
+lot of that kind of complete satiety. The real trouble about the
+Whirlwind Campaign was that they never clearly understood which of
+them were the whirlwind and who were to be the campaign.
+
+Some of them, I believe, took it pretty much to heart. I know that
+Henry Mullins did. You could see it. The first day he came down to
+the lunch, all dressed up with the American Beauty and the white
+waistcoat. The second day he only wore a pink carnation and a grey
+waistcoat. The third day he had on a dead daffodil and a cardigan
+undervest, and on the last day, when the high school teachers should
+have been there, he only wore his office suit and he hadn't even
+shaved. He looked beaten.
+
+It was that night that he went up to the rectory to tell the news to
+Dean Drone. It had been arranged, you know, that the rector should
+not attend the lunches, so as to let the whole thing come as a
+surprise; so that all he knew about it was just scraps of information
+about the crowds at the lunch and how they cheered and all that.
+Once, I believe, he caught sight of the Newspacket with a two-inch
+headline: A QUARTER OF A MILLION, but he wouldn't let himself read
+further because it would have spoilt the surprise.
+
+I saw Mullins, as I say, go up the street on his way to Dean Drone's.
+It was middle April and there was ragged snow on the streets, and the
+nights were dark still, and cold. I saw Mullins grit his teeth as he
+walked, and I know that he held in his coat pocket his own cheque for
+the hundred, with the condition taken off it, and he said that there
+were so many skunks in Mariposa that a man might as well be in the
+Head Office in the city.
+
+The Dean came out to the little gate in the dark,--you could see the
+lamplight behind him from the open door of the rectory,--and he shook
+hands with Mullins and they went in together.
+
+
+
+SIX
+
+The Beacon on the Hill
+
+Mullins said afterward that it was ever so much easier than he
+thought it would have been. The Dean, he said, was so quiet. Of
+course if Mr. Drone had started to swear at Mullins, or tried to
+strike him, it would have been much harder. But as it was he was so
+quiet that part of the time he hardly seemed to follow what Mullins
+was saying. So Mullins was glad of that, because it proved that the
+Dean wasn't feeling disappointed as, in a way, he might have.
+
+Indeed, the only time when the rector seemed animated and excited in
+the whole interview was when Mullins said that the campaign had been
+ruined by a lot of confounded mugwumps. Straight away the Dean asked
+if those mugwumps had really prejudiced the outcome of the campaign.
+Mullins said there was no doubt of it, and the Dean enquired if the
+presence of mugwumps was fatal in matters of endeavour, and Mullins
+said that it was. Then the rector asked if even one mugwump was, in
+the Christian sense, deleterious. Mullins said that one mugwump
+would kill anything. After that the Dean hardly spoke at all.
+
+In fact, the rector presently said that he mustn't detain Mullins too
+long and that he had detained him too long already and that Mullins
+must be weary from his train journey and that in cases of extreme
+weariness nothing but a sound sleep was of any avail; he himself,
+unfortunately, would not be able to avail himself of the priceless
+boon of slumber until he had first retired to his study to write some
+letters; so that Mullins, who had a certain kind of social quickness
+of intuition, saw that it was time to leave, and went away.
+
+It was midnight as he went down the street, and a dark, still night.
+That can be stated positively because it came out in court
+afterwards. Mullins swore that it was a dark night; he admitted,
+under examination, that there may have been the stars, or at least
+some of the less important of them, though he had made no attempt, as
+brought out on cross-examination, to count them: there may have been,
+too, the electric lights, and Mullins was not willing to deny that it
+was quite possible that there was more or less moonlight. But that
+there was no light that night in the form of sunlight, Mullins was
+absolutely certain. All that, I say, came out in court.
+
+But meanwhile the rector had gone upstairs to his study and had
+seated himself in front of his table to write his letters. It was
+here always that he wrote his sermons. From the window of the room
+you looked through the bare white maple trees to the sweeping outline
+of the church shadowed against the night sky, and beyond that, though
+far off, was the new cemetery where the rector walked of a Sunday (I
+think I told you why): beyond that again, for the window faced the
+east, there lay, at no very great distance, the New Jerusalem. There
+were no better things that a man might look towards from his study
+window, nor anything that could serve as a better aid to writing.
+
+But this night the Dean's letters must have been difficult indeed to
+write. For he sat beside the table holding his pen and with his head
+bent upon his other hand, and though he sometimes put a line or two
+on the paper, for the most part he sat motionless. The fact is that
+Dean Drone was not trying to write letters, but only one letter. He
+was writing a letter of resignation. If you have not done that for
+forty years it is extremely difficult to get the words.
+
+So at least the Dean found it. First he wrote one set of words and
+then he sat and thought and wrote something else. But nothing seemed
+to suit.
+
+The real truth was that Dean Drone, perhaps more than he knew
+himself, had a fine taste for words and effects, and when you feel
+that a situation is entirely out of the common, you naturally try, if
+you have that instinct, to give it the right sort of expression.
+
+I believe that at the time when Rupert Drone had taken the medal in
+Greek over fifty years ago, it was only a twist of fate that had
+prevented him from becoming a great writer. There was a buried author
+in him just as there was a buried financier in Jefferson Thorpe. In
+fact, there were many people in Mariposa like that, and for all I
+know you may yourself have seen such elsewhere. For instance, I am
+certain that Billy Rawson, the telegraph operator at Mariposa, could
+easily have invented radium. In the same way one has only to read
+the advertisements of Mr. Gingham, the undertaker, to know that there
+is still in him a poet, who could have written on death far more
+attractive verses than the Thanatopsis of Cullen Bryant, and under a
+title less likely to offend the public and drive away custom. He has
+told me this himself.
+
+So the Dean tried first this and then that and nothing would seem to
+suit. First of all he wrote:
+
+"It is now forty years since I came among you, a youth full of life
+and hope and ardent in the work before me--" Then he paused, doubtful
+of the accuracy and clearness of the expression, read it over again
+and again in deep thought and then began again:
+
+"It is now forty years since I came among you, a broken and
+melancholy boy, without life or hope, desiring only to devote to the
+service of this parish such few years as might remain of an existence
+blighted before it had truly begun--" And then again the Dean
+stopped. He read what he had written; he frowned; he crossed it
+through with his pen. This was no way to write, this thin egotistical
+strain of complaint. Once more he started:
+
+"It is now forty years since I came among you, a man already
+tempered and trained, except possibly in mathematics--" And then
+again the rector paused and his mind drifted away to the memory of
+the Anglican professor that I spoke of, who had had so little sense
+of his higher mission as to omit the teaching of logarithms. And the
+rector mused so long that when he began again it seemed to him that
+it was simpler and better to discard the personal note altogether,
+and he wrote:
+
+"There are times, gentlemen, in the life of a parish, when it comes
+to an epoch which brings it to a moment when it reaches a point--"
+
+The Dean stuck fast again, but refusing this time to be beaten went
+resolutely on:
+
+"--reaches a point where the circumstances of the moment make the
+epoch such as to focus the life of the parish in that time."
+
+Then the Dean saw that he was beaten, and he knew that he not only
+couldn't manage the parish but couldn't say so in proper English, and
+of the two the last was the bitterer discovery.
+
+He raised his head, and looked for a moment through the window at the
+shadow of the church against the night, so outlined that you could
+almost fancy that the light of the New Jerusalem was beyond it. Then
+he wrote, and this time not to the world at large but only to
+Mullins:
+
+"My dear Harry, I want to resign my charge. Will you come over and
+help me?"
+
+
+When the Dean at last rose from writing that, I think it was far on
+in the night. As he rose he looked again through the window, looked
+once and then once more, and so stood with widening eyes, and his
+face set towards what he saw.
+
+What was that? That light in the sky there, eastward?--near or far
+he could not say. Was it already the dawn of the New Jerusalem
+brightening in the east, or was it--look--in the church
+itself,--what is that?--that dull red glow that shines behind the
+stained-glass windows, turning them to crimson? that fork of flame
+that breaks now from the casement and flashes upward, along the
+wood--and see--that sudden sheet of fire that springs the windows of
+the church with the roar of splintered glass and surges upward into
+the sky, till the dark night and the bare trees and sleeping street
+of Mariposa are all illumined with its glow!
+
+Fire! Fire! and the sudden sound of the bell now, breaking upon the
+night.
+
+So stood the Dean erect, with one hand pressed against the table for
+support, while the Mariposa fire bell struck out its warning to the
+sleeping town,--stood there while the street grew loud with the
+tumult of voices,--with the roaring gallop of the fire brigade,--with
+the harsh note of the gong--and over all other sounds, the great
+seething of the flames that tore their way into the beams and rafters
+of the pointed church and flared above it like a torch into the
+midnight sky.
+
+So stood the Dean, and as the church broke thus into a very beacon
+kindled upon a hill,--sank forward without a sign, his face against
+the table, stricken.
+
+
+You need to see a fire in a place such as Mariposa, a town still half
+of wood, to know what fire means. In the city it is all different. To
+the onlooker, at any rate, a fire is only a spectacle, nothing more.
+Everything is arranged, organized, certain. It is only once perhaps
+in a century that fire comes to a large city as it comes to the
+little wooden town like Mariposa as a great Terror of the Night.
+
+That, at any rate, is what it meant in Mariposa that night in April,
+the night the Church of England Church burnt down. Had the fire
+gained but a hundred feet, or less, it could have reached from the
+driving shed behind the church to the backs of the wooden shops of
+the Main Street, and once there not all the waters of Lake Wissanotti
+could stay the course of its destruction. It was for that hundred
+feet that they fought, the men of Mariposa, from the midnight call of
+the bell till the slow coming of the day. They fought the fire, not
+to save the church, for that was doomed from the first outbreak of
+the flames, but to stop the spread of it and save the town. They
+fought it at the windows, and at the blazing doors, and through the
+yawning furnace of the open belfry; fought it, with the Mariposa
+engine thumping and panting in the street, itself aglow with fire
+like a servant demon fighting its own kind, with tall ladders
+reaching to the very roof, and with hose that poured their streams of
+tossing water foaming into the flames.
+
+Most of all they fought to save the wooden driving shed behind the
+church from which the fire could leap into the heart of Mariposa.
+That was where the real fight was, for the life of the town. I wish
+you could have seen how they turned the hose against the shingles,
+ripping and tearing them from their places with the force of the
+driven water: how they mounted on the roof, axe in hand, and cut
+madly at the rafters to bring the building down, while the black
+clouds of smoke rolled in volumes about the men as they worked. You
+could see the fire horses harnessed with logging chains to the
+uprights of the shed to tear the building from its place.
+
+Most of all I wish you could have seen Mr. Smith, proprietor, as I
+think you know, of Smith's Hotel, there on the roof with a fireman's
+helmet on, cutting through the main beam of solid cedar, twelve by
+twelve, that held tight still when the rafters and the roof tree were
+down already, the shed on fire in a dozen places, and the other men
+driven from the work by the flaming sparks, and by the strangle of
+the smoke. Not so Mr. Smith! See him there as he plants himself firm
+at the angle of the beams, and with the full impact of his two
+hundred and eighty pounds drives his axe into the wood! I tell you it
+takes a man from the pine country of the north to handle an axe!
+Right, left, left, right, down it comes, with never a pause or stay,
+never missing by a fraction of an inch the line of the stroke! At it,
+Smith! Down with it! Till with a shout from the crowd the beam gapes
+asunder, and Mr. Smith is on the ground again, roaring his directions
+to the men and horses as they haul down the shed, in a voice that
+dominates the fire itself.
+
+Who made Mr. Smith the head and chief of the Mariposa fire brigade
+that night, I cannot say. I do not know even where he got the huge
+red helmet that he wore, nor had I ever heard till the night the
+church burnt down that Mr. Smith was a member of the fire brigade at
+all. But it's always that way. Your little narrow-chested men may
+plan and organize, but when there is something to be done, something
+real, then it's the man of size and weight that steps to the front
+every time. Look at Bismarck and Mr. Gladstone and President Taft and
+Mr. Smith,--the same thing in each case.
+
+I suppose it was perfectly natural that just as soon as Mr. Smith
+came on the scene he put on somebody's helmet and shouted his
+directions to the men and bossed the Mariposa fire brigade like
+Bismarck with the German parliament.
+
+The fire had broken out late, late at night, and they fought it till
+the day. The flame of it lit up the town and the bare grey maple
+trees, and you could see in the light of it the broad sheet of the
+frozen lake, snow covered still. It kindled such a beacon as it
+burned that from the other side of the lake the people on the night
+express from the north could see it twenty miles away. It lit up
+such a testimony of flame that Mariposa has never seen the like of it
+before or since. Then when the roof crashed in and the tall steeple
+tottered and fell, so swift a darkness seemed to come that the grey
+trees and the frozen lake vanished in a moment as if blotted out of
+existence.
+
+
+When the morning came the great church of Mariposa was nothing but a
+ragged group of walls with a sodden heap of bricks and blackened
+wood, still hissing here and there beneath the hose with the sullen
+anger of a conquered fire. Round the ruins of the fire walked the
+people of Mariposa next morning, and they pointed out where the wreck
+of the steeple had fallen, and where the bells of the church lay in a
+molten heap among the bricks, and they talked of the loss that it was
+and how many dollars it would take to rebuild the church, and whether
+it was insured and for how much. And there were at least fourteen
+people who had seen the fire first, and more than that who had given
+the first alarm, and ever so many who knew how fires of this sort
+could be prevented.
+
+Most noticeable of all you could see the sidesmen and the wardens and
+Mullins, the chairman of the vestry, talking in little groups about
+the fire. Later in the day there came from the city the insurance men
+and the fire appraisers, and they too walked about the ruins, and
+talked with the wardens and the vestry men. There was such a luxury
+of excitement in the town that day that it was just as good as a
+public holiday.
+
+But the strangest part of it was the unexpected sequel. I don't know
+through what error of the Dean's figures it happened, through what
+lack of mathematical training the thing turned out as it did. No
+doubt the memory of the mathematical professor was heavily to blame
+for it, but the solid fact is that the Church of England Church of
+Mariposa turned out to be insured for a hundred thousand, and there
+were the receipts and the vouchers, all signed and regular, just as
+they found them in a drawer of the rector's study. There was no doubt
+about it. The insurance people might protest as they liked. The
+straight, plain fact was that the church was insured for about twice
+the whole amount of the cost and the debt and the rector's salary and
+the boarding-school fees of the littlest of the Drones all put
+together.
+
+
+There was a Whirlwind Campaign for you! Talk of raising money,--that
+was something like! I wonder if the universities and the city
+institutions that go round trying to raise money by the slow and
+painful method called a Whirlwind Campaign, that takes perhaps all
+day to raise fifty thousand dollars, ever thought of anything so
+beautifully simple as this.
+
+The Greater Testimony that had lain so heavily on the congregation
+went flaming to its end, and burned up its debts and its obligations
+and enriched its worshippers by its destruction. Talk of a beacon on
+a hill! You can hardly beat that one.
+
+I wish you could have seen how the wardens and the sidesmen and
+Mullins, the chairman of the vestry, smiled and chuckled at the
+thought of it. Hadn't they said all along that all that was needed
+was a little faith and effort? And here it was, just as they said,
+and they'd been right after all.
+
+Protest from the insurance people? Legal proceedings to prevent
+payment? My dear sir! I see you know nothing about the Mariposa
+court, in spite of the fact that I have already said that it was one
+of the most precise instruments of British fair play ever
+established. Why, Judge Pepperleigh disposed of the case and
+dismissed the protest of the company in less than fifteen minutes!
+Just what the jurisdiction of Judge Pepperleigh's court is I don't
+know, but I do know that in upholding the rights of a Christian
+congregation--I am quoting here the text of the decision--against the
+intrigues of a set of infernal skunks that make too much money,
+anyway, the Mariposa court is without an equal. Pepperleigh even
+threatened the plaintiffs with the penitentiary, or worse.
+
+How the fire started no one ever knew. There was a queer story that
+went about to the effect that Mr. Smith and Mr. Gingham's assistant
+had been seen very late that night carrying an automobile can of
+kerosene up the street. But that was amply disproved by the
+proceedings of the court, and by the evidence of Mr. Smith himself.
+He took his dying oath,--not his ordinary one as used in the License
+cases, but his dying one,--that he had not carried a can of kerosene
+up the street, and that anyway it was the rottenest kind of kerosene
+he had ever seen and no more use than so much molasses. So that point
+was settled.
+
+Dean Drone? Did he get well again? Why, what makes you ask that? You
+mean, was his head at all affected after the stroke? No, it was not.
+Absolutely not. It was not affected in the least, though how anybody
+who knows him now in Mariposa could have the faintest idea that his
+mind was in any way impaired by the stroke is more than I can tell.
+The engaging of Mr. Uttermost, the curate, whom perhaps you have
+heard preach in the new church, had nothing whatever to do with Dean
+Drone's head. It was merely a case of the pressure of overwork. It
+was felt very generally by the wardens that, in these days of
+specialization, the rector was covering too wide a field, and that if
+he should abandon some of the lesser duties of his office, he might
+devote his energies more intently to the Infant Class. That was all.
+You may hear him there any afternoon, talking to them, if you will
+stand under the maple trees and listen through the open windows of
+the new Infant School.
+
+And, as for audiences, for intelligence, for attention--well, if I
+want to find listeners who can hear and understand about the great
+spaces of Lake Huron, let me tell of it, every time face to face with
+the blue eyes of the Infant Class, fresh from the infinity of spaces
+greater still. Talk of grown-up people all you like, but for
+listeners let me have the Infant Class with their pinafores and their
+Teddy Bears and their feet not even touching the floor, and Mr.
