Some Make a Living Writing Speeches for Other Men to Deliver-Some, Again, are Handwriting Experts and Tree Surgeons – Some Catch Rats, and Others Collect Cigar Stubs.
Mr. Arthur Hawkes enthusiastically writing other people’s speeches.
By Gregory Clark, January 10, 1914.
In a city the size of Toronto there are many queer trades and professions, practised by only a few men, and preserved from becoming common trades by the narrowness of their scope and the smallness of their patronage. Among the strangest are the professional speech writers, of whom several are said to have plenty to do in Toronto, whose names, however, are little known except to some of Toronto’s best after-dinner speakers, who jealously guard the names of their particular geniuses. Mr. Arthur Hawkes the well-known politician and journalist, used to be, in his young days in the Old Country, one of these professional speechwriters. It was fine, says Mr. Hawkes, as well as inspiring, to go to a meeting and hear some dignified town councillor spouting forth your own words, swinging his arms according to your bracketed directions, and to hear him thunderously applauded at the end, into the bargain.
Another queer profession, one that in Toronto is practised by only two men, is that of the handwriting expert. He figures in law suits, trials. and in the preparation of criminal cases. The two Toronto experts are W. H. Shaw, of the shorthand school, and O. B. Stanton, the Yonge street stationer.
Mr. Stanton, and his father before him, have figured in many a famous criminal case in Toronto. The method used in determining whether, say, a cheque is a forgery or not, is to have a photographic enlargement of cheque and of a sample of the genuine signature made, many sizes larger than ordinary writing. With past experience and training, the handwriting expert goes to the particular letters and particular curves, and angles of letters, and compares the cheque with the genuine sample. He knows certain rules, chiefly common rules of simple psychology, which show him where a man cannot disguise his writing and these rules he explains to judge or jury.
In Europe, in Paris, principally. the study of hand-writing in relation to crime is highly developed.
Tracing a letter to a particular typewriting machine, a thing that figures In some criminal cases, is one expert profession. But the papers and samples have to be sent to New York from Toronto in cases of extreme doubt.
Tree Surgery
Tree-Doctoring and tree surgery is practised by three or four firms in Toronto. In Queen’s Park subjects of tree surgery can be seen – grand old oaks, with the side of their trunks filled in with black asphalt. If a gentleman falls in love with a tree under which he romped as a boy on the home farm, and wishes to have it placed on his front lawn in the city, for his children to romp under, these firms will undertake to transplant it – any number of miles.
In connection with the detection of crime, there is the finger-print expert, only one of which works in Toronto Mr. Hugh Duncan, of the Detective Department. He blackens the convicts’ hands, takes prints of them on paper, and these are considerably enlarged into photographs. These are kept on file.
In case a finger print is found on paper or an article of furniture connected with a crime, it is moistened, powdered lightly, and pressed on to paper. If it corresponds with the suspect’s finger print, it is regarded as most damaging evidence by the police.
Autograph hunting as a profession is said to have its exponents in Toronto, although no explicit examples are to be had. An amusing case is that of a Frenchman, Ludovic Picard, who made a steady income out of autograph hunting for many years. His most successful coup was accomplished with a letter in which he posed as “one of the unappreciated who is meditating suicide, and seeks for counsel and aid in this hour of sore distress.” This effusion drew a number of celebrities, including Beranger and Heine1. Lacordaire sent ten closely written pages, which were promptly converted into cash. Dickens also fell a victim, and took trouble to answer in French. Eventually Picard was shown up in the press by Jules Sandeau, and had to seek another occupation.
Rat-Catching
In the lower stratum of society, in the “submerged tenth,” a great number of queer professions flourish, none queerer being that of the professional rat-catcher, or “rat-eater,” as the police call them. Every big establishment has to have the services of these quaint professors, modified pied pipers. Eaton’s, Simpson’s, and the St. Lawrence Market find them indispensable. At night-fall these “rat-eaters” enter the darkened edifices, and in those nooks and crannies where their professional knowledge directs them, they set traps and lay poison. They are paid prices, ranging from 1 to 5 cents, according to the anxiety of the proprietors, per rat head.
