They Wanted To Stop Then And
There For The Sabbath - They And All The Little Stock They Had Brought
With Them.
It was the Winnipeg agent who had to go among them arguing
(he was Scotch too, and they could not quite understand it) on the
impropriety of dislocating the company's traffic.
So their own minister
held a service in the station, and the agent gave them a good dinner,
cheering them in Gaelic, at which they wept, and they went on to settle
at Moosomin, where they lived happily ever afterwards. Of the manager,
the head of the line from Montreal to Vancouver, our companion spoke
with reverence that was almost awe. That manager lived in a palace at
Montreal, but from time to time he would sally forth in his special car
and whirl over his 3000 miles at 50 miles an hour. The regulation pace
is twenty-two, but he sells his neck with his head. Few drivers cared
for the honour of taking him over the road. A mysterious man he was, who
'carried the profile of the line in his head,' and, more than that, knew
intimately the possibilities of back country which he had never seen nor
travelled over. There is always one such man on every line. You can hear
similar tales from drivers on the Great Western in England or Eurasian
stationmasters on the big North-Western in India. Then a
fellow-traveller spoke, as many others had done, on the possibilities of
Canadian union with the United States; and his language was not the
language of Mr. Goldwin Smith. It was brutal in places. Summarised it
came to a pronounced objection to having anything to do with a land
rotten before it was ripe, a land with seven million negroes as yet
unwelded into the population, their race-type unevolved, and rather more
than crude notions on murder, marriage, and honesty. 'We've picked up
their ways of politics,' he said mournfully. 'That comes of living next
door to them; but I don't think we're anxious to mix up with their other
messes. They say they don't want us. They keep on saying it. There's a
nigger on the fence somewhere, or they wouldn't lie about it.'
'But does it follow that they are lying?'
'Sure. I've lived among 'em. They can't go straight. There's some dam'
fraud at the back of it.'
From this belief he would not be shaken. He had lived among
them - perhaps had been bested in trade. Let them keep themselves and
their manners and customs to their own side of the line, he said.
This is very sad and chilling. It seemed quite otherwise in New York,
where Canada was represented as a ripe plum ready to fell into Uncle
Sam's mouth when he should open it. The Canadian has no special love for
England - the Mother of Colonies has a wonderful gift for alienating the
affections of her own household by neglect - but, perhaps, he loves his
own country.
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