+Uttermost may preach to his heart's content of the newer forms of
+doubt revealed by the higher criticism.
+
+So you will understand that the Dean's mind is, if anything, even
+keener, and his head even clearer than before. And if you want proof
+of it, notice him there beneath the plum blossoms reading in the
+Greek: he has told me that he finds that he can read, with the
+greatest ease, works in the Greek that seemed difficult before.
+Because his head is so clear now.
+
+And sometimes,--when his head is very clear,--as he sits there
+reading beneath the plum blossoms he can hear them singing beyond,
+and his wife's voice.
+
+
+
+SEVEN
+
+The Extraordinary Entanglement of Mr. Pupkin
+
+Judge Pepperleigh lived in a big house with hardwood floors and a
+wide piazza that looked over the lake from the top of Oneida Street.
+
+Every day about half-past five he used to come home from his office
+in the Mariposa Court House. On some days as he got near the house he
+would call out to his wife:
+
+"Almighty Moses, Martha! who left the sprinkler on the grass?"
+
+On other days he would call to her from quite a little distance off:
+"Hullo, mother! Got any supper for a hungry man?"
+
+And Mrs. Pepperleigh never knew which it would be. On the days when
+he swore at the sprinkler you could see his spectacles flash like
+dynamite. But on the days when he called: "Hullo, mother," they were
+simply irradiated with kindliness.
+
+Some days, I say, he would cry out with a perfect whine of
+indignation: "Suffering Caesar! has that infernal dog torn up those
+geraniums again?" And other days you would hear him singing out:
+"Hullo, Rover! Well, doggie, well, old fellow!"
+
+In the same way at breakfast, the judge, as he looked over the
+morning paper, would sometimes leap to his feet with a perfect howl
+of suffering, and cry: "Everlasting Moses! the Liberals have carried
+East Elgin." Or else he would lean back from the breakfast table with
+the most good-humoured laugh you ever heard and say: "Ha! ha! the
+Conservatives have carried South Norfolk."
+
+And yet he was perfectly logical, when you come to think of it. After
+all, what is more annoying to a sensitive, highly-strung man than an
+infernal sprinkler playing all over the place, and what more
+agreeable to a good-natured, even-tempered fellow than a
+well-prepared supper? Or, what is more likeable than one's good, old,
+affectionate dog bounding down the path from sheer delight at seeing
+you,--or more execrable than an infernal whelp that has torn up the
+geraniums and is too old to keep, anyway?
+
+As for politics, well, it all seemed reasonable enough. When the
+Conservatives got in anywhere, Pepperleigh laughed and enjoyed it,
+simply because it does one good to see a straight, fine, honest fight
+where the best man wins. When a Liberal got in, it made him mad, and
+he said so,--not, mind you, from any political bias, for his office
+forbid it,--but simply because one can't bear to see the country go
+absolutely to the devil.
+
+I suppose, too, it was partly the effect of sitting in court all day
+listening to cases. One gets what you might call the judicial temper
+of mind. Pepperleigh had it so strongly developed that I've seen him
+kick a hydrangea pot to pieces with his foot because the accursed
+thing wouldn't flower. He once threw the canary cage clear into the
+lilac bushes because the "blasted bird wouldn't stop singing." It was
+a straight case of judicial temper. Lots of judges have it, developed
+in just the same broad, all-round way as with Judge Pepperleigh.
+
+
+I think it must be passing sentences that does it. Anyway,
+Pepperleigh had the aptitude for passing sentences so highly
+perfected that he spent his whole time at it inside of court and out.
+I've heard him hand out sentences for the Sultan of Turkey and Mrs.
+Pankhurst and the Emperor of Germany that made one's blood run cold.
+He would sit there on the piazza of a summer evening reading the
+paper, with dynamite sparks flying from his spectacles as he
+sentenced the Czar of Russia to ten years in the salt mines--and made
+it fifteen a few minutes afterwards. Pepperleigh always read the
+foreign news--the news of things that he couldn't alter--as a form of
+wild and stimulating torment.
+
+So you can imagine that in some ways the judge's house was a pretty
+difficult house to go to. I mean you can see how awfully hard it must
+have been for Mr. Pupkin. I tell you it took some nerve to step up
+on that piazza and say, in a perfectly natural, off-hand way: "Oh,
+how do you do, judge? Is Miss Zena in? No, I won't stay, thanks; I
+think I ought to be going. I simply called." A man who can do that
+has got to have a pretty fair amount of savoir what do you call it,
+and he's got to be mighty well shaved and have his cameo pin put in
+his tie at a pretty undeniable angle before he can tackle it. Yes,
+and even then he may need to hang round behind the lilac bushes for
+half an hour first, and cool off. And he's apt to make pretty good
+time down Oneida Street on the way back.
+
+Still, that's what you call love, and if you've got it, and are well
+shaved, and your boots well blacked, you can do things that seem
+almost impossible. Yes, you can do anything, even if you do trip over
+the dog in getting off the piazza.
+
+Don't suppose for a moment that Judge Pepperleigh was an
+unapproachable or a harsh man always and to everybody. Even Mr.
+Pupkin had to admit that that couldn't be so. To know that, you had
+only to see Zena Pepperleigh put her arm round his neck and call him
+Daddy. She would do that even when there were two or three young men
+sitting on the edge of the piazza. You know, I think, the way they
+sit on the edge in Mariposa. It is meant to indicate what part of the
+family they have come to see. Thus when George Duff, the bank
+manager, came up to the Pepperleigh house, he always sat in a chair
+on the verandah and talked to the judge. But when Pupkin or Mallory
+Tompkins or any fellow like that came, he sat down in a sidelong
+fashion on the edge of the boards and then they knew exactly what he
+was there for. If he knew the house well, he leaned his back against
+the verandah post and smoked a cigarette. But that took nerve.
+
+But I am afraid that this is a digression, and, of course, you know
+all about it just as well as I do. All that I was trying to say was
+that I don't suppose that the judge had ever spoken a cross word to
+Zena in his life.--Oh, he threw her novel over the grape-vine, I
+don't deny that, but then why on earth should a girl read trash like
+the Errant Quest of the Palladin Pilgrim, and the Life of Sir
+Galahad, when the house was full of good reading like The Life of Sir
+John A. Macdonald, and Pioneer Days in Tecumseh Township?
+
+
+Still, what I mean is that the judge never spoke harshly to Zena,
+except perhaps under extreme provocation; and I am quite sure that he
+never, never had to Neil. But then what father ever would want to
+speak angrily to such a boy as Neil Pepperleigh? The judge took no
+credit himself for that; the finest grown boy in the whole county and
+so broad and big that they took him into the Missinaba Horse when he
+was only seventeen. And clever,--so clever that he didn't need to
+study; so clever that he used to come out at the foot of the class in
+mathematics at the Mariposa high school through sheer surplus of
+brain power. I've heard the judge explain it a dozen times. Why,
+Neil was so clever that he used to be able to play billiards at the
+Mariposa House all evening when the other boys had to stay at home
+and study.
+
+Such a powerful looking fellow, too! Everybody in Mariposa remembers
+how Neil Pepperleigh smashed in the face of Peter McGinnis, the
+Liberal organizer, at the big election--you recall it--when the old
+Macdonald Government went out. Judge Pepperleigh had to try him for
+it the next morning--his own son. They say there never was such a
+scene even in the Mariposa court. There was, I believe, something
+like it on a smaller scale in Roman history, but it wasn't half as
+dramatic. I remember Judge Pepperleigh leaning forward to pass the
+sentence,--for a judge is bound, you know, by his oath,--and how
+grave he looked and yet so proud and happy, like a man doing his duty
+and sustained by it, and he said:
+
+"My boy, you are innocent. You smashed in Peter McGinnis's face, but
+you did it without criminal intent. You put a face on him, by
+Jehoshaphat! that he won't lose for six months, but you did it
+without evil purpose or malign design. My boy, look up! Give me your
+hand! You leave this court without a stain upon your name."
+
+They said it was one of the most moving scenes ever enacted in the
+Mariposa Court.
+
+
+But the strangest thing is that if the judge had known what every one
+else in Mariposa knew, it would have broken his heart. If he could
+have seen Neil with the drunken flush on his face in the billiard
+room of the Mariposa House,--if he had known, as every one else did,
+that Neil was crazed with drink the night he struck the Liberal
+organizer when the old Macdonald Government went out,--if he could
+have known that even on that last day Neil was drunk when he rode
+with the Missinaba Horse to the station to join the Third Contingent
+for the war, and all the street of the little town was one great roar
+of people--
+
+But the judge never knew, and now he never will. For if you could
+find it in the meanness of your soul to tell him, it would serve no
+purpose now except to break his heart, and there would rise up to
+rebuke you the pictured vision of an untended grave somewhere in the
+great silences of South Africa.
+
+Did I say above, or seem to imply, that the judge sometimes spoke
+harshly to his wife? Or did you gather for a minute that her lot was
+one to lament over or feel sorry for? If so, it just shows that you
+know nothing about such things, and that marriage, at least as it
+exists in Mariposa, is a sealed book to you. You are as ignorant as
+Miss Spiffkins, the biology teacher at the high school, who always
+says how sorry she is for Mrs. Pepperleigh. You get that impression
+simply because the judge howled like an Algonquin Indian when he saw
+the sprinkler running on the lawn. But are you sure you know the
+other side of it? Are you quite sure when you talk like Miss
+Spiffkins does about the rights of it, that you are taking all things
+into account? You might have thought differently perhaps of the
+Pepperleighs, anyway, if you had been there that evening when the
+judge came home to his wife with one hand pressed to his temple and
+in the other the cablegram that said that Neil had been killed in
+action in South Africa. That night they sat together with her hand in
+his, just as they had sat together thirty years ago when he was a law
+student in the city.
+
+Go and tell Miss Spiffkins that! Hydrangeas,--canaries,--
+temper,--blazes! What does Miss Spiffkins know about it all?
+
+But in any case, if you tried to tell Judge Pepperleigh about Neil
+now he wouldn't believe it. He'd laugh it to scorn. That is Neil's
+picture, in uniform, hanging in the dining-room beside the Fathers of
+Confederation. That military-looking man in the picture beside him is
+General Kitchener, whom you may perhaps have heard of, for he was
+very highly spoken of in Neil's letters. All round the room, in fact,
+and still more in the judge's library upstairs, you will see pictures
+of South Africa and the departure of the Canadians (there are none of
+the return), and of Mounted Infantry and of Unmounted Cavalry and a
+lot of things that only soldiers and the fathers of soldiers know
+about.
+
+So you can realize that for a fellow who isn't military, and who
+wears nothing nearer to a uniform than a daffodil tennis blazer, the
+judge's house is a devil of a house to come to.
+
+I think you remember young Mr. Pupkin, do you not? I have referred to
+him several times already as the junior teller in the Exchange Bank.
+But if you know Mariposa at all you have often seen him. You have
+noticed him, I am sure, going for the bank mail in the morning in an
+office suit effect of clinging grey with a gold necktie pin shaped
+like a riding whip. You have seen him often enough going down to the
+lake front after supper, in tennis things, smoking a cigarette and
+with a paddle and a crimson canoe cushion under his arm. You have
+seen him entering Dean Drone's church in a top hat and a long frock
+coat nearly to his feet. You have seen him, perhaps, playing poker in
+Peter Glover's room over the hardware store and trying to look as if
+he didn't hold three aces,--in fact, giving absolutely no sign of it
+beyond the wild flush in his face and the fact that his hair stands
+on end.
+
+That kind of reticence is a thing you simply have to learn in
+banking. I mean, if you've got to be in a position where you know for
+a fact that the Mariposa Packing Company's account is overdrawn by
+sixty-four dollars, and yet daren't say anything about it, not even
+to the girls that you play tennis with,--I don't say, not a casual
+hint as a reference, but not really tell them, not, for instance,
+bring down the bank ledger to the tennis court and show them,--you
+learn a sort of reticence and self-control that people outside of
+banking circles never can attain.
+
+Why, I've known Pupkin at the Fireman's Ball lean against the wall in
+his dress suit and talk away to Jim Eliot, the druggist, without
+giving the faintest hint or indication that Eliot's note for
+twenty-seven dollars had been protested that very morning. Not a hint
+of it. I don't say he didn't mention it, in a sort of way, in the
+supper room, just to one or two, but I mean there was nothing in the
+way he leant up against the wall to suggest it.
+
+But, however, I don't mention that as either for or against Mr.
+Pupkin. That sort of thing is merely the A B C of banking, as he
+himself told me when explaining why it was that he hesitated to
+divulge the exact standing of the Mariposa Carriage Company. Of
+course, once you get past the A B C you can learn a lot that is
+mighty interesting.
+
+So I think that if you know Mariposa and understand even the
+rudiments of banking, you are perfectly acquainted with Mr. Pupkin.
+What? You remember him as being in love with Miss Lawson, the high
+school teacher? In love with HER? What a ridiculous idea. You mean
+merely because on the night when the Mariposa Belle sank with every
+soul on board, Pupkin put off from the town in a skiff to rescue
+Miss Lawson. Oh, but you're quite wrong. That wasn't LOVE. I've
+heard Pupkin explain it himself a dozen times. That sort of
+thing,--paddling out to a sinking steamer at night in a crazy
+skiff,--may indicate a sort of attraction, but not real love, not
+what Pupkin came to feel afterwards. Indeed, when he began to think
+of it, it wasn't even attraction, it was merely respect,--that's all
+it was. And anyway, that was long before, six or seven months back,
+and Pupkin admitted that at the time he was a mere boy.
+
+
+Mr. Pupkin, I must explain, lived with Mallory Tompkins in rooms over
+the Exchange Bank, on the very top floor, the third, with Mullins's
+own rooms below them. Extremely comfortable quarters they were, with
+two bedrooms and a sitting-room that was all fixed up with snowshoes
+and tennis rackets on the walls and dance programmes and canoe club
+badges and all that sort of thing.
+
+Mallory Tompkins was a young man with long legs and check trousers
+who worked on the Mariposa Times-Herald. That was what gave him his
+literary taste. He used to read Ibsen and that other Dutch
+author--Bumstone Bumstone, isn't it?--and you can judge that he was a
+mighty intellectual fellow. He was so intellectual that he was, as he
+himself admitted, a complete eggnostic. He and Pupkin used to have
+the most tremendous arguments about creation and evolution, and how
+if you study at a school of applied science you learn that there's no
+hell beyond the present life.
+
+Mallory Tompkins used to prove absolutely that the miracles were only
+electricity, and Pupkin used to admit that it was an awfully good
+argument, but claimed that he had heard it awfully well answered in a
+sermon, though unfortunately he had forgotten how.
+
+Tompkins used to show that the flood was contrary to geology, and
+Pupkin would acknowledge that the point was an excellent one, but
+that he had read a book,--the title of which he ought to have written
+down,--which explained geology away altogether.
+
+Mallory Tompkins generally got the best of the merely logical side of
+the arguments, but Pupkin--who was a tremendous Christian--was much
+stronger in the things he had forgotten. So the discussions often
+lasted till far into the night, and Mr. Pupkin would fall asleep and
+dream of a splendid argument, which would have settled the whole
+controversy, only unfortunately he couldn't recall it in the morning.
+
+Of course, Pupkin would never have thought of considering himself on
+an intellectual par with Mallory Tompkins. That would have been
+ridiculous. Mallory Tompkins had read all sorts of things and had
+half a mind to write a novel himself--either that or a play. All he
+needed, he said, was to have a chance to get away somewhere by
+himself and think. Every time he went away to the city Pupkin
+expected that he might return with the novel all finished; but though
+he often came back with his eyes red from thinking, the novel as yet
+remained incomplete.
+
+Meantime, Mallory Tompkins, as I say, was a mighty intellectual
+fellow. You could see that from the books on the bamboo bookshelves
+in the sitting-room. There was, for instance, the "Encyclopaedia
+Metropolitana" in forty volumes, that he bought on the instalment
+plan for two dollars a month. Then when they took that away, there
+was the "History of Civilization," in fifty volumes at fifty cents a
+week for fifty years. Tompkins had read in it half-way through the
+Stone Age before they took it from him. After that there was the
+"Lives of the Painters," one volume at a time--a splendid thing in
+which you could read all about Aahrens, and Aachenthal, and Aax and
+men of that class.
+
+After all, there's nothing like educating oneself. Mallory Tompkins
+knew about the opening period of all sorts of things, and in regard
+to people whose names began with "A" you couldn't stick him.
+
+I don't mean that he and Mr. Pupkin lived a mere routine of studious
+evenings. That would be untrue. Quite often their time was spent in
+much less commendable ways than that, and there were poker parties in
+their sitting-room that didn't break up till nearly midnight.
+Card-playing, after all, is a slow business, unless you put money on
+it, and, besides, if you are in a bank and are handling money all
+day, gambling has a fascination.
+
+I've seen Pupkin and Mallory Tompkins and Joe Milligan, the dentist,
+and Mitchell the ticket agent, and the other "boys" sitting round the
+table with matches enough piled up in front of them to stock a
+factory. Ten matches counted for one chip and ten chips made a
+cent--so you see they weren't merely playing for the fun of the
+thing. Of course it's a hollow pleasure. You realize that when you
+wake up at night parched with thirst, ten thousand matches to the
+bad. But banking is a wild life and everybody knows it.