The Rat Killer.
The boot beggar’s queer trade borders close on vagrant crime or mendicancy. The boot-beggar calls at your door, a pitiable sight, with his toes protruding from dilapidated boots, and tearfully begs a pair of old boots. If you respond, as you are likely to do, he walks down the street to where his wife is standing, on the watch for a stray policeman, and hands her your boots to add to her already bulging apron-full. Detective William Wallace, of the Toronto staff, who is a devoted student of all these petty forms of crime and queer turns of human nature, says that the boot beggar averages 80 cents per pair for the old boots he gets for nothing, when, sold to the junk dealer.
Picking Up Cigar Butts
The city man who rises with the sun in the summer for the sake of health will often see a man much resembling the comic paper’s hobo, shambling along the streets picking up cigar-butts and cigarette ends. This is a profession, as they seldom smoke what they rescue from the gutter. Where the tobacco goes is a mystery to the police. But it is suspected that it goes whence it come back into the mouth of the smoker, in the form of a cheap cigar or cheap cigarette. These hoboes are “snipe-shooters” of the police lists.
The “finders” are closely allied to the “snipe shooters,” only they frequent the busy corners and fronts of hotels and theatres at daybreak; and carefully turn over the papers and rubbish in search of dropped coins and car tickets. It is surprising to learn from the police that these men “find” enough to make a living, miserable though it be.
The “pollackers” are other early birds, or early worms, as the case may be, who search through the garbage barrels of the city in search of tea-lead2, bottles, rags – all of which are merchandise in the eyes of the slum dwellers.
The Rag Picker.
A profession that has a slight following in Toronto is that of “sandwiching”- being a human advertising board. Stray vagrants from London, where the human back is considered a good advertising ground, sometimes offer their services to Toronto firms.
Editor’s Notes: This is one of Greg’s earliest credited works in the Star Weekly. Sometimes when he was first credited, it was as Gregg Clark, like in this one. I’m not sure if that was a typo or he wanted to be called that initially.
It’s harder to guess who some of these early celebrities are, especially if he only gives single names, and does not mention the time period they were famous, since these ones might have been in the recent (for him) past. ↩︎
Jim’s foot caught on the top wire and down he went face first in the snow…
Will science ever produce a car that won’t have to be pulled out of snowdrifts?
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, January 3, 1942.
“I hope we don’t hit any drifts,” said Jimmie Frise. “This car needs a carbon job.”1
“Or its clutch is slipping,” I suggested. “It certainly doesn’t seem to have the pep.”
“I guess the lucky people,” said Jim, “were those who bought early 1940 models. They got them before the war prices and taxes went on. And they’ll be good until the war is over, I hope.”
“Well, a lot of people,” I submitted, “are finding out how long a car will last. Before the war, as soon as a car needed a simonize job we turned it in on a new model.”2
“I hope I live long enough,” said Jim, “to see the period after the war. The wonders of the age we’ve lived through will be nothing to the wonders of the coming age. We’ve lived through one of the most glorious periods of history. We’ve actually seen the birth of the telephone, the radio, the airplane, the motor car, the highway and modern industry with all its marvels. We’ve been very fortunate.”
“We don’t realize,” I confessed, “the miracles we have seen.”
“But after the war,” pursued Jimmie, “as the result of the great discoveries of these war years, we are going to see an age that will make the past 50 years seem like the buggy age.”
“Science,” I admitted, “is boundless.”
“Think,” cried Jim, “what they must have found out about engines in the past year. Engines for planes, engines for tanks, engines for speedboats and warcraft. When the war ends, all those discoveries will have to be converted to the uses of peace. A 1945 model car3 is going to be something to see.”
“And to own,” I reminded him dismally.
