to do was to borrow Buck’s dog, who had been
duly brought over with the calf, and left on the mountain.
No old man Butler did not go hunting alone,
but waited till Buck came back from town. Buck
sold the calf for a dollar and a quarter and not for
seventy-five cents as was falsely asserted by interested
parties. Then the two went after the fox together.
This much learned, everybody breathes freely, if life
has not been complicated in the meantime by more strange
counter-marchings.
Five or six sleighs a day we can understand, if we
know why they are abroad; but any metropolitan rush
of traffic disturbs and excites.
1908
These letters appeared in newspapers during the spring
of 1908, after a trip to Canada undertaken in the
autumn of 1907. They are now reprinted without
alteration.
THE ROAD TO QUEBEC.
A PEOPLE AT HOME.
CITIES AND SPACES.
NEWSPAPERS AND DEMOCRACY.
LABOUR.
THE FORTUNATE TOWNS.
MOUNTAINS AND THE PACIFIC.
A CONCLUSION.
* * * *
*
(1907)
It must be hard for those who do not live there to
realise the cross between canker and blight that has
settled on England for the last couple of years.
The effects of it are felt throughout the Empire, but
at headquarters we taste the stuff in the very air,
just as one tastes iodoform in the cups and bread-and-butter
of a hospital-tea. So far as one can come at
things in the present fog, every form of unfitness,
general or specialised, born or created, during the
last generation has combined in one big trust—a
majority of all the minorities—to play the
game of Government. Now that the game ceases to
amuse, nine-tenths of the English who set these folk
in power are crying, ’If we had only known what
they were going to do we should never have voted for
them!’
Yet, as the rest of the Empire perceived at the time,
these men were always perfectly explicit as to their
emotions and intentions. They said first, and
drove it home by large pictures, that no possible advantage
to the Empire outweighed the cruelty and injustice
of charging the British working man twopence halfpenny
a week on some of his provisions. Incidentally
they explained, so that all Earth except England heard
it, that the Army was wicked; much of the Navy unnecessary;
that half the population of one of the Colonies practised
slavery, with torture, for the sake of private gain,
and that the mere name of Empire wearied and sickened
them. On these grounds they stood to save England;
on these grounds they were elected, with what seemed
like clear orders to destroy the blood-stained fetish
of Empire as soon as possible. The present mellow
condition of Ireland, Egypt, India, and South Africa
is proof of their honesty and obedience. Over