+
+Sometimes Pupkin would swear off and keep away from the cursed thing
+for weeks, and then perhaps he'd see by sheer accident a pile of
+matches on the table, or a match lying on the floor and it would
+start the craze in him. I am using his own words--a "craze"--that's
+what he called it when he told Miss Lawson all about it, and she
+promised to cure him of it. She would have, too. Only, as I say,
+Pupkin found that what he had mistaken for attraction was only
+respect. And there's no use worrying a woman that you respect about
+your crazes.
+
+
+It was from Mallory Tompkins that Pupkin learned all about the
+Mariposa people, because Pupkin came from away off--somewhere down in
+the Maritime Provinces--and didn't know a soul. Mallory Tompkins used
+to tell him about Judge Pepperleigh, and what a wonderfully clever
+man he was and how he would have been in the Supreme Court for
+certain if the Conservative Government had stayed in another fifteen
+or twenty years instead of coming to a premature end. He used to talk
+so much about the Pepperleighs, that Pupkin was sick of the very
+name. But just as soon as he had seen Zena Pepperleigh he couldn't
+hear enough of them. He would have talked with Tompkins for hours
+about the judge's dog Rover. And as for Zena, if he could have
+brought her name over his lips, he would have talked of her forever.
+
+He first saw her--by one of the strangest coincidences in the
+world--on the Main Street of Mariposa. If he hadn't happened to be
+going up the street and she to be coming down it, the thing wouldn't
+have happened. Afterwards they both admitted that it was one of the
+most peculiar coincidences they ever heard of. Pupkin owned that he
+had had the strangest feeling that morning as if something were going
+to happen--a feeling not at all to be classed with the one of which
+he had once spoken to Miss Lawson, and which was, at the most, a mere
+anticipation of respect.
+
+But, as I say, Pupkin met Zena Pepperleigh on the 26th of June, at
+twenty-five minutes to eleven. And at once the whole world changed.
+The past was all blotted out. Even in the new forty volume edition
+of the "Instalment Record of Humanity" that Mallory Tompkins had just
+received--Pupkin wouldn't have bothered with it.
+
+She--that word henceforth meant Zena--had just come back from her
+boarding-school, and of all times of year coming back from a
+boarding-school and for wearing a white shirt waist and a crimson tie
+and for carrying a tennis racket on the stricken street of a
+town--commend me to the month of June in Mariposa.
+
+And, for Pupkin, straight away the whole town was irradiated with
+sunshine, and there was such a singing of the birds, and such a
+dancing of the rippled waters of the lake, and such a kindliness in
+the faces of all the people, that only those who have lived in
+Mariposa, and been young there, can know at all what he felt.
+
+The simple fact is that just the moment he saw Zena Pepperleigh,
+Mr. Pupkin was clean, plumb, straight, flat, absolutely in love with
+her.
+
+Which fact is so important that it would be folly not to close the
+chapter and think about it.
+
+
+
+EIGHT
+
+The Fore-ordained Attachment of Zena Pepperleigh and Peter Pupkin
+
+Zena Pepperleigh used to sit reading novels on the piazza of the
+judge's house, half hidden by the Virginia creepers. At times the
+book would fall upon her lap and there was such a look of unstilled
+yearning in her violet eyes that it did not entirely disappear even
+when she picked up the apple that lay beside her and took another
+bite out of it.
+
+With hands clasped she would sit there dreaming all the beautiful
+day-dreams of girlhood. When you saw that faraway look in her eyes,
+it meant that she was dreaming that a plumed and armoured knight was
+rescuing her from the embattled keep of a castle beside the Danube.
+At other times she was being borne away by an Algerian corsair over
+the blue waters of the Mediterranean and was reaching out her arms
+towards France to say farewell to it.
+
+Sometimes when you noticed a sweet look of resignation that seemed to
+rest upon her features, it meant that Lord Ronald de Chevereux was
+kneeling at her feet, and that she was telling him to rise, that her
+humbler birth must ever be a bar to their happiness, and Lord Ronald
+was getting into an awful state about it, as English peers do at the
+least suggestion of anything of the sort.
+
+Or, if it wasn't that, then her lover had just returned to her side,
+tall and soldierly and sunburned, after fighting for ten years in the
+Soudan for her sake, and had come back to ask her for her answer and
+to tell her that for ten years her face had been with him even in the
+watches of the night. He was asking her for a sign, any kind of
+sign,--ten years in the Soudan entitles them to a sign,--and Zena was
+plucking a white rose, just one, from her hair, when she would hear
+her father's step on the piazza and make a grab for the Pioneers of
+Tecumseh Township, and start reading it like mad.
+
+She was always, as I say, being rescued and being borne away, and
+being parted, and reaching out her arms to France and to Spain, and
+saying good-bye forever to Valladolid or the old grey towers of
+Hohenbranntwein.
+
+And I don't mean that she was in the least exceptional or romantic,
+because all the girls in Mariposa were just like that. An Algerian
+corsair could have come into the town and had a dozen of them for the
+asking, and as for a wounded English officer,--well, perhaps it's
+better not to talk about it outside or the little town would become a
+regular military hospital.
+
+Because, mind you, the Mariposa girls are all right. You've only to
+look at them to realize that. You see, you can get in Mariposa a
+print dress of pale blue or pale pink for a dollar twenty that looks
+infinitely better than anything you ever see in the city,--especially
+if you can wear with it a broad straw hat and a background of maple
+trees and the green grass of a tennis court. And if you remember,
+too, that these are cultivated girls who have all been to the
+Mariposa high school and can do decimal fractions, you will
+understand that an Algerian corsair would sharpen his scimitar at the
+very sight of them.
+
+Don't think either that they are all dying to get married; because
+they are not. I don't say they wouldn't take an errant knight, or a
+buccaneer or a Hungarian refugee, but for the ordinary marriages of
+ordinary people they feel nothing but a pitying disdain. So it is
+that each one of them in due time marries an enchanted prince and
+goes to live in one of the little enchanted houses in the lower part
+of the town.
+
+I don't know whether you know it, but you can rent an enchanted house
+in Mariposa for eight dollars a month, and some of the most
+completely enchanted are the cheapest. As for the enchanted princes,
+they find them in the strangest places, where you never expected to
+see them, working--under a spell, you understand,--in drug-stores and
+printing offices, and even selling things in shops. But to be able to
+find them you have first to read ever so many novels about Sir
+Galahad and the Errant Quest and that sort of thing.
+
+
+Naturally then Zena Pepperleigh, as she sat on the piazza, dreamed of
+bandits and of wounded officers and of Lord Ronalds riding on
+foam-flecked chargers. But that she ever dreamed of a junior bank
+teller in a daffodil blazer riding past on a bicycle, is pretty hard
+to imagine. So, when Mr. Pupkin came tearing past up the slope of
+Oneida Street at a speed that proved that he wasn't riding there
+merely to pass the house, I don't suppose that Zena Pepperleigh was
+aware of his existence.
+
+That may be a slight exaggeration. She knew, perhaps, that he was the
+new junior teller in the Exchange Bank and that he came from the
+Maritime Provinces, and that nobody knew who his people were, and
+that he had never been in a canoe in his life till he came to
+Mariposa, and that he sat four pews back in Dean Drone's church, and
+that his salary was eight hundred dollars. Beyond that, she didn't
+know a thing about him. She presumed, however, that the reason why he
+went past so fast was because he didn't dare to go slow.
+
+This, of course, was perfectly correct. Ever since the day when Mr.
+Pupkin met Zena in the Main Street he used to come past the house on
+his bicycle just after bank hours. He would have gone past twenty
+times a day but he was afraid to. As he came up Oneida Street, he
+used to pedal faster and faster,--he never meant to, but he couldn't
+help it,--till he went past the piazza where Zena was sitting at an
+awful speed with his little yellow blazer flying in the wind. In a
+second he had disappeared in a buzz and a cloud of dust, and the
+momentum of it carried him clear out into the country for miles and
+miles before he ever dared to pause or look back.
+
+Then Mr. Pupkin would ride in a huge circuit about the country,
+trying to think he was looking at the crops, and sooner or later his
+bicycle would be turned towards the town again and headed for Oneida
+Street, and would get going quicker and quicker and quicker, till the
+pedals whirled round with a buzz and he came past the judge's house
+again, like a bullet out of a gun. He rode fifteen miles to pass the
+house twice, and even then it took all the nerve that he had.
+
+The people on Oneida Street thought that Mr. Pupkin was crazy, but
+Zena Pepperleigh knew that he was not. Already, you see, there was a
+sort of dim parallel between the passing of the bicycle and the last
+ride of Tancred the Inconsolable along the banks of the Danube.
+
+I have already mentioned, I think, how Mr. Pupkin and Zena
+Pepperleigh first came to know one another. Like everything else
+about them, it was a sheer matter of coincidence, quite inexplicable
+unless you understand that these things are fore-ordained.
+
+That, of course, is the way with fore-ordained affairs and that's
+where they differ from ordinary love.
+
+
+I won't even try to describe how Mr. Pupkin felt when he first spoke
+with Zena and sat beside her as they copied out the "endless chain"
+letter asking for ten cents. They wrote out, as I said, no less than
+eight of the letters between them, and they found out that their
+handwritings were so alike that you could hardly tell them apart,
+except that Pupkin's letters were round and Zena's letters were
+pointed and Pupkin wrote straight up and down and Zena wrote on a
+slant. Beyond that the writing was so alike that it was the strangest
+coincidence in the world. Of course when they made figures it was
+different and Pupkin explained to Zena that in the bank you have to
+be able to make a seven so that it doesn't look like a nine.
+
+So, as I say, they wrote the letters all afternoon and when it was
+over they walked up Oneida Street together, ever so slowly. When they
+got near the house, Zena asked Pupkin to come in to tea, with such an
+easy off-hand way that you couldn't have told that she was half an
+hour late and was taking awful chances on the judge. Pupkin hadn't
+had time to say yes before the judge appeared at the door, just as
+they were stepping up on to the piazza, and he had a table napkin in
+his hand and the dynamite sparks were flying from his spectacles as
+he called out:
+
+"Great heaven! Zena, why in everlasting blazes can't you get in to
+tea at a Christian hour?"
+
+Zena gave one look of appeal to Pupkin, and Pupkin looked one glance
+of comprehension, and turned and fled down Oneida Street. And if the
+scene wasn't quite as dramatic as the renunciation of Tancred the
+Troubadour, it at least had something of the same elements in it.
+
+Pupkin walked home to his supper at the Mariposa House on air, and
+that evening there was a gentle distance in his manner towards Sadie,
+the dining-room girl, that I suppose no bank clerk in Mariposa ever
+showed before. It was like Sir Galahad talking with the tire-women of
+Queen Guinevere and receiving huckleberry pie at their hands.
+
+After that Mr. Pupkin and Zena Pepperleigh constantly met together.
+They played tennis as partners on the grass court behind Dr.
+Gallagher's house,--the Mariposa Tennis Club rent it, you remember,
+for fifty cents a month,--and Pupkin used to perform perfect
+prodigies of valour, leaping in the air to serve with his little body
+hooked like a letter S. Sometimes, too, they went out on Lake
+Wissanotti in the evening in Pupkin's canoe, with Zena sitting in the
+bow and Pupkin paddling in the stern and they went out ever so far
+and it was after dark and the stars were shining before they came
+home. Zena would look at the stars and say how infinitely far away
+they seemed, and Pupkin would realize that a girl with a mind like
+that couldn't have any use for a fool such as him. Zena used to ask
+him to point out the Pleiades and Jupiter and Ursa minor, and Pupkin
+showed her exactly where they were. That impressed them both
+tremendously, because Pupkin didn't know that Zena remembered the
+names out of the astronomy book at her boarding-school, and Zena
+didn't know that Pupkin simply took a chance on where the stars were.
+
+And ever so many times they talked so intimately that Pupkin came
+mighty near telling her about his home in the Maritime Provinces and
+about his father and mother, and then kicked himself that he hadn't
+the manliness to speak straight out about it and take the
+consequences.
+
+Please don't imagine from any of this that the course of Mr. Pupkin's
+love ran smooth. On the contrary, Pupkin himself felt that it was
+absolutely hopeless from the start.
+
+There were, it might be admitted, certain things that seemed to
+indicate progress.
+
+In the course of the months of June and July and August, he had taken
+Zena out in his canoe thirty-one times. Allowing an average of two
+miles for each evening, Pupkin had paddled Zena sixty-two miles, or
+more than a hundred thousand yards. That surely was something.
+
+He had played tennis with her on sixteen afternoons. Three times he
+had left his tennis racket up at the judge's house in Zena's charge,
+and once he had, with her full consent, left his bicycle there all
+night. This must count for something. No girl could trifle with a man
+to the extent of having his bicycle leaning against the verandah post
+all night and mean nothing by it.
+
+More than that--he had been to tea at the judge's house fourteen
+times, and seven times he had been asked by Lilian Drone to the
+rectory when Zena was coming, and five times by Nora Gallagher to tea
+at the doctor's house because Zena was there.
+
+Altogether he had eaten so many meals where Zena was that his meal
+ticket at the Mariposa lasted nearly double its proper time, and the
+face of Sadie, the dining-room girl, had grown to wear a look of
+melancholy resignation; sadder than romance.
+
+Still more than that, Pupkin had bought for Zena, reckoning it
+altogether, about two buckets of ice cream and perhaps half a bushel
+of chocolate. Not that Pupkin grudged the expense of it. On the
+contrary, over and above the ice cream and the chocolate he had
+bought her a white waistcoat and a walking stick with a gold top, a
+lot of new neckties and a pair of patent leather boots--that is,
+they were all bought on account of her, which is the same thing.
+
+Add to all this that Pupkin and Zena had been to the Church of
+England Church nearly every Sunday evening for two months, and one
+evening they had even gone to the Presbyterian Church "for fun,"
+which, if you know Mariposa, you will realize to be a wild sort of
+escapade that ought to speak volumes.
+
+
+Yet in spite of this, Pupkin felt that the thing was hopeless: which
+only illustrates the dreadful ups and downs, the wild alternations of
+hope and despair that characterise an exceptional affair of this
+sort.
+
+Yes, it was hopeless.
+
+Every time that Pupkin watched Zena praying in church, he knew that
+she was too good for him. Every time that he came to call for her and
+found her reading Browning and Omar Khayyam he knew that she was too
+clever for him. And every time that he saw her at all he realized
+that she was too beautiful for him.
+
+You see, Pupkin knew that he wasn't a hero. When Zena would clasp her
+hands and talk rapturously about crusaders and soldiers and firemen
+and heroes generally, Pupkin knew just where he came in. Not in it,
+that was all. If a war could have broken out in Mariposa, or the
+judge's house been invaded by the Germans, he might have had a
+chance, but as it was--hopeless.
+
+Then there was Zena's father. Heaven knows Pupkin tried hard to
+please the judge. He agreed with every theory that Judge Pepperleigh
+advanced, and that took a pretty pliable intellect in itself. They
+denounced female suffrage one day and they favoured it the next. One
+day the judge would claim that the labour movement was eating out the
+heart of the country, and the next day he would hold that the hope of
+the world lay in the organization of the toiling masses. Pupkin
+shifted his opinions like the glass in a kaleidoscope. Indeed, the
+only things on which he was allowed to maintain a steadfast
+conviction were the purity of the Conservative party of Canada and
+the awful wickedness of the recall of judges.
+
+But with all that the judge was hardly civil to Pupkin. He hadn't
+asked him to the house till Zena brought him there, though, as a
+rule, all the bank clerks in Mariposa treated Judge Pepperleigh's
+premises as their own. He used to sit and sneer at Pupkin after he
+had gone till Zena would throw down the Pioneers of Tecumseh Township
+in a temper and flounce off the piazza to her room. After which the
+judge's manner would change instantly and he would relight his corn
+cob pipe and sit and positively beam with contentment. In all of
+which there was something so mysterious as to prove that Mr. Pupkin's
+chances were hopeless.
+
+Nor was that all of it. Pupkin's salary was eight hundred dollars a
+year and the Exchange Bank limit for marriage was a thousand.
+
+I suppose you are aware of the grinding capitalistic tyranny of the
+banks in Mariposa whereby marriage is put beyond the reach of ever so
+many mature and experienced men of nineteen and twenty and
+twenty-one, who are compelled to go on eating on a meal ticket at the
+Mariposa House and living over the bank to suit the whim of a group
+of capitalists.
+
+Whenever Pupkin thought of this two hundred dollars he understood all
+that it meant by social unrest. In fact, he interpreted all forms of
+social discontent in terms of it. Russian Anarchism, German
+Socialism, the Labour Movement, Henry George, Lloyd George,--he
+understood the whole lot of them by thinking of his two hundred
+dollars.
+
+When I tell you that at this period Mr. Pupkin read Memoirs of the
+Great Revolutionists and even thought of blowing up Henry Mullins
+with dynamite, you can appreciate his state of mind.
+
+
+But not even by all these hindrances and obstacles to his love for
+Zena Pepperleigh would Peter Pupkin have been driven to commit
+suicide (oh, yes; he committed it three times, as I'm going to tell
+you), had it not been for another thing that he knew stood once and
+for all and in cold reality between him and Zena.
+
+He felt it in a sort of way, as soon as he knew her. Each time that
+he tried to talk to her about his home and his father and mother and
+found that something held him back, he realized more and more the
+kind of thing that stood between them. Most of all did he realize it,
+with a sudden sickness of heart, when he got word that his father and
+mother wanted to come to Mariposa to see him and he had all he could
+do to head them off from it.
+
+Why? Why stop them? The reason was, simple enough, that Pupkin was
+ashamed of them, bitterly ashamed. The picture of his mother and
+father turning up in Mariposa and being seen by his friends there and
+going up to the Pepperleigh's house made him feel faint with shame.
