Just At The Point Of Dawn, What Looked Like The Sultan Harun-Al-Raschid's Own Private Shallop, All Spangled With Coloured Lights, Stole Across The Iron-Grey Water, And Disappeared Into The Darkness Of A Slip.

She came out again in three minutes, but the full day had come too; so she snapped off her masthead, steering and cabin electrics, and turned into a dingy white ferryboat, full of cold passengers.

I spoke to a Canadian about her. 'Why, she's the old So-and-So, to Port Levis,' he answered, wondering as the Cockney wonders when a stranger stares at an Inner Circle train. This was his Inner Circle - the Zion where he was all at ease. He drew my attention to stately city and stately river with the same tranquil pride that we each feel when the visitor steps across our own threshold, whether that be Southampton Water on a grey, wavy morning; Sydney Harbour with a regatta in full swing; or Table Mountain, radiant and new-washed after the Christmas rains. He had, quite rightly, felt personally responsible for the weather, and every flaming stretch of maple since we had entered the river. (The North-wester in these parts is equivalent to the South-easter elsewhere, and may impress a guest unfavourably.)

Then the autumn sun rose, and the man smiled. Personally and politically he said he loathed the city - but it was his.

'Well,' he asked at last, 'what do you think? Not so bad?'

'Oh no. Not at all so bad,' I answered; and it wasn't till much later that I realised that we had exchanged the countersign which runs clear round the Empire.

A PEOPLE AT HOME

An up-country proverb says, 'She was bidden to the wedding and set down to grind corn.' The same fate, reversed, overtook me on my little excursion. There is a crafty network of organisations of business men called Canadian Clubs. They catch people who look interesting, assemble their members during the mid-day lunch-hour, and, tying the victim to a steak, bid him discourse on anything that he thinks he knows. The idea might be copied elsewhere, since it takes men out of themselves to listen to matters not otherwise coming under their notice and, at the same time, does not hamper their work. It is safely short, too. The whole affair cannot exceed an hour, of which the lunch fills half. The Clubs print their speeches annually, and one gets cross-sections of many interesting questions - from practical forestry to State mints - all set out by experts.

Not being an expert, the experience, to me, was very like hard work. Till then I had thought speech-making was a sort of conversational whist, that any one could cut in at it. I perceive now that it is an Art of conventions remote from anything that comes out of an inkpot, and of colours hard to control. The Canadians seem to like listening to speeches, and, though this is by no means a national vice, they make good oratory on occasion.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 64 of 138
Words from 32767 to 33285 of 71314