Hour in the dusk just before we left, when the
company gathered to say good-bye, while young couples walked in the
street, and the glare of the never-extinguished natural-gas lamps
coloured the leaves of the trees a stage green.
It was a woman, speaking out of the shadow, who said, what we all felt,
'You see, we just love our town,'
'So do we,' I said, and it slid behind us.
MOUNTAINS AND THE PACIFIC
The Prairie proper ends at Calgary, among the cattle-ranches, mills,
breweries, and three million acre irrigation works. The river that
floats timber to the town from the mountains does not slide nor rustle
like Prairie rivers, but brawls across bars of blue pebbles, and a
greenish tinge in its water hints of the snows.
What I saw of Calgary was crowded into one lively half-hour (motors were
invented to run about new cities). What I heard I picked up, oddly
enough, weeks later, from a young Dane in the North Sea. He was
qualmish, but his Saga of triumph upheld him.
'Three years ago I come to Canada by steerage - third class. And I have
the language to learn. Look at me! I have now my own dairy business, in
Calgary, and - look at me!