+
+No, I don't say it wasn't wrong. It only shows what difference of
+fortune, the difference of being rich and being poor, means in this
+world. You perhaps have been so lucky that you cannot appreciate what
+it means to feel shame at the station of your own father and mother.
+You think it doesn't matter, that honesty and kindliness of heart are
+all that counts. That only shows that you have never known some of
+the bitterest feelings of people less fortunate than yourself.
+
+So it was with Mr. Pupkin. When he thought of his father and mother
+turning up in Mariposa, his face reddened with unworthy shame.
+
+He could just picture the scene! He could see them getting out of
+their Limousine touring car, with the chauffeur holding open the door
+for them, and his father asking for a suite of rooms,--just think of
+it, a suite of rooms!--at the Mariposa House.
+
+The very thought of it turned him ill.
+
+What! You have mistaken my meaning? Ashamed of them because they were
+poor? Good heavens, no, but because they were rich! And not rich in
+the sense in which they use the term in Mariposa, where a rich person
+merely means a man who has money enough to build a house with a
+piazza and to have everything he wants; but rich in the other
+sense,--motor cars, Ritz hotels, steam yachts, summer islands and all
+that sort of thing.
+
+Why, Pupkin's father,--what's the use of trying to conceal it any
+longer?--was the senior partner in the law firm of Pupkin, Pupkin and
+Pupkin. If you know the Maritime Provinces at all, you've heard of
+the Pupkins. The name is a household word from Chedabucto to
+Chidabecto. And, for the matter of that, the law firm and the fact
+that Pupkin senior had been an Attorney General was the least part of
+it. Attorney General! Why, there's no money in that! It's no better
+than the Senate. No, no, Pupkin senior, like so many lawyers, was
+practically a promoter, and he blew companies like bubbles, and when
+he wasn't in the Maritime Provinces he was in Boston and New York
+raising money and floating loans, and when they had no money left in
+New York he floated it in London: and when he had it, he floated on
+top of it big rafts of lumber on the Miramichi and codfish on the
+Grand Banks and lesser fish in the Fundy Bay. You've heard perhaps of
+the Tidal Transportation Company, and Fundy Fisheries Corporation,
+and the Paspebiac Pulp and Paper Unlimited? Well, all of those were
+Pupkin senior under other names. So just imagine him in Mariposa!
+Wouldn't he be utterly foolish there? Just imagine him meeting Jim
+Eliot and treating him like a druggist merely because he ran a drug
+store! or speaking to Jefferson Thorpe as if he were a barber simply
+because he shaved for money! Why, a man like that could ruin young
+Pupkin in Mariposa in half a day, and Pupkin knew it.
+
+That wouldn't matter so much, but think of the Pepperleighs and
+Zena! Everything. would be over with them at once. Pupkin knew just
+what the judge thought of riches and luxuries. How often had he heard
+the judge pass sentences of life imprisonment on Pierpont Morgan and
+Mr. Rockefeller. How often had Pupkin heard him say that any man who
+received more than three thousand dollars a year (that was the
+judicial salary in the Missinaba district) was a mere robber, unfit
+to shake the hand of an honest man. Bitter! I should think he was!
+He was not so bitter, perhaps, as Mr. Muddleson, the principal of the
+Mariposa high school, who said that any man who received more than
+fifteen hundred dollars was a public enemy. He was certainly not so
+bitter as Trelawney, the post-master, who said that any man who got
+from society more than thirteen hundred dollars (apart from a
+legitimate increase in recognition of a successful election) was a
+danger to society. Still, he was bitter. They all were in Mariposa.
+Pupkin could just imagine how they would despise his father!
+
+And Zena! That was the worst of all. How often had, Pupkin heard her
+say that she simply hated diamonds wouldn't wear them, despised them,
+wouldn't give a thank you for a whole tiara of them! As for motor
+cars and steam yachts,--well, it was pretty plain that that sort of
+thing had no chance with Zena Pepperleigh. Why, she had told Pupkin
+one night in the canoe that she would only marry a man who was poor
+and had his way to make and would hew down difficulties for her sake.
+And when Pupkin couldn't answer the argument she was quite cross and
+silent all the way home.
+
+
+What was Peter Pupkin doing, then, at eight hundred dollars in a bank
+in Mariposa? If you ask that, it means that you know nothing of the
+life of the Maritime Provinces and the sturdy temper of the people. I
+suppose there are no people in the world who hate luxury and
+extravagance and that sort of thing quite as much as the Maritime
+Province people, and, of them, no one hated luxury more than Pupkin
+senior.
+
+Don't mistake the man. He wore a long sealskin coat in winter, yes;
+but mark you, not as a matter of luxury, but merely as a question of
+his lungs. He smoked, I admit it, a thirty-five cent cigar, not
+because he preferred it, but merely through a delicacy of the thorax
+that made it imperative. He drank champagne at lunch, I concede the
+point, not in the least from the enjoyment of it, but simply on
+account of a peculiar affection of the tongue and lips that
+positively dictated it. His own longing--and his wife shared it--was
+for the simple, simple life--an island somewhere, with birds and
+trees. They had bought three or four islands--one in the St.
+Lawrence, and two in the Gulf, and one off the coast of
+Maine--looking for this sort of thing. Pupkin senior often said that
+he wanted to have some place that would remind him of the little old
+farm up the Aroostook where he was brought up. He often bought little
+old farms, just to try them, but they always turned out to be so near
+a city that he cut them into real estate lots, without even having
+had time to look at them.
+
+But--and this is where the emphasis lay--in the matter of luxury for
+his only son, Peter, Pupkin senior was a Maritime Province man right
+to the core, with all the hardihood of the United Empire Loyalists
+ingrained in him. No luxury for that boy! No, sir! From his
+childhood, Pupkin senior had undertaken, at the least sign of luxury,
+to "tan it out of him," after the fashion still in vogue in the
+provinces. Then he sent him to an old-fashioned school to get it
+"thumped out of him," and after that he had put him for a year on a
+Nova Scotia schooner to get it "knocked out of him." If, after all
+that, young Pupkin, even when he came to Mariposa, wore cameo pins
+and daffodil blazers, and broke out into ribbed silk saffron ties on
+pay day, it only shows that the old Adam still needs further tanning
+even in the Maritime Provinces.
+
+Young Pupkin, of course, was to have gone into law. That was his
+father's cherished dream and would have made the firm Pupkin, Pupkin,
+Pupkin, and Pupkin, as it ought to have been. But young Peter was
+kept out of the law by the fool system of examinations devised since
+his father's time. Hence there was nothing for it but to sling him
+into a bank; "sling him" was, I think, the expression. So his father
+decided that if Pupkin was to be slung, he should be slung good and
+far--clean into Canada (you know the way they use that word in the
+Maritime Provinces). And to sling Pupkin he called in the services of
+an old friend, a man after his own heart, just as violent as himself,
+who used to be at the law school in the city with Pupkin senior
+thirty years ago. So this friend, who happened to live in Mariposa,
+and who was a violent man, said at once: "Edward, by Jehoshaphat!
+send the boy up here."
+
+So that is how Pupkin came to Mariposa. And if, when he got there,
+his father's friend gave no sign, and treated the boy with roughness
+and incivility, that may have been, for all I know, a continuation of
+the "tanning" process of the Maritime people.
+
+Did I mention that the Pepperleigh family, generations ago, had taken
+up land near the Aroostook, and that it was from there the judge's
+father came to Tecumseh township? Perhaps not, but it doesn't matter.
+
+But surely after such reminiscences as these the awful things that
+are impending over Mr. Pupkin must be kept for another chapter.
+
+
+
+NINE
+
+The Mariposa Bank Mystery
+
+Suicide is a thing that ought not to be committed without very
+careful thought. It often involves serious consequences, and in some
+cases brings pain to others than oneself.
+
+I don't say that there is no justification for it. There often is.
+Anybody who has listened to certain kinds of music, or read certain
+kinds of poetry, or heard certain kinds of performances upon the
+concertina, will admit that there are some lives which ought not to
+be continued, and that even suicide has its brighter aspects.
+
+But to commit suicide on grounds of love is at the best a very
+dubious experiment. I know that in this I am expressing an opinion
+contrary to that of most true lovers who embrace suicide on the
+slightest provocation as the only honourable termination of an
+existence that never ought to have begun.
+
+I quite admit that there is a glamour and a sensation about the thing
+which has its charm, and that there is nothing like it for causing a
+girl to realize the value of the heart that she has broken and which
+breathed forgiveness upon her at the very moment when it held in its
+hand the half-pint of prussic acid that was to terminate its beating
+for ever.
+
+But apart from the general merits of the question, I suppose there
+are few people, outside of lovers, who know what it is to commit
+suicide four times in five weeks.
+
+Yet this was what happened to Mr. Pupkin, of the Exchange Bank of
+Mariposa.
+
+Ever since he had known Zena Pepperleigh he had realized that his
+love for her was hopeless. She was too beautiful for him and too good
+for him; her father hated him and her mother despised him; his salary
+was too small and his own people were too rich.
+
+If you add to all that that he came up to the judge's house one night
+and found a poet reciting verses to Zena, you will understand the
+suicide at once. It was one of those regular poets with a solemn
+jackass face, and lank parted hair and eyes like puddles of molasses.
+I don't know how he came there--up from the city, probably--but
+there he was on the Pepperleighs' verandah that August evening. He
+was reciting poetry--either Tennyson's or Shelley's, or his own, you
+couldn't tell--and about him sat Zena with her hands clasped and Nora
+Gallagher looking at the sky and Jocelyn Drone gazing into infinity,
+and a little tubby woman looking at the poet with her head falling
+over sideways--in fact, there was a whole group of them.
+
+
+I don't know what it is about poets that draws women to them in this
+way. But everybody knows that a poet has only to sit and saw the air
+with his hands and recite verses in a deep stupid voice, and all the
+women are crazy over him. Men despise him and would kick him off the
+verandah if they dared, but the women simply rave over him.
+
+So Pupkin sat there in the gloom and listened to this poet reciting
+Browning and he realized that everybody understood it but him. He
+could see Zena with her eyes fixed on the poet as if she were hanging
+on to every syllable (she was; she needed to), and he stood it just
+about fifteen minutes and then slid off the side of the verandah and
+disappeared without even saying good-night.
+
+He walked straight down Oneida Street and along the Main Street just
+as hard as he could go. There was only one purpose in his
+mind,--suicide. He was heading straight for Jim Eliot's drug store on
+the main corner and his idea was to buy a drink of chloroform and
+drink it and die right there on the spot.
+
+As Pupkin walked down the street, the whole thing was so vivid in his
+mind that he could picture it to the remotest detail. He could even
+see it all in type, in big headings in the newspapers of the
+following day:
+
+APPALLING SUICIDE. PETER PUPKIN POISONED.
+
+He perhaps hoped that the thing might lead to some kind of public
+enquiry and that the question of Browning's poetry and whether it is
+altogether fair to allow of its general circulation would be fully
+ventilated in the newspapers.
+
+Thinking of that, Pupkin came to the main corner.
+
+On a warm August evening the drug store of Mariposa, as you know, is
+all a blaze of lights. You can hear the hissing of the soda-water
+fountain half a block away, and inside the store there are ever so
+many people--boys and girls and old people too--all drinking
+sarsaparilla and chocolate sundaes and lemon sours and foaming drinks
+that you take out of long straws. There is such a laughing and a
+talking as you never heard, and the girls are all in white and pink
+and cambridge blue, and the soda fountain is of white marble with
+silver taps, and it hisses and sputters, and Jim Eliot and his
+assistant wear white coats with red geraniums in them, and it's just
+as gay as gay.
+
+The foyer of the opera in Paris may be a fine sight, but I doubt if
+it can compare with the inside of Eliot's drug store in Mariposa--for
+real gaiety and joy of living.
+
+This night the store was especially crowded because it was a Saturday
+and that meant early closing for all the hotels, except, of course,
+Smith's. So as the hotels were shut, the people were all in the drug
+store, drinking like fishes. It just shows the folly of Local Option
+and the Temperance Movement and all that. Why, if you shut the hotels
+you simply drive the people to the soda fountains and there's more
+drinking than ever, and not only of the men, too, but the girls and
+young boys and children. I've seen little things of eight and nine
+that had to be lifted up on the high stools at Eliot's drug store,
+drinking great goblets of lemon soda, enough to burst them--brought
+there by their own fathers, and why? Simply because the hotel bars
+were shut.
+
+What's the use of thinking you can stop people drinking merely by
+cutting off whiskey and brandy? The only effect is to drive them to
+taking lemon sour and sarsaparilla and cherry pectoral and caroka
+cordial and things they wouldn't have touched before. So in the long
+run they drink more than ever. The point is that you can't prevent
+people having a good time, no matter how hard you try. If they can't
+have it with lager beer and brandy, they'll have it with plain soda
+and lemon pop, and so the whole gloomy scheme of the temperance
+people breaks down, anyway.
+
+But I was only saying that Eliot's drug store in Mariposa on a
+Saturday night is the gayest and brightest spot in the world.
+
+And just imagine what a fool of a place to commit suicide in!
+
+Just imagine going up to the soda-water fountain and asking for five
+cents' worth of chloroform and soda! Well, you simply can't, that's
+all.
+
+That's the way Pupkin found it. You see, as soon as he came in,
+somebody called out: "Hello, Pete!" and one or two others called:
+"Hullo, Pup!" and some said: "How goes it?" and others: "How are you
+toughing it?" and so on, because you see they had all been drinking
+more or less and naturally they felt jolly and glad-hearted.
+
+So the upshot of it was that instead of taking chloroform, Pupkin
+stepped up to the counter of the fountain and he had a bromo-seltzer
+with cherry soda, and after that he had one of those aerated
+seltzers, and then a couple of lemon seltzers and a bromo-phizzer.
+
+I don't know if you know the mental effect of a bromo-seltzer.
+
+But it's a hard thing to commit suicide on.
+
+You can't.
+
+You feel so buoyant.
+
+Anyway, what with the phizzing of the seltzer and the lights and the
+girls, Pupkin began to feel so fine that he didn't care a cuss for
+all the Browning in the world, and as for the poet--oh, to blazes
+with him! What's poetry, anyway?--only rhymes.
+
+So, would you believe it, in about ten minutes Peter Pupkin was off
+again and heading straight for the Pepperleighs' house, poet or no
+poet, and, what was more to the point, he carried with him three
+great bricks of Eliot's ice cream--in green, pink and brown layers.
+He struck the verandah just at the moment when Browning was getting
+too stale and dreary for words. His brain was all sizzling and jolly
+with the bromo-seltzer, and when he fetched out the ice cream bricks
+and Zena ran to get plates and spoons to eat it with, and Pupkin went
+with her to help fetch them and they picked out the spoons together,
+they were so laughing and happy that it was just a marvel. Girls, you
+know, need no bromo-seltzer. They're full of it all the time.
+
+And as for the poet--well, can you imagine how Pupkin felt when Zena
+told him that the poet was married, and that the tubby little woman
+with her head on sideways was his wife?
+
+So they had the ice cream, and the poet ate it in bucketsful. Poets
+always do. They need it. And after it the poet recited some stanzas
+of his own and Pupkin saw that he had misjudged the man, because it
+was dandy poetry, the very best. That night Pupkin walked home on air
+and there was no thought of chloroform, and it turned out that he
+hadn't committed suicide, but like all lovers he had commuted it.
+
+
+I don't need to describe in full the later suicides of Mr. Pupkin,
+because they were all conducted on the same plan and rested on
+something the same reasons as above.
+
+Sometimes he would go down at night to the offices of the bank below
+his bedroom and bring up his bank revolver in order to make an end of
+himself with it. This, too, he could see headed up in the newspapers
+as:
+
+BRILLIANT BOY BANKER BLOWS OUT BRAINS.
+
+But blowing your brains out is a noisy, rackety performance, and
+Pupkin soon found that only special kinds of brains are suited for
+it. So he always sneaked back again later in the night and put the
+revolver in its place, deciding to drown himself instead. Yet every
+time that he walked down to the Trestle Bridge over the Ossawippi he
+found it was quite unsuitable for drowning--too high, and the water
+too swift and black, and the rushes too gruesome--in fact, not at
+all the kind of place for a drowning.
+
+Far better, he realized, to wait there on the railroad track and
+throw himself under the wheels of the express and be done with it.
+Yet, though Pupkin often waited in this way for the train, he was
+never able to pick out a pair of wheels that suited him. Anyhow, it's
+awfully hard to tell an express from a fast freight.
+
+I wouldn't mention these attempts at suicide if one of them hadn't
+finally culminated in making Peter Pupkin a hero and solving for him
+the whole perplexed entanglement of his love affair with Zena
+Pepperleigh. Incidentally it threw him into the very centre of one of
+the most impenetrable bank mysteries that ever baffled the ingenuity
+of some of the finest legal talent that ever adorned one of the most
+enterprising communities in the country.
+
+It happened one night, as I say, that Pupkin decided to go down into
+the office of the bank and get his revolver and see if it would blow
+his brains out. It was the night of the Firemen's Ball and Zena had
+danced four times with a visitor from the city, a man who was in the
+fourth year at the University and who knew everything. It was more
+than Peter Pupkin could bear. Mallory Tompkins was away that night,
+and when Pupkin came home he was all alone in the building, except
+for Gillis, the caretaker, who lived in the extension at the back.
