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.
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. You know the old
belief that the white man on brown, red, or black
lands, will throw back in manner and instinct to the
type originally bred there? Thus, a speech in
the taal should carry the deep roll, the direct belly-appeal,
the reiterated, cunning arguments, and the few simple
metaphors of the prince of commercial orators, the
Bantu. A New Zealander is said to speak from his
diaphragm, hands clenched at the sides, as the old
Maoris used. What we know of first-class Australian