+
+He sat in his room for hours brooding. Two or three times he picked
+up a book--he remembered afterwards distinctly that it was Kant's
+Critique of Pure Reason--and tried to read it, but it seemed
+meaningless and trivial. Then with a sudden access of resolution he
+started from his chair and made his way down the stairs and into the
+office room of the bank, meaning to get a revolver and kill himself
+on the spot and let them find his body lying on the floor.
+
+It was then far on in the night and the empty building of the bank
+was as still as death. Pupkin could hear the stairs creak under his
+feet, and as he went he thought he heard another sound like the
+opening or closing of a door. But it sounded not like the sharp
+ordinary noise of a closing door but with a dull muffled noise as if
+someone had shut the iron door of a safe in a room under the ground.
+For a moment Pupkin stood and listened with his heart thumping
+against his ribs. Then he kicked his slippers from his feet and
+without a sound stole into the office on the ground floor and took
+the revolver from his teller's desk. As he gripped it, he listened to
+the sounds on the back-stairway and in the vaults below.
+
+I should explain that in the Exchange Bank of Mariposa the offices
+are on the ground floor level with the street. Below this is another
+floor with low dark rooms paved with flagstones, with unused office
+desks and with piles of papers stored in boxes. On this floor are the
+vaults of the bank, and lying in them in the autumn--the grain
+season--there is anything from fifty to a hundred thousand dollars in
+currency tied in bundles. There is no other light down there than the
+dim reflection from the lights out on the street, that lies in
+patches on the stone floor.
+
+I think as Peter Pupkin stood, revolver in hand, in the office of the
+bank, he had forgotten all about the maudlin purpose of his first
+coming. He had forgotten for the moment all about heroes and love
+affairs, and his whole mind was focussed, sharp and alert, with the
+intensity of the night-time, on the sounds that he heard in the vault
+and on the back-stairway of the bank.
+
+Straight away, Pupkin knew what it meant as plainly as if it were
+written in print. He had forgotten, I say, about being a hero and he
+only knew that there was sixty thousand dollars in the vault of the
+bank below, and that he was paid eight hundred dollars a year to look
+after it.
+
+As Peter Pupkin stood there listening to the sounds in his stockinged
+feet, his faced showed grey as ashes in the light that fell through
+the window from the street. His heart beat like a hammer against his
+ribs. But behind its beatings was the blood of four generations of
+Loyalists, and the robber who would take that sixty thousand dollars
+from the Mariposa bank must take it over the dead body of Peter
+Pupkin, teller.
+
+
+Pupkin walked down the stairs to the lower room, the one below the
+ground with the bank vault in it, with as fine a step as any of his
+ancestors showed on parade. And if he had known it, as he came down
+the stairway in the front of the vault room, there was a man crouched
+in the shadow of the passage way by the stairs at the back. This man,
+too, held a revolver in his hand, and, criminal or not, his face was
+as resolute as Pupkin's own. As he heard the teller's step on the
+stair, he turned and waited in the shadow of the doorway without a
+sound.
+
+There is no need really to mention all these details. They are only
+of interest as showing how sometimes a bank teller in a corded
+smoking jacket and stockinged feet may be turned into such a hero as
+even the Mariposa girls might dream about.
+
+All of this must have happened at about three o'clock in the night.
+This much was established afterwards from the evidence of Gillis, the
+caretaker. When he first heard the sounds he had looked at his watch
+and noticed that it was half-past two; the watch he knew was
+three-quarters of an hour slow three days before and had been gaining
+since. The exact time at which Gillis heard footsteps in the bank
+and started downstairs, pistol in hand, became a nice point
+afterwards in the cross-examination.
+
+But one must not anticipate. Pupkin reached the iron door of the bank
+safe, and knelt in front of it, feeling in the dark to find the
+fracture of the lock. As he knelt, he heard a sound behind him, and
+swung round on his knees and saw the bank robber in the half light of
+the passage way and the glitter of a pistol in his hand. The rest was
+over in an instant. Pupkin heard a voice that was his own, but that
+sounded strange and hollow, call out: "Drop that, or I'll fire!" and
+then just as he raised his revolver, there came a blinding flash of
+light before his eyes, and Peter Pupkin, junior teller of the bank,
+fell forward on the floor and knew no more.
+
+
+At that point, of course, I ought to close down a chapter, or volume,
+or, at least, strike the reader over the head with a sandbag to force
+him to stop and think. In common fairness one ought to stop here and
+count a hundred or get up and walk round a block, or, at any rate,
+picture to oneself Peter Pupkin lying on the floor of the bank,
+motionless, his arms distended, the revolver still grasped in his
+hand. But I must go on.
+
+By half-past seven on the following morning it was known all over
+Mariposa that Peter Pupkin the junior teller of the Exchange had been
+shot dead by a bank robber in the vault of the building. It was known
+also that Gillis, the caretaker, had been shot and killed at the foot
+of the stairs, and that the robber had made off with fifty thousand
+dollars in currency; that he had left a trail of blood on the
+sidewalk and that the men were out tracking him with bloodhounds in
+the great swamps to the north of the town.
+
+This, I say, and it is important to note it, was what they knew at
+half-past seven. Of course as each hour went past they learned more
+and more. At eight o'clock it was known that Pupkin was not dead, but
+dangerously wounded in the lungs. At eight-thirty it was known that
+he was not shot in the lungs, but that the ball had traversed the pit
+of his stomach.
+
+At nine o'clock it was learned that the pit of Pupkin's stomach was
+all right, but that the bullet had struck his right ear and carried
+it away. Finally it was learned that his ear had not exactly been
+carried away, that is, not precisely removed by the bullet, but that
+it had grazed Pupkin's head in such a way that it had stunned him,
+and if it had been an inch or two more to the left it might have
+reached his brain. This, of course, was just as good as being killed
+from the point of view of public interest.
+
+Indeed, by nine o'clock Pupkin could be himself seen on the Main
+Street with a great bandage sideways on his head, pointing out the
+traces of the robber. Gillis, the caretaker, too, it was known by
+eight, had not been killed. He had been shot through the brain, but
+whether the injury was serious or not was only a matter of
+conjecture. In fact, by ten o'clock it was understood that the bullet
+from the robber's second shot had grazed the side of the caretaker's
+head, but as far as could be known his brain was just as before. I
+should add that the first report about the bloodstains and the swamp
+and the bloodhounds turned out to be inaccurate. The stains may have
+been blood, but as they led to the cellar way of Netley's store they
+may have also been molasses, though it was argued, to be sure, that
+the robber might well have poured molasses over the bloodstains from
+sheer cunning.
+
+It was remembered, too, that there were no bloodhounds in Mariposa,
+although, mind you, there are any amount of dogs there.
+
+So you see that by ten o'clock in the morning the whole affair was
+settling into the impenetrable mystery which it ever since remained.
+
+Not that there wasn't evidence enough. There was Pupkin's own story
+and Gillis's story, and the stories of all the people who had heard
+the shots and seen the robber (some said, the bunch of robbers) go
+running past (others said, walking past), in the night. Apparently
+the robber ran up and down half the streets of Mariposa before he
+vanished.
+
+But the stories of Pupkin and Gillis were plain enough. Pupkin
+related that he heard sounds in the bank and came downstairs just in
+time to see the robber crouching in the passage way, and that the
+robber was a large, hulking, villainous looking man, wearing a heavy
+coat. Gillis told exactly the same story, having heard the noises at
+the same time, except that he first described the robber as a small
+thin fellow (peculiarly villainous looking, however, even in the
+dark), wearing a short jacket; but on thinking it over, Gillis
+realized that he had been wrong about the size of the criminal, and
+that he was even bigger, if anything, than what Mr: Pupkin thought.
+Gillis had fired at the robber; just at the same moment had Mr.
+Pupkin.
+
+Beyond that, all was mystery, absolute and impenetrable.
+
+By eleven o'clock the detectives had come up from the city under
+orders from the head of the bank.
+
+
+I wish you could have seen the two detectives as they moved to and
+fro in Mariposa--fine looking, stern, impenetrable men that they
+were. They seemed to take in the whole town by instinct and so
+quietly. They found their way to Mr. Smith's Hotel just as quietly as
+if it wasn't design at all and stood there at the bar, picking up
+scraps of conversation--you know the way detectives do it.
+Occasionally they allowed one or two bystanders--confederates,
+perhaps,--to buy a drink for them, and you could see from the way
+they drank it that they were still listening for a clue. If there had
+been the faintest clue in Smith's Hotel or in the Mariposa House or
+in the Continental, those fellows would have been at it like a flash.
+
+To see them moving round the town that day--silent, massive,
+imperturbable--gave one a great idea of their strange, dangerous
+calling. They went about the town all day and yet in such a quiet
+peculiar way that you couldn't have realized that they were working
+at all. They ate their dinner together at Smith's cafe and took an
+hour and a half over it to throw people off the scent. Then when they
+got them off it, they sat and talked with Josh Smith in the back bar
+to keep them off. Mr. Smith seemed to take to them right away. They
+were men of his own size, or near it, and anyway hotel men and
+detectives have a general affinity and share in the same impenetrable
+silence and in their confidential knowledge of the weaknesses of the
+public.
+
+Mr. Smith, too, was of great use to the detectives. "Boys," he said,
+"I wouldn't ask too close as to what folks was out late at night: in
+this town it don't do."
+
+When those two great brains finally left for the city on the
+five-thirty, it was hard to realize that behind each grand,
+impassible face a perfect vortex of clues was seething.
+
+But if the detectives were heroes, what was Pupkin? Imagine him with
+his bandage on his head standing in front of the bank and talking of
+the midnight robbery with that peculiar false modesty that only
+heroes are entitled to use.
+
+I don't know whether you have ever been a hero, but for sheer
+exhilaration there is nothing like it. And for Mr. Pupkin, who had
+gone through life thinking himself no good, to be suddenly exalted
+into the class of Napoleon Bonaparte and John Maynard and the Charge
+of the Light Brigade--oh, it was wonderful. Because Pupkin was a
+brave man now and he knew it and acquired with it all the brave man's
+modesty. In fact, I believe he was heard to say that he had only done
+his duty, and that what he did was what any other man would have
+done: though when somebody else said: "That's so, when you come to
+think of it," Pupkin turned on him that quiet look of the wounded
+hero, bitterer than words.
+
+And if Pupkin had known that all of the afternoon papers in the city
+reported him dead, he would have felt more luxurious still.
+
+That afternoon the Mariposa court sat in enquiry,--technically it
+was summoned in inquest on the dead robber--though they hadn't found
+the body--and it was wonderful to see them lining up the witnesses
+and holding cross-examinations. There is something in the
+cross-examination of great criminal lawyers like Nivens, of Mariposa,
+and in the counter examinations of presiding judges like Pepperleigh
+that thrills you to the core with the astuteness of it.
+
+They had Henry Mullins, the manager, on the stand for an hour and a
+half, and the excitement was so breathless that you could have heard
+a pin drop. Nivens took him on first.
+
+"What is your name?" he said.
+
+"Henry August Mullins."
+
+"What position do you hold?"
+
+"I am manager of the Exchange Bank."
+
+"When were you born?"
+
+"December 30, 1869."
+
+After that, Nivens stood looking quietly at Mullins. You could feel
+that he was thinking pretty deeply before he shot the next question
+at him.
+
+"Where did you go to school?"
+
+Mullins answered straight off: "The high school down home," and
+Nivens thought again for a while and then asked:
+
+"How many boys were at the school?"
+
+"About sixty."
+
+"How many masters?"
+
+"About three."
+
+After that Nivens paused a long while and seemed to be digesting the
+evidence, but at last an idea seemed to strike him and he said:
+
+"I understand you were not on the bank premises last night. Where
+were you?"
+
+"Down the lake duck shooting."
+
+You should have seen the excitement in the court when Mullins said
+this. The judge leaned forward in his chair and broke in at once.
+
+"Did you get any, Harry?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," Mullins said, "about six."
+
+"Where did you get them? What? In the wild rice marsh past the
+river? You don't say so! Did you get them on the sit or how?"
+
+All of these questions were fired off at the witness from the court
+in a single breath. In fact, it was the knowledge that the first
+ducks of the season had been seen in the Ossawippi marsh that led to
+the termination of the proceedings before the afternoon was a quarter
+over. Mullins and George Duff and half the witnesses were off with
+shotguns as soon as the court was cleared.
+
+
+I may as well state at once that the full story of the robbery
+of the bank of Mariposa never came to the light. A number of
+arrests--mostly of vagrants and suspicious characters--were made, but
+the guilt of the robbery was never brought home to them. One man was
+arrested twenty miles away, at the other end of Missinaba county,
+who not only corresponded exactly with the description of the robber,
+but, in addition to this, had a wooden leg. Vagrants with one leg
+are always regarded with suspicion in places like Mariposa, and
+whenever a robbery or a murder happens they are arrested in batches.
+
+It was never even known just how much money was stolen from the bank.
+Some people said ten thousand dollars, others more. The bank, no
+doubt for business motives, claimed that the contents of the safe
+were intact and that the robber had been foiled in his design.
+
+But none of this matters to the exaltation of Mr. Pupkin. Good
+fortune, like bad, never comes in small instalments. On that
+wonderful day, every good thing happened to Peter Pupkin at once. The
+morning saw him a hero. At the sitting of the court, the judge
+publicly told him that his conduct was fit to rank among the annals
+of the pioneers of Tecumseh Township, and asked him to his house for
+supper. At five o'clock he received the telegram of promotion from
+the head office that raised his salary to a thousand dollars, and
+made him not only a hero but a marriageable man. At six o'clock he
+started up to the judge's house with his resolution nerved to the
+most momentous step of his life.
+
+His mind was made up.
+
+He would do a thing seldom if ever done in Mariposa. He would propose
+to Zena Pepperleigh. In Mariposa this kind of step, I say, is seldom
+taken. The course of love runs on and on through all its stages of
+tennis playing and dancing and sleigh riding, till by sheer notoriety
+of circumstance an understanding is reached. To propose straight out
+would be thought priggish and affected and is supposed to belong only
+to people in books.
+
+But Pupkin felt that what ordinary people dare not do, heroes are
+allowed to attempt. He would propose to Zena, and more than that, he
+would tell her in a straight, manly way that he was rich and take the
+consequences.
+
+And he did it.
+
+That night on the piazza, where the hammock hangs in the shadow of
+the Virginia creeper, he did it. By sheer good luck the judge had
+gone indoors to the library, and by a piece of rare good fortune Mrs.
+Pepperleigh had gone indoors to the sewing room, and by a happy trick
+of coincidence the servant was out and the dog was tied up--in fact,
+no such chain of circumstances was ever offered in favour of mortal
+man before.
+
+What Zena said--beyond saying yes--I do not know. I am sure that when
+Pupkin told her of the money, she bore up as bravely as so fine a
+girl as Zena would, and when he spoke of diamonds she said she would
+wear them for his sake.
+
+They were saying these things and other things--ever so many other
+things--when there was such a roar and a clatter up Oneida Street as
+you never heard, and there came bounding up to the house one of the
+most marvellous Limousine touring cars that ever drew up at the home
+of a judge on a modest salary of three thousand dollars. When it
+stopped there sprang from it an excited man in a long sealskin
+coat--worn not for the luxury of it at all but from the sheer
+chilliness of the autumn evening. And it was, as of course you know,
+Pupkin's father. He had seen the news of his son's death in the
+evening paper in the city. They drove the car through, so the
+chauffeur said, in two hours and a quarter, and behind them there was
+to follow a special trainload of detectives and emergency men, but
+Pupkin senior had cancelled all that by telegram half way up when he
+heard that Peter was still living.
+
+For a moment as his eye rested on young Pupkin you would almost have
+imagined, had you not known that he came from the Maritime Provinces,
+that there were tears in them and that he was about to hug his son to
+his heart. But if he didn't hug Peter to his heart, he certainly did
+within a few moments clasp Zena to it, in that fine fatherly way in
+which they clasp pretty girls in the Maritime Provinces. The
+strangest thing is that Pupkin senior seemed to understand the whole
+situation without any explanations at all.
+
+Judge Pepperleigh, I think, would have shaken both of Pupkin senior's
+arms off when he saw him; and when you heard them call one another
+"Ned" and "Phillip" it made you feel that they were boys again
+attending classes together at the old law school in the city.
+
+If Pupkin thought that his father wouldn't make a hit in Mariposa, it
+only showed his ignorance. Pupkin senior sat there on the judge's
+verandah smoking a corn cob pipe as if he had never heard of Havana
+cigars in his life. In the three days that he spent in Mariposa that
+autumn, he went in and out of Jeff Thorpe's barber shop and Eliot's
+drug store, shot black ducks in the marsh and played poker every
+evening at a hundred matches for a cent as if he had never lived any
+other life in all his days. They had to send him telegrams enough to
+fill a satchel to make him come away.
+
+So Pupkin and Zena in due course of time were married, and went to
+live in one of the enchanted houses on the hillside in the newer part
+of the town, where you may find them to this day.
+
+You may see Pupkin there at any time cutting enchanted grass on a
+little lawn in as gaudy a blazer as ever.
+
+But if you step up to speak to him or walk with him into the
+enchanted house, pray modulate your voice a little musical though it
+is--for there is said to be an enchanted baby on the premises whose
+sleep must not lightly be disturbed.
+
+
+
+TEN
+
+The Great Election in Missinaba County
+
+Don't ask me what election it was, whether Dominion or Provincial or
+Imperial or Universal, for I scarcely know.
+
+It must, of course, have been going on in other parts of the country
+as well, but I saw it all from Missinaba County which, with the town
+of Mariposa, was, of course, the storm centre and focus point of the
+whole turmoil.
+
+I only know that it was a huge election and that on it turned issues
+of the most tremendous importance, such as whether or not Mariposa
+should become part of the United States, and whether the flag that
+had waved over the school house at Tecumseh Township for ten
+centuries should be trampled under the hoof of an alien invader, and
+whether Britons should be slaves, and whether Canadians should be
+Britons, and whether the farming class would prove themselves
+Canadians, and tremendous questions of that kind.
+
+And there was such a roar and a tumult to it, and such a waving of
+flags and beating of drums and flaring of torchlights that such parts
+of the election as may have been going on elsewhere than in Missinaba
+county must have been quite unimportant and didn't really matter.
+
+Now that it is all over, we can look back at it without heat or
+passion. We can see,--it's plain enough now,--that in the great
+election Canada saved the British Empire, and that Missinaba saved
+Canada and that the vote of the Third Concession of Tecumseh Township
+saved Missinaba County, and that those of us who carried the third
+concession,--well, there's no need to push it further. We prefer to
+be modest about it. If we still speak of it, it is only quietly and
+simply and not more than three or four times a day.
+
+But you can't understand the election at all, and the conventions and
+the campaigns and the nominations and the balloting, unless you first
+appreciate the peculiar complexion of politics in Mariposa.
+
+Let me begin at the beginning. Everybody in Mariposa is either a
+Liberal or a Conservative or else is both. Some of the people are or
+have been Liberals or Conservatives all their lives and are called
+dyed-in-the-wool Grits or old-time Tories and things of that sort.
+These people get from long training such a swift penetrating insight
+into national issues that they can decide the most complicated
+question in four seconds: in fact, just as soon as they grab the city
+papers out of the morning mail, they know the whole solution of any
+problem you can put to them. There are other people whose aim it is
+to be broad-minded and judicious and who vote Liberal or Conservative
+according to their judgment of the questions of the day. If their
+judgment of these questions tells them that there is something in it
+for them in voting Liberal, then they do so. But if not, they refuse
+to be the slaves of a party or the henchmen of any political leader.
+So that anybody looking for henches has got to keep away from them.
+
+But the one thing that nobody is allowed to do in Mariposa is to have
+no politics. Of course there are always some people whose
+circumstances compel them to say that they have no politics. But that
+is easily understood. Take the case of Trelawney, the postmaster.
+Long ago he was a letter carrier under the old Mackenzie Government,
+and later he was a letter sorter under the old Macdonald Government,
+and after that a letter stamper under the old Tupper Government, and
+so on. Trelawney always says that he has no politics, but the truth
+is that he has too many.
+
+So, too, with the clergy in Mariposa. They have no politics--
+absolutely none. Yet Dean Drone round election time always announces
+as his text such a verse as: "Lo! is there not one righteous man in
+Israel?" or: "What ho! is it not time for a change?" And that is a
+signal for all the Liberal business men to get up and leave their
+pews.
+
+Similarly over at the Presbyterian Church, the minister says that his
+sacred calling will not allow him to take part in politics and that
+his sacred calling prevents him from breathing even a word of
+harshness against his fellow man, but that when it comes to the
+elevation of the ungodly into high places in the commonwealth (this
+means, of course, the nomination of the Conservative candidate) then
+he's not going to allow his sacred calling to prevent him from saying
+just what he thinks of it. And by that time, having pretty well
+cleared the church of Conservatives, he proceeds to show from the
+scriptures that the ancient Hebrews were Liberals to a man, except
+those who were drowned in the flood or who perished, more or less
+deservedly, in the desert.
+
+There are, I say, some people who are allowed to claim to have no
+politics,--the office holders, and the clergy and the school teachers
+and the hotel keepers. But beyond them, anybody in Mariposa who says
+that he has no politics is looked upon as crooked, and people wonder
+what it is that he is "out after."
+
+In fact, the whole town and county is a hive of politics, and people
+who have only witnessed gatherings such as the House of Commons at
+Westminster and the Senate at Washington and never seen a
+Conservative Convention at Tecumseh Corners or a Liberal Rally at the
+Concession school house, don't know what politics means.
+
+So you may imagine the excitement in Mariposa when it became known
+that King George had dissolved the parliament of Canada and had sent
+out a writ or command for Missinaba County to elect for him some
+other person than John Henry Bagshaw because he no longer had
+confidence in him.
+
+The king, of course, is very well known, very favourably known, in
+Mariposa. Everybody remembers how he visited the town on his great
+tour in Canada, and stopped off at the Mariposa station. Although he
+was only a prince at the time, there was quite a big crowd down at
+the depot and everybody felt what a shame it was that the prince had
+no time to see more of Mariposa, because he would get such a false
+idea of it, seeing only the station and the lumber yards. Still, they
+all came to the station and all the Liberals and Conservatives mixed
+together perfectly freely and stood side by side without any
+distinction, so that the prince should not observe any party
+differences among them. And he didn't,--you could see that he didn't.
+They read him an address all about the tranquillity and loyalty of
+the Empire, and they purposely left out any reference to the trouble
+over the town wharf or the big row there had been about the location
+of the new post-office. There was a general decent feeling that it
+wouldn't be fair to disturb the prince with these things: later on,
+as king, he would, of course, _have_ to know all about them, but
+meanwhile it was better to leave him with the idea that his empire
+was tranquil.
+
+So they deliberately couched the address in terms that were just as
+reassuring as possible and the prince was simply delighted with it. I
+am certain that he slept pretty soundly after hearing that address.
+Why, you could see it taking effect even on his aides-de-camp and the
+people round him, so imagine how the prince must have felt!
+
+I think in Mariposa they understand kings perfectly. Every time that
+a king or a prince comes, they try to make him see the bright side of
+everything and let him think that they're all united. Judge
+Pepperleigh walked up and down arm in arm with Dr. Gallagher, the
+worst Grit in the town, just to make the prince feel fine.
+
+So when they got the news that the king had lost confidence in John
+Henry Bagshaw, the sitting member, they never questioned it a bit.
+Lost confidence? All right, they'd elect him another right away.
+They'd elect him half a dozen if he needed them. They don't mind;
+they'd elect the whole town man after man rather than have the king
+worried about it.
+
+In any case, all the Conservatives had been wondering for years
+how the king and the governor-general and men like that had tolerated
+such a man as Bagshaw so long.
+
+Missinaba County, I say, is a regular hive of politics, and not the
+miserable, crooked, money-ridden politics of the cities, but the
+straight, real old-fashioned thing that is an honour to the country
+side. Any man who would offer to take a bribe or sell his convictions
+for money, would be an object of scorn. I don't say they wouldn't
+take money,--they would, of course, why not?--but if they did they
+would take it in a straight fearless way and say nothing about it.
+They might,--it's only human,--accept a job or a contract from the
+government, but if they did, rest assured it would be in a broad
+national spirit and not for the sake of the work itself. No, sir.
+Not for a minute.
+
+Any man who wants to get the votes of the Missinaba farmers and the
+Mariposa business men has got to persuade them that he's the right
+man. If he can do that,--if he can persuade any one of them that he
+is the right man and that all the rest know it, then they'll vote for
+him.
+
+The division, I repeat, between the Liberals and the Conservatives,
+is intense. Yet you might live for a long while in the town, between
+elections, and never know it. It is only when you get to understand
+the people that you begin to see that there is a cross division
+running through them that nothing can ever remove. You gradually
+become aware of fine subtle distinctions that miss your observation
+at first. Outwardly, they are all friendly enough. For instance, Joe
+Milligan the dentist is a Conservative, and has been for six years,
+and yet he shares the same boat-house with young Dr. Gallagher, who
+is a Liberal, and they even bought a motor boat between them. Pete
+Glover and Alf McNichol were in partnership in the hardware and paint
+store, though they belonged on different sides.
+
+But just as soon as elections drew near, the differences in politics
+became perfectly apparent. Liberals and Conservatives drew away from
+one another. Joe Milligan used the motor boat one Saturday and Dr.
+Gallagher the next, and Pete Glover sold hardware on one side of the
+store and Alf McNichol sold paint on the other. You soon realized
+too that one of the newspapers was Conservative and the other was
+Liberal, and that there was a Liberal drug store and a Conservative
+drug store, and so on. Similarly round election time, the Mariposa
+House was the Liberal Hotel, and the Continental Conservative, though
+Mr. Smith's place, where they always put on a couple of extra bar
+tenders, was what you might call Independent-Liberal-Conservative,
+with a dash of Imperialism thrown in. Mr. Gingham, the undertaker,
+was, as a natural effect of his calling, an advanced Liberal, but at
+election time he always engaged a special assistant for embalming
+Conservative customers.
+
+So now, I think, you understand something of the general political
+surroundings of the great election in Missinaba County.
+
+John Henry Bagshaw was the sitting member, the Liberal member, for
+Missinaba County.
+
+The Liberals called him the old war horse, and the old battle-axe,
+and the old charger and the old champion and all sorts of things of
+that kind. The Conservatives called him the old jackass and the old
+army mule and the old booze fighter and the old grafter and the old
+scoundrel.
+
+John Henry Bagshaw was, I suppose, one of the greatest political
+forces in the world. He had flowing white hair crowned with a fedora
+hat, and a smooth statesmanlike face which it cost the country
+twenty-five cents a day to shave.
+
+Altogether the Dominion of Canada had spent over two thousand dollars
+in shaving that face during the twenty years that Bagshaw had
+represented Missinaba County. But the result had been well worth it.
+
+Bagshaw wore a long political overcoat that it cost the country
+twenty cents a day to brush, and boots that cost the Dominion fifteen
+cents every morning to shine.
+
+But it was money well spent.
+
+Bagshaw of Mariposa was one of the most representative men of the
+age, and it's no wonder that he had been returned for the county for
+five elections running, leaving the Conservatives nowhere. Just think
+how representative he was. He owned two hundred acres out on the
+Third Concession and kept two men working on it all the time to
+prove that he was a practical farmer. They sent in fat hogs to the
+Missinaba County Agricultural Exposition and the World's Fair every
+autumn, and Bagshaw himself stood beside the pig pens with the
+judges, and wore a pair of corduroy breeches and chewed a straw all
+afternoon. After that if any farmer thought that he was not properly
+represented in Parliament, it showed that he was an ass.
+
+Bagshaw owned a half share in the harness business and a quarter
+share in the tannery and that made him a business man. He paid for a
+pew in the Presbyterian Church and that represented religion in
+Parliament. He attended college for two sessions thirty years ago,
+and that represented education and kept him abreast with modern
+science, if not ahead of it. He kept a little account in one bank and
+a big account in the other, so that he was a rich man or a poor man
+at the same time.
+
+Add to that that John Henry Bagshaw was perhaps the finest orator in
+Mariposa. That, of course, is saying a great deal. There are speakers
+there, lots of them that can talk two or three hours at a stretch,
+but the old war horse could beat them all. They say that when John
+Henry Bagshaw got well started, say after a couple of hours of talk,
+he could speak as Pericles or Demosthenes or Cicero never could have
+spoken.
+
+You could tell Bagshaw a hundred yards off as a member of the House
+of Commons. He wore a pepper-and-salt suit to show that he came from
+a rural constituency, and he wore a broad gold watch-chain with
+dangling seals to show that he also represents a town. You could see
+from his quiet low collar and white tie that his electorate were a
+Godfearing, religious people, while the horseshoe pin that he wore
+showed that his electorate were not without sporting instincts and
+knew a horse from a jackass.
+
+Most of the time, John Henry Bagshaw had to be at Ottawa (though he
+preferred the quiet of his farm and always left it, as he said, with
+a sigh). If he was not in Ottawa, he was in Washington, and of course
+at any time they might need him in London, so that it was no wonder
+that he could only be in Mariposa about two months of the year.
+
+That is why everybody knew, when Bagshaw got off the afternoon train
+one day early in the spring, that there must be something very
+important coming and that the rumours about a new election must be
+perfectly true.
+
+Everything that he did showed this. He gave the baggage man
+twenty-five cents to take the check off his trunk, the 'bus driver
+fifty cents to drive him up to the Main Street, and he went into
+Callahan's tobacco store and bought two ten-cent cigars and took them
+across the street and gave them to Mallory Tompkins of the
+Times-Herald as a present from the Prime Minister.
+
+All that afternoon, Bagshaw went up and down the Main Street of
+Mariposa, and you could see, if you knew the signs of it, that there
+was politics in the air. He bought nails and putty and glass in the
+hardware store, and harness in the harness shop, and drugs in the
+drug store and toys in the toy shop, and all the things like that
+that are needed for a big campaign.
+
+Then when he had done all this he went over with McGinnis the Liberal
+organizer and Mallory Tompkins, the Times-Herald man, and Gingham
+(the great Independent-Liberal undertaker) to the back parlour in the
+Mariposa House.
+
+You could tell from the way John Henry Bagshaw closed the door before
+he sat down that he was in a pretty serious frame of mind.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said, "the election is a certainty. We're going to
+have a big fight on our hands and we've got to get ready for it."
+
+"Is it going to be on the tariff?" asked Tompkins.
+
+"Yes, gentlemen, I'm afraid it is. The whole thing is going to turn
+on the tariff question. I wish it were otherwise. I think it madness,
+but they're bent on it, and we got to fight it on that line. Why they
+can't fight it merely on the question of graft," continued the old
+war horse, rising from his seat and walking up and down, "Heaven only
+knows. I warned them. I appealed to them. I said, fight the thing
+on graft and we can win easy. Take this constituency,--why not have
+fought the thing out on whether I spent too much money on the town
+wharf or the post-office? What better issues could a man want? Let
+them claim that I am crooked and let me claim that I'm not. Surely
+that was good enough without dragging in the tariff. But now,
+gentlemen, tell me about things in the constituency. Is there any
+talk yet of who is to run?"
+
+Mallory Tompkins lighted up the second of his Prime Minister's cigars
+and then answered for the group:
+
+"Everybody says that Edward Drone is going to run."
+
+"Ah!" said the old war horse, and there was joy upon his face, "is he?
+At last! That's good, that's good--now what platform will he run on?"
+
+"Independent."
+
+"Excellent," said Mr. Bagshaw. "Independent, that's fine. On a
+programme of what?"
+
+"Just simple honesty and public morality."
+
+"Come now," said the member, "that's splendid: that will help
+enormously. Honesty and public morality! The very thing! If Drone
+runs and makes a good showing, we win for a certainty. Tompkins, you
+must lose no time over this. Can't you manage to get some articles in
+the other papers hinting that at the last election we bribed all the
+voters in the county, and that we gave out enough contracts to simply
+pervert the whole constituency. Imply that we poured the public money
+into this county in bucketsful and that we are bound to do it again.
+Let Drone have plenty of material of this sort and he'll draw off
+every honest unbiassed vote in the Conservative party.
+
+"My only fear is," continued the old war horse, losing some of his
+animation, "that Drone won't run after all. He's said it so often
+before and never has. He hasn't got the money. But we must see to
+that. Gingham, you know his brother well; you must work it so that we
+pay Drone's deposit and his campaign expenses. But how like Drone it
+is to come out at this time!"
+
+It was indeed very like Edward Drone to attempt so misguided a thing
+as to come out an Independent candidate in Missinaba County on a
+platform of public honesty. It was just the sort of thing that anyone
+in Mariposa would expect from him.
+
+Edward Drone was the Rural Dean's younger brother,--young Mr. Drone,
+they used to call him, years ago, to distinguish him from the rector.
+He was a somewhat weaker copy of his elder brother, with a simple,
+inefficient face and kind blue eyes. Edward Drone was, and always had
+been, a failure. In training he had been, once upon a time, an
+engineer and built dams that broke and bridges that fell down and
+wharves that floated away in the spring floods. He had been a
+manufacturer and failed, had been a contractor and failed, and now
+lived a meagre life as a sort of surveyor or land expert on goodness
+knows what.
+
+In his political ideas Edward Drone was and, as everybody in Mariposa
+knew, always had been crazy. He used to come up to the autumn
+exercises at the high school and make speeches about the ancient
+Romans and Titus Manlius and Quintus Curtius at the same time when
+John Henry Bagshaw used to make a speech about the Maple Leaf and ask
+for an extra half holiday. Drone used to tell the boys about the
+lessons to be learned from the lives of the truly great, and Bagshaw
+used to talk to them about the lessons learned from the lives of the
+extremely rich. Drone used to say that his heart filled whenever he
+thought of the splendid patriotism of the ancient Romans, and Bagshaw
+said that whenever he looked out over this wide Dominion his heart
+overflowed.
+
+Even the youngest boy in the school could tell that Drone was
+foolish. Not even the school teachers would have voted for him.
+
+"What about the Conservatives?" asked Bagshaw presently; "is there
+any talk yet as to who they'll bring out?" Gingham and Mallory
+Tompkins looked at one another. They were almost afraid to speak.
+
+"Hadn't you heard?" said Gingham; "they've got their man already."
+
+"Who is it?" said Bagshaw quickly. "They're going to put up Josh
+Smith."
+
+"Great Heaven!" said Bagshaw, jumping to his feet; "Smith! the hotel
+keeper."
+
+"Yes, sir," said Mr. Gingham, "that's the man."
+
+Do you remember, in history, how Napoleon turned pale when he heard
+that the Duke of Wellington was to lead the allies in Belgium? Do you
+remember how when Themistocles heard that Aristogiton was to lead the
+Spartans, he jumped into the sea? Possibly you don't, but it may help
+you to form some idea of what John Henry Bagshaw felt when he heard
+that the Conservatives had selected Josh Smith, proprietor of Smith's
+Hotel.
+
+You remember Smith. You've seen him there on the steps of his
+hotel,--two hundred and eighty pounds in his stockinged feet. You've
+seen him selling liquor after hours through sheer public spirit, and
+you recall how he saved the lives of hundreds of people on the day
+when the steamer sank, and how he saved the town from being destroyed
+the night when the Church of England Church burnt down. You know that
+hotel of his, too, half way down the street, Smith's Northern Health
+Resort, though already they were beginning to call it Smith's British
+Arms.
+
+So you can imagine that Bagshaw came as near to turning pale as a man
+in federal politics can.
+
+"I never knew Smith was a Conservative," he said faintly; "he always
+subscribed to our fund."
+
+"He is now," said Mr. Gingham ominously; "he says the idea of this
+reciprocity business cuts him to the heart."
+
+"The infernal liar!" said Mr. Bagshaw.
+
+There was silence for a few moments. Then Bagshaw spoke again.
+
+"Will Smith have anything else in his platform besides the trade
+question?"
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Gingham gloomily, "he will."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Temperance and total prohibition!"
+
+John Henry Bagshaw sank back in his chair as if struck with a club.
+There let me leave him for a chapter.
+
+
+
+ELEVEN
+
+The Candidacy of Mr. Smith
+
+"Boys," said Mr. Smith to the two hostlers, stepping out on to the
+sidewalk in front of the hotel,--"hoist that there British Jack over
+the place and hoist her up good."
+
+Then he stood and watched the flag fluttering in the wind.
+
+"Billy," he said to the desk clerk, "get a couple more and put them
+up on the roof of the caff behind the hotel. Wire down to the city
+and get a quotation on a hundred of them. Take them signs 'American
+Drinks' out of the bar. Put up noo ones with 'British Beer at all
+Hours'; clear out the rye whiskey and order in Scotch and Irish, and
+then go up to the printing office and get me them placards."
+
+Then another thought struck Mr. Smith.
+
+"Say, Billy," he said, "wire to the city for fifty pictures of King
+George. Get 'em good, and get 'em coloured. It don't matter what they
+cost."
+
+"All right, sir," said Billy.
+
+"And Billy," called Mr. Smith, as still another thought struck him
+(indeed, the moment Mr. Smith went into politics you could see these
+thoughts strike him like waves), "get fifty pictures of his father,
+old King Albert."
+
+"All right, sir."
+
+"And say, I tell you, while you're at it, get some of the old queen,
+Victorina, if you can. Get 'em in mourning, with a harp and one of
+them lions and a three-pointed prong."
+
+It was on the morning after the Conservative Convention. Josh Smith
+had been chosen the candidate. And now the whole town was covered
+with flags and placards and there were bands in the streets every
+evening, and noise and music and excitement that went on from morning
+till night.
+
+Election times are exciting enough even in the city. But there the
+excitement dies down in business hours. In Mariposa there aren't any
+business hours and the excitement goes on _all_ the time.
+
+Mr. Smith had carried the Convention before him. There had been a
+feeble attempt to put up Nivens. But everybody knew that he was a
+lawyer and a college man and wouldn't have a chance by a man with a
+broader outlook like Josh Smith.
+
+So the result was that Smith was the candidate and there were
+placards out all over the town with SMITH AND BRITISH ALLEGIANCE in
+big letters, and people were wearing badges with Mr. Smith's face on
+one side and King George's on the other, and the fruit store next to
+the hotel had been cleaned out and turned into committee rooms with a
+gang of workers smoking cigars in it all day and half the night.
+
+There were other placards, too, with BAGSHAW AND LIBERTY, BAGSHAW AND
+PROSPERITY, VOTE FOR THE OLD MISSINABA STANDARD BEARER, and up town
+beside the Mariposa House there were the Bagshaw committee rooms with
+a huge white streamer across the street, and with a gang of Bagshaw
+workers smoking their heads off.
+
+But Mr. Smith had an estimate made which showed that nearly two
+cigars to one were smoked in his committee rooms as compared with
+the Liberals. It was the first time in five elections that the
+Conservative had been able to make such a showing as that.
+
+One might mention, too, that there were Drone placards out,--five or
+six of them,--little things about the size of a pocket handkerchief,
+with a statement that "Mr. Edward Drone solicits the votes of the
+electors of Missinaba County." But you would never notice them. And
+when Drone tried to put up a streamer across the Main Street with
+DRONE AND HONESTY the wind carried it away into the lake.
+
+The fight was really between Smith and Bagshaw, and everybody knew it
+from the start.
+
+I wish that I were able to narrate all the phases and the turns of
+the great contest from the opening of the campaign till the final
+polling day. But it would take volumes.
+
+First of all, of course, the trade question was hotly discussed in
+the two newspapers of Mariposa, and the Newspacket and the
+Times-Herald literally bristled with statistics. Then came interviews
+with the candidates and the expression of their convictions in regard
+to tariff questions.
+
+"Mr. Smith," said the reporter of the Mariposa Newspacket, "we'd like
+to get your views of the effect of the proposed reduction of the
+differential duties."
+
+"By gosh, Pete," said Mr. Smith, "you can search me. Have a cigar."
+
+"What do you think, Mr. Smith, would be the result of lowering the
+_ad valorem_ British preference and admitting American goods at a
+reciprocal rate?"
+
+"It's a corker, ain't it?" answered Mr. Smith. "What'll you take,
+lager or domestic?"
+
+And in that short dialogue Mr. Smith showed that he had
+instantaneously grasped the whole method of dealing with the press.
+The interview in the paper next day said that Mr. Smith, while
+unwilling to state positively that the principle of tariff
+discrimination was at variance with sound fiscal science, was firmly
+of opinion that any reciprocal interchange of tariff preferences with
+the United States must inevitably lead to a serious per capita
+reduction of the national industry.
+
+
+"Mr. Smith," said the chairman of a delegation of the manufacturers
+of Mariposa, "what do you propose to do in regard to the tariff if
+you're elected?"
+
+"Boys," answered Mr. Smith, "I'll put her up so darned high they
+won't never get her down again."
+
+
+"Mr. Smith," said the chairman of another delegation, "I'm an old
+free trader--"
+
+"Put it there," said Mr. Smith, "so'm I. There ain't nothing like
+it."
+
+
+"What do you think about imperial defence?" asked another questioner.
+
+"Which?" said Mr. Smith.
+
+"Imperial defence."
+
+"Of what?"
+
+"Of everything."
+
+"Who says it?" said Mr. Smith.
+
+"Everybody is talking of it."
+
+"What do the Conservative boys at Ottaway think about it?" answered
+Mr. Smith.
+
+"They're all for it."
+
+"Well, I'm fer it too," said Mr. Smith.
+
+
+These little conversations represented only the first stage, the
+argumentative stage of the great contest. It was during this period,
+for example, that the Mariposa Newspacket absolutely proved that the
+price of hogs in Mariposa was decimal six higher than the price of
+oranges in Southern California and that the average decennial import
+of eggs into Missinaba County had increased four decimal six eight
+two in the last fifteen years more than the import of lemons in New
+Orleans.
+
+Figures of this kind made the people think. Most certainly.
+
+After all this came the organizing stage and after that the big
+public meetings and the rallies. Perhaps you have never seen a county
+being "organized." It is a wonderful sight.
+
+First of all the Bagshaw men drove through crosswise in top buggies
+and then drove through it again lengthwise. Whenever they met a
+farmer they went in and ate a meal with him, and after the meal they
+took him out to the buggy and gave him a drink. After that the man's
+vote was absolutely solid until it was tampered with by feeding a
+Conservative.
+
+In fact, the only way to show a farmer that you are in earnest is to
+go in and eat a meal with him. If you won't eat it, he won't vote for
+you. That is the recognized political test.
+
+But, of course, just as soon as the Bagshaw men had begun to get the
+farming vote solidified, the Smith buggies came driving through in
+the other direction, eating meals and distributing cigars and turning
+all the farmers back into Conservatives.
+
+Here and there you might see Edward Drone, the Independent candidate,
+wandering round from farm to farm in the dust of the political
+buggies. To each of the farmers he explained that he pledged himself
+to give no bribes, to spend no money and to offer no jobs, and each
+one of them gripped him warmly by the hand and showed him the way to
+the next farm.
+
+After the organization of the county there came the period of the
+public meetings and the rallies and the joint debates between the
+candidates and their supporters.
+
+I suppose there was no place in the whole Dominion where the trade
+question--the Reciprocity question--was threshed out quite so
+thoroughly and in quite such a national patriotic spirit as in
+Mariposa. For a month, at least, people talked of nothing else. A man
+would stop another in the street and tell him that he had read last
+night that the average price of an egg in New York was decimal ought
+one more than the price of an egg in Mariposa, and the other man
+would stop the first one later in the day and tell him that the
+average price of a hog in Idaho was point six of a cent per pound
+less (or more,--he couldn't remember which for the moment) than the
+average price of beef in Mariposa.
+
+People lived on figures of this sort, and the man who could
+remember most of them stood out as a born leader.
+
+But of course it was at the public meetings that these things were
+most fully discussed. It would take volumes to do full justice to all
+the meetings that they held in Missinaba County. But here and there
+single speeches stood out as masterpieces of convincing oratory.
+Take, for example, the speech of John Henry Bagshaw at the Tecumseh
+Corners School House. The Mariposa Times-Herald said next day that
+that speech would go down in history, and so it will,--ever so far
+down.
+
+Anyone who has heard Bagshaw knows what an impressive speaker he is,
+and on this night when he spoke with the quiet dignity of a man old
+in years and anxious only to serve his country, he almost surpassed
+himself. Near the end of his speech somebody dropped a pin, and the
+noise it made in falling fairly rattled the windows.
+
+"I am an old man now, gentlemen," Bagshaw said, "and the time must
+soon come when I must not only leave politics, but must take my way
+towards that goal from which no traveller returns."
+
+There was a deep hush when Bagshaw said this. It was understood to
+imply that he thought of going to the United States.
+
+"Yes, gentlemen, I am an old man, and I wish, when my time comes to
+go, to depart leaving as little animosity behind me as possible. But
+before I _do_ go, I want it pretty clearly understood that there are
+more darn scoundrels in the Conservative party than ought to be
+tolerated in any decent community. I bear," he continued, "malice
+towards none and I wish to speak with gentleness to all, but what I
+will say is that how any set of rational responsible men could
+nominate such a skunk as the Conservative candidate passes the bounds
+of my comprehension. Gentlemen, in the present campaign there is no
+room for vindictive abuse. Let us rise to a higher level than that.
+They tell me that my opponent, Smith, is a common saloon keeper.
+Let it pass. They tell me that he has stood convicted of horse
+stealing, that he is a notable perjurer, that he is known as the
+blackest-hearted liar in Missinaba County. Let us not speak of it.
+Let no whisper of it pass our lips.
+
+"No, gentlemen," continued Bagshaw, pausing to take a drink of water,
+"let us rather consider this question on the high plane of national
+welfare. Let us not think of our own particular interests but let us
+consider the good of the country at large. And to do this, let me
+present to you some facts in regard to the price of barley in
+Tecumseh Township."
+
+Then, amid a deep stillness, Bagshaw read off the list of prices of
+sixteen kinds of grain in sixteen different places during sixteen
+years.
+
+"But let me turn," Bagshaw went on to another phase of the national
+subject, "and view for a moment the price of marsh hay in Missinaba
+County--"
+
+When Bagshaw sat down that night it was felt that a Liberal vote in
+Tecumseh Township was a foregone conclusion.
+
+But here they hadn't reckoned on the political genius of Mr. Smith.
+When he heard next day of the meeting, he summoned some of his
+leading speakers to him and he said:
+
+"Boys, they're beating us on them statissicks. Ourn ain't good
+enough."
+
+Then he turned to Nivens and he said:
+
+"What was them figures you had here the other night?"
+
+Nivens took out a paper and began reading.
+
+"Stop," said Mr. Smith, "what was that figure for bacon?"
+
+"Fourteen million dollars," said Nivens.
+
+"Not enough," said Mr. Smith, "make it twenty. They'll stand for it,
+them farmers."
+
+Nivens changed it.
+
+"And what was that for hay?"
+
+"Two dollars a ton."
+
+"Shove it up to four," said Mr. Smith: "And I tell you," he added,
+"if any of them farmers says the figures ain't correct, tell them to
+go to Washington and see for themselves; say that if any man wants
+the proof of your figures let him go over to England and ask,--tell
+him to go straight to London and see it all for himself in the
+books."
+
+
+After this, there was no more trouble over statistics. I must say
+though that it is a wonderfully convincing thing to hear trade
+figures of this kind properly handled. Perhaps the best man on this
+sort of thing in the campaign was Mullins, the banker. A man of his
+profession simply has to have figures of trade and population and
+money at his fingers' ends and the effect of it in public speaking is
+wonderful.
+
+No doubt you have listened to speakers of this kind, but I question
+whether you have ever heard anything more typical of the sort of
+effect that I allude to than Mullins's speech at the big rally at the
+Fourth Concession.
+
+Mullins himself, of course, knows the figures so well that he never
+bothers to write them into notes and the effect is very striking.
+
+"Now, gentlemen," he said very earnestly, "how many of you know just
+to what extent the exports of this country have increased in the last
+ten years? How many could tell what per cent. of increase there has
+been in one decade of our national importation?"--then Mullins paused
+and looked round. Not a man knew it.
+
+"I don't recall," he said, "exactly the precise amount myself,--not
+at this moment,--but it must be simply tremendous. Or take the
+question of population," Mullins went on, warming up again as a born
+statistician always does at the proximity of figures, "how many of
+you know, how many of you can state, what has been the decennial
+percentage increase in our leading cities--?"
+
+There he paused, and would you believe it, not a man could state it.
+
+"I don't recall the exact figures," said Mullins, "but I have them at
+home and they are positively colossal."
+
+But just in one phase of the public speaking, the candidacy of Mr.
+Smith received a serious set-back.
+
+It had been arranged that Mr. Smith should run on a platform of
+total prohibition. But they soon found that it was a mistake. They
+had imported a special speaker from the city, a grave man with a
+white tie, who put his whole heart into the work and would take
+nothing for it except his expenses and a sum of money for each
+speech. But beyond the money, I say, he would take nothing.
+
+He spoke one night at the Tecumseh Corners social hall at the same
+time when the Liberal meeting was going on at the Tecumseh Corners
+school house.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said, as he paused half way in his speech,--"while
+we are gathered here in earnest discussion, do you know what is
+happening over at the meeting place of our opponents? Do you know
+that seventeen bottles of rye whiskey were sent out from the town
+this afternoon to that innocent and unsuspecting school house?
+Seventeen bottles of whiskey hidden in between the blackboard and the
+wall, and every single man that attends that meeting,--mark my
+words, every single man,--will drink his fill of the abominable stuff
+at the expense of the Liberal candidate!"
+
+Just as soon as the speaker said this, you could see the Smith men at
+the meeting look at one another in injured surprise, and before the
+speech was half over the hall was practically emptied.
+
+After that the total prohibition plank was changed and the committee
+substituted a declaration in favour of such a form of restrictive
+license as should promote temperance while encouraging the
+manufacture of spirituous liquors, and by a severe regulation of the
+liquor traffic should place intoxicants only in the hands of those
+fitted to use them.
+
+
+Finally there came the great day itself, the Election Day that
+brought, as everybody knows, the crowning triumph of Mr. Smith's
+career. There is no need to speak of it at any length, because it has
+become a matter of history.
+
+In any case, everybody who has ever seen Mariposa knows just what
+election day is like. The shops, of course, are, as a matter of
+custom, all closed, and the bar rooms are all closed by law so that
+you have to go in by the back way. All the people are in their best
+clothes and at first they walk up and down the street in a solemn
+way just as they do on the twelfth of July and on St. Patrick's Day,
+before the fun begins. Everybody keeps looking in at the different
+polling places to see if anybody else has voted yet, because, of
+course, nobody cares to vote first for fear of being fooled after all
+and voting on the wrong side.
+
+Most of all did the supporters of Mr. Smith, acting under his
+instructions, hang back from the poll in the early hours. To Mr.
+Smith's mind, voting was to be conducted on the same plan as
+bear-shooting.
+
+"Hold back your votes, boys," he said, "and don't be too eager. Wait
+till she begins to warm up and then let 'em have it good and hard."
+
+In each of the polling places in Mariposa there is a returning
+officer and with him are two scrutineers, and the electors, I say,
+peep in and out like mice looking into a trap. But if once the
+scrutineers get a man well into the polling booth, they push him in
+behind a little curtain and make him vote. The voting, of course, is
+by secret ballot, so that no one except the scrutineers and the
+returning officer and the two or three people who may be round the
+poll can possibly tell how a man has voted.
+
+That's how it comes about that the first results are often so
+contradictory and conflicting. Sometimes the poll is badly arranged
+and the scrutineers are unable to see properly just how the ballots
+are being marked and they count up the Liberals and Conservatives in
+different ways. Often, too, a voter makes his mark so hurriedly and
+carelessly that they have to pick it out of the ballot box and look
+at it to see what it is.
+
+I suppose that may have been why it was that in Mariposa the results
+came out at first in such a conflicting way. Perhaps that was how it
+was that the first reports showed that Edward Drone the Independent
+candidate was certain to win. You should have seen how the excitement
+grew upon the streets when the news was circulated. In the big
+rallies and meetings of the Liberals and Conservatives, everybody had
+pretty well forgotten all about Drone, and when the news got round
+at about four o'clock that the Drone vote was carrying the poll, the
+people were simply astounded. Not that they were not pleased. On
+the contrary. They were delighted. Everybody came up to Drone and
+shook hands and congratulated him and told him that they had known
+all along that what the country wanted was a straight, honest,
+non-partisan representation. The Conservatives said openly that they
+were sick of party, utterly done with it, and the Liberals said that
+they hated it. Already three or four of them had taken Drone aside
+and explained that what was needed in the town was a straight, clean,
+non-partisan post-office, built on a piece of ground of a strictly
+non-partisan character, and constructed under contracts that were
+not tainted and smirched with party affiliation. Two or three men
+were willing to show to Drone just where a piece of ground of this
+character could be bought. They told him too that in the matter of
+the postmastership itself they had nothing against Trelawney, the
+present postmaster, in any personal sense, and would say nothing
+against him except merely that he was utterly and hopelessly unfit
+for his job and that if Drone believed, as he had said he did, in a
+purified civil service, he ought to begin by purifying Trelawney.
+
+Already Edward Drone was beginning to feel something of what it meant
+to hold office and there was creeping into his manner the quiet
+self-importance which is the first sign of conscious power.
+
+In fact, in that brief half-hour of office, Drone had a chance to see
+something of what it meant. Henry McGinnis came to him and asked
+straight out for a job as federal census-taker on the ground that he
+was hard up and had been crippled with rheumatism all winter. Nelson
+Williamson asked for the post of wharf master on the plea that he had
+been laid up with sciatica all winter and was absolutely fit for
+nothing. Erasmus Archer asked him if he could get his boy Pete into
+one of the departments at Ottawa, and made a strong case of it by
+explaining that he had tried his cussedest to get Pete a job anywhere
+else and it was simply impossible. Not that Pete wasn't a willing
+boy, but he was slow,--even his father admitted it,--slow as the
+devil, blast him, and with no head for figures and unfortunately he'd
+never had the schooling to bring him on. But if Drone could get him
+in at Ottawa, his father truly believed it would be the very place
+for him. Surely in the Indian Department or in the Astronomical
+Branch or in the New Canadian Navy there must be any amount of
+opening for a boy like this? And to all of these requests Drone found
+himself explaining that he would take the matter under his very
+earnest consideration and that they must remember that he had to
+consult his colleagues and not merely follow the dictates of his own
+wishes. In fact, if he had ever in his life had any envy of Cabinet
+Ministers, he lost it in this hour.
+
+But Drone's hour was short. Even before the poll had closed in
+Mariposa, the news came sweeping in, true or false, that Bagshaw was
+carrying the county. The second concession had gone for Bagshaw in a
+regular landslide, six votes to only two for Smith,--and all down the
+township line road (where the hay farms are) Bagshaw was said to be
+carrying all before him.
+
+Just as soon as that news went round the town, they launched the
+Mariposa band of the Knights of Pythias (every man in it is a
+Liberal) down the Main Street with big red banners in front of it
+with the motto BAGSHAW FOREVER in letters a foot high. Such rejoicing
+and enthusiasm began to set in as you never saw. Everybody crowded
+round Bagshaw on the steps of the Mariposa House and shook his
+hand and said they were proud to see the day and that the Liberal
+party was the glory of the Dominion and that as for this idea of
+non-partisan politics the very thought of it made them sick. Right
+away in the committee rooms they began to organize the demonstration
+for the evening with lantern slides and speeches and they arranged
+for a huge bouquet to be presented to Bagshaw on the platform by four
+little girls (all Liberals) all dressed in white.
+
+And it was just at this juncture, with one hour of voting left, that
+Mr. Smith emerged from his committee rooms and turned his voters on
+the town, much as the Duke of Wellington sent the whole line to the
+charge at Waterloo. From every committee room and sub-committee room
+they poured out in flocks with blue badges fluttering on their coats.
+
+"Get at it, boys," said Mr. Smith, "vote and keep on voting till they
+make you quit."
+
+Then he turned to his campaign assistant. "Billy," he said, "wire
+down to the city that I'm elected by an overwhelming majority and
+tell them to wire it right back. Send word by telephone to all the
+polling places in the county that the hull town has gone solid
+Conservative and tell them to send the same news back here. Get
+carpenters and tell them to run up a platform in front of the hotel;
+tell them to take the bar door clean off its hinges and be all ready
+the minute the poll quits."
+
+It was that last hour that did it. Just as soon as the big posters
+went up in the windows of the Mariposa Newspacket with the
+telegraphic despatch that Josh Smith was reported in the city to be
+elected, and was followed by the messages from all over the county,
+the voters hesitated no longer. They had waited, most of them, all
+through the day, not wanting to make any error in their vote, but
+when they saw the Smith men crowding into the polls and heard the
+news from the outside, they went solid in one great stampede, and by
+the time the poll was declared closed at five o'clock there was no
+shadow of doubt that the county was saved and that Josh Smith was
+elected for Missinaba.
+
+
+I wish you could have witnessed the scene in Mariposa that evening.
+It would have done your heart good,--such joy, such public rejoicing
+as you never saw. It turned out that there wasn't really a Liberal in
+the whole town and that there never had been. They were all
+Conservatives and had been for years and years. Men who had voted,
+with pain and sorrow in their hearts, for the Liberal party for
+twenty years, came out that evening and owned up straight that they
+were Conservatives. They said they could stand the strain no longer
+and simply had to confess. Whatever the sacrifice might mean, they
+were prepared to make it.
+
+Even Mr. Golgotha Gingham, the undertaker, came out and admitted that
+in working for John Henry Bagshaw he'd been going straight against
+his conscience. He said that right from the first he had had his
+misgivings. He said it had haunted him. Often at night when he would
+be working away quietly, one of these sudden misgivings would
+overcome him so that he could hardly go on with his embalming. Why,
+it appeared that on the very first day when reciprocity was proposed,
+he had come home and said to Mrs. Gingham that he thought it simply
+meant selling out the country. And the strange thing was that ever
+so many others had just the same misgivings. Trelawney admitted that
+he had said to Mrs. Trelawney that it was madness, and Jeff Thorpe,
+the barber, had, he admitted, gone home to his dinner, the first day
+reciprocity was talked of, and said to Mrs. Thorpe that it would
+simply kill business in the country and introduce a cheap, shoddy,
+American form of haircut that would render true loyalty impossible.
+To think that Mrs. Gingham and Mrs. Trelawney and Mrs. Thorpe had
+known all this for six months and kept quiet about it! Yet I think
+there were a good many Mrs. Ginghams in the country. It is merely
+another proof that no woman is fit for politics.
+
+
+The demonstration that night in Mariposa will never be forgotten. The
+excitement in the streets, the torchlights, the music of the band of
+the Knights of Pythias (an organization which is conservative in all
+but name), and above all the speeches and the patriotism.
+
+They had put up a big platform in front of the hotel, and on it were
+Mr. Smith and his chief workers, and behind them was a perfect forest
+of flags. They presented a huge bouquet of flowers to Mr. Smith,
+handed to him by four little girls in white,--the same four that I
+spoke of above, for it turned out that they were all Conservatives.
+
+Then there were the speeches. Judge Pepperleigh spoke and said that
+there was no need to dwell on the victory that they had achieved,
+because it was history; there was no occasion to speak of what part
+he himself had played, within the limits of his official position,
+because what he had done was henceforth a matter of history; and
+Nivens, the lawyer, said that he would only say just a few words,
+because anything that he might have done was now history; later
+generations, he said, might read it but it was not for him to speak
+of it, because it belonged now to the history of the country. And,
+after them, others spoke in the same strain and all refused
+absolutely to dwell on the subject (for more than half an hour) on
+the ground that anything that they might have done was better left
+for future generations to investigate. And no doubt this was very
+true, as to some things, anyway.
+
+Mr. Smith, of course, said nothing. He didn't have to,--not for four
+years,--and he knew it.
+
+
+
+TWELVE
+
+L'Envoi. The Train to Mariposa
+
+It leaves the city every day about five o'clock in the evening, the
+train for Mariposa.
+
+Strange that you did not know of it, though you come from the little
+town--or did, long years ago.
+
+Odd that you never knew, in all these years, that the train was there
+every afternoon, puffing up steam in the city station, and that you
+might have boarded it any day and gone home. No, not "home,"--of
+course you couldn't call it "home" now; "home" means that big red
+sandstone house of yours in the costlier part of the city. "Home"
+means, in a way, this Mausoleum Club where you sometimes talk with me
+of the times that you had as a boy in Mariposa.
+
+But of course "home" would hardly be the word you would apply to the
+little town, unless perhaps, late at night, when you'd been sitting
+reading in a quiet corner somewhere such a book as the present one.
+
+Naturally you don't know of the Mariposa train now. Years ago, when
+you first came to the city as a boy with your way to make, you knew
+of it well enough, only too well. The price of a ticket counted in
+those days, and though you knew of the train you couldn't take it,
+but sometimes from sheer homesickness you used to wander down to the
+station on a Friday afternoon after your work, and watch the Mariposa
+people getting on the train and wish that you could go.
+
+Why, you knew that train at one time better, I suppose, than any
+other single thing in the city, and loved it too for the little town
+in the sunshine that it ran to.
+
+Do you remember how when you first began to make money you used to
+plan that just as soon as you were rich, really rich, you'd go back
+home again to the little town and build a great big house with a fine
+verandah,--no stint about it, the best that money could buy, planed
+lumber, every square foot of it, and a fine picket fence in front of
+it.
+
+It was to be one of the grandest and finest houses that thought could
+conceive; much finer, in true reality, than that vast palace of
+sandstone with the porte cochere and the sweeping conservatories that
+you afterwards built in the costlier part of the city.
+
+But if you have half forgotten Mariposa, and long since lost the way
+to it, you are only like the greater part of the men here in this
+Mausoleum Club in the city. Would you believe it that practically
+every one of them came from Mariposa once upon a time, and that there
+isn't one of them that doesn't sometimes dream in the dull quiet of
+the long evening here in the club, that some day he will go back and
+see the place.
+
+They all do. Only they're half ashamed to own it.
+
+Ask your neighbour there at the next table whether the partridge that
+they sometimes serve to you here can be compared for a moment to the
+birds that he and you, or he and some one else, used to shoot as boys
+in the spruce thickets along the lake. Ask him if he ever tasted duck
+that could for a moment be compared to the black ducks in the rice
+marsh along the Ossawippi. And as for fish, and fishing,--no, don't
+ask him about that, for if he ever starts telling you of the chub
+they used to catch below the mill dam and the green bass that used to
+lie in the water-shadow of the rocks beside the Indian's Island, not
+even the long dull evening in this club would be long enough for the
+telling of it.
+
+But no wonder they don't know about the five o'clock train for
+Mariposa. Very few people know about it. Hundreds of them know that
+there is a train that goes out at five o'clock, but they mistake it.
+Ever so many of them think it's just a suburban train. Lots of people
+that take it every day think it's only the train to the golf grounds,
+but the joke is that after it passes out of the city and the suburbs
+and the golf grounds, it turns itself little by little into the
+Mariposa train, thundering and pounding towards the north with
+hemlock sparks pouring out into the darkness from the funnel of it.
+
+Of course you can't tell it just at first. All those people that are
+crowding into it with golf clubs, and wearing knickerbockers and flat
+caps, would deceive anybody. That crowd of suburban people going home
+on commutation tickets and sometimes standing thick in the aisles,
+those are, of course, not Mariposa people. But look round a little
+bit and you'll find them easily enough. Here and there in the crowd
+those people with the clothes that are perfectly all right and yet
+look odd in some way, the women with the peculiar hats and the--what
+do you say?--last year's fashions? Ah yes, of course, that must be
+it.
+
+Anyway, those are the Mariposa people all right enough. That man
+with the two-dollar panama and the glaring spectacles is one of the
+greatest judges that ever adorned the bench of Missinaba County. That
+clerical gentleman with the wide black hat, who is explaining to the
+man with him the marvellous mechanism of the new air brake (one of
+the most conspicuous illustrations of the divine structure of the
+physical universe), surely you have seen him before. Mariposa people!
+Oh yes, there are any number of them on the train every day.
+
+But of course you hardly recognize them while the train is still
+passing through the suburbs and the golf district and the outlying
+parts of the city area. But wait a little, and you will see that when
+the city is well behind you, bit by bit the train changes its
+character. The electric locomotive that took you through the city
+tunnels is off now and the old wood engine is hitched on in its
+place. I suppose, very probably, you haven't seen one of these wood
+engines since you were a boy forty years ago,--the old engine with a
+wide top like a hat on its funnel, and with sparks enough to light up
+a suit for damages once in every mile.
+
+Do you see, too, that the trim little cars that came out of the city
+on the electric suburban express are being discarded now at the way
+stations, one by one, and in their place is the old familiar car with
+the stuff cushions in red plush (how gorgeous it once seemed!) and
+with a box stove set up in one end of it? The stove is burning
+furiously at its sticks this autumn evening, for the air sets in
+chill as you get clear away from the city and are rising up to the
+higher ground of the country of the pines and the lakes.
+
+Look from the window as you go. The city is far behind now and right
+and left of you there are trim farms with elms and maples near them
+and with tall windmills beside the barns that you can still see in
+the gathering dusk. There is a dull red light from the windows of
+the farmstead. It must be comfortable there after the roar and
+clatter of the city, and only think of the still quiet of it.
+
+As you sit back half dreaming in the car, you keep wondering why it
+is that you never came up before in all these years. Ever so many
+times you planned that just as soon as the rush and strain of
+business eased up a little, you would take the train and go back to
+the little town to see what it was like now, and if things had
+changed much since your day. But each time when your holidays came,
+somehow you changed your mind and went down to Naragansett or
+Nagahuckett or Nagasomething, and left over the visit to Mariposa for
+another time.
+
+It is almost night now. You can still see the trees and the fences
+and the farmsteads, but they are fading fast in the twilight. They
+have lengthened out the train by this time with a string of flat cars
+and freight cars between where we are sitting and the engine. But at
+every crossway we can hear the long muffled roar of the whistle,
+dying to a melancholy wail that echoes into the woods; the woods, I
+say, for the farms are thinning out and the track plunges here and
+there into great stretches of bush,--tall tamerack and red scrub
+willow and with a tangled undergrowth of bush that has defied for two
+generations all attempts to clear it into the form of fields.
+
+Why, look, that great space that seems to open out in the half-dark
+of the falling evening,--why, surely yes,--Lake Ossawippi, the big
+lake, as they used to call it, from which the river runs down to the
+smaller lake,--Lake Wissanotti,--where the town of Mariposa has lain
+waiting for you there for thirty years.
+
+This is Lake Ossawippi surely enough. You would know it anywhere by
+the broad, still, black water with hardly a ripple, and with the grip
+of the coming frost already on it. Such a great sheet of blackness it
+looks as the train thunders along the side, swinging the curve of the
+embankment at a breakneck speed as it rounds the corner of the lake.
+
+How fast the train goes this autumn night! You have travelled, I know
+you have; in the Empire State Express, and the New Limited and the
+Maritime Express that holds the record of six hundred whirling miles
+from Paris to Marseilles. But what are they to this, this mad career,
+this breakneck speed, this thundering roar of the Mariposa local
+driving hard to its home! Don't tell me that the speed is only
+twenty-five miles an hour. I don't care what it is. I tell you, and
+you can prove it for yourself if you will, that that train of mingled
+flat cars and coaches that goes tearing into the night, its engine
+whistle shrieking out its warning into the silent woods and echoing
+over the dull still lake, is the fastest train in the whole world.
+
+Yes, and the best too,--the most comfortable, the most reliable, the
+most luxurious and the speediest train that ever turned a wheel.
+
+And the most genial, the most sociable too. See how the passengers
+all turn and talk to one another now as they get nearer and nearer to
+the little town. That dull reserve that seemed to hold the passengers
+in the electric suburban has clean vanished and gone. They are
+talking,--listen,--of the harvest, and the late election, and of how
+the local member is mentioned for the cabinet and all the old
+familiar topics of the sort. Already the conductor has changed his
+glazed hat for an ordinary round Christie and you can hear the
+passengers calling him and the brakesman "Bill" and "Sam" as if they
+were all one family.
+
+What is it now--nine thirty? Ah, then we must be nearing the
+town,--this big bush that we are passing through, you remember it
+surely as the great swamp just this side of the bridge over the
+Ossawippi? There is the bridge itself, and the long roar of the train
+as it rushes sounding over the trestle work that rises above the
+marsh. Hear the clatter as we pass the semaphores and switch lights!
+We must be close in now!
+
+What? it feels nervous and strange to be coming here again after all
+these years? It must indeed. No, don't bother to look at the
+reflection of your face in the window-pane shadowed by the night
+outside. Nobody could tell you now after all these years. Your face
+has changed in these long years of money-getting in the city. Perhaps
+if you had come back now and again, just at odd times, it wouldn't
+have been so.
+
+There,--you hear it?--the long whistle of the locomotive, one, two,
+three! You feel the sharp slackening of the train as it swings round
+the curve of the last embankment that brings it to the Mariposa
+station. See, too, as we round the curve, the row of the flashing
+lights, the bright windows of the depot.
+
+How vivid and plain it all is. Just as it used to be thirty years
+ago. There is the string of the hotel 'buses, drawn up all ready for
+the train, and as the train rounds in and stops hissing and panting
+at the platform, you can hear above all other sounds the cry of the
+brakesmen and the porters:
+
+"MARIPOSA! MARIPOSA!"
+
+
+And as we listen, the cry grows fainter and fainter in our ears and
+we are sitting here again in the leather chairs of the Mausoleum
+Club, talking of the little Town in the Sunshine that once we knew.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, by Stephen Leacock