“Aw, we’ll get back to normal,” assured Jimmie. “The only basis on which society can operate is that enough people should earn enough to buy what everybody se makes. Things look pretty grim and dreary now, but peace comes. And every peace we’ve had in the past 2,000 years, has been a better peace than the one that went before.”
“Hold on,” I protested. “Don’t try to tell me that the past 20 years, between our war and this one, was better than that golden age, the Edwardian age, from 1900 to 1914.”
Era of Emancipation
“Certainly I do,” said Jim. “Since 1918, hundreds of millions of human beings have been set free, for one thing. The Russians, the Chinese, or are you merely thinking of our own little neighborhood.”
“Excuse me, Jim,” I said humbly.
“Look at those cows,” said Jim, pointing to a herd of cattle that had been let out of the barn for a breath of winter sunshine and a drink at the water trough. “Even the cows look upon the past 20 years as the great era of emancipation. For in those years of peace, the science of vitamins was discovered.”
“What the Sam Hill have vitamins to do,” I demanded, “with cows?”
“My dear sir,” exclaimed Jimmie. “Do you mean to say you don’t know that cows get vitamins? Didn’t you know that hogs are dieted? Have you been eating eggs for the past 10 years without knowing that the average hen today has the services of a dietitian?”
“Dietitian?” I said, a little at a loss.
“My dear boy,” said Jim. relaxing at the steering wheel, “the day is gone forever when you just went out and tossed a forkful of hay to a cow. A cow is now fed according to its weight. All its food is measured. It gets no more a toss of hay, but so much hay and so much ensilage, so much oil cake and so much vitamin cake. So much cod-liver oil.”
“Jimmie,” I protested.
“It’s a fact,” cried Jim. “You might just as well go out of business as try to run a farm the old-fashioned way.”
“Maybe these millionaire farmers…” I started.
“No, sir,” declared Jim. “Every farmer has to be scientific or give up business. He can’t sell his beef or his milk in competition with scientifically-bred cattle if he doesn’t make a personal problem of each cow. Each cow today is a personality. In accordance with its weight and condition, it gets so much food and so much vitamin. It eats out of its own private manger. The same with hogs.”
“Do you mean to say the old-fashioned hog trough is gone?” I demanded.
“Gone,” insisted Jimmie. “Each hog has its own pen and its own trough.”
“Why?” I bewailed. “One of the most delightful institutions of country life has vanished if the hog trough is gone. When feeding time drew nigh, the sound of those hogs squealing and yelling and getting ready was a sound as characteristic of the country as a rooster’s crow. And the riot of pigs when the farmer approached with the pails of swill was one of the greatest lessons humanity has ever learned. Not to be like a pig is one of the first lessons a child learns.”
“Ah, well,” interrupted Jim, “science has carried us well past morals.”
“And the fight.” I insisted, “when the swill was dumped into the trough. The way those pigs jostled and heaved at one another and jockeyed and gulped. The way each pig tried at one and the same time, to guzzle all the swill he could and at the same time to prevent his neighbors on either side of him from guzzling. I love to watch pigs eat. I think there is more education in watching pigs than in going to school.”
“Well, those days are done,” declared Jim. “Each pig has his own pen. Each pig has his own trough. He gets exactly his right share. The old principle of letting a hog get all he could resulted in one or two fat hogs and a lot of lean hogs. What we want from a hog is size. We are not interested in his manners or morals. How fat is he? So we’ve worked out a plan whereby all hogs will be fat.”
“It’s terrible,” I enunciated. “It’s stealing their very character and nature from them. I bet in a few years, hogs will sicken and die. We’ll develop a race of high-strung, nervous hogs, lean and stringy, because we have interfered with their basic character.”
“Pooh,” said Jim. “The world has been sentimental about things like that for too long. Now we’re going scientific. You ought to see a modern chicken ranch. Each chicken has his own little stall.”
“Stall?” I cried. “A chicken in a stall?”
“Sure,” said Jim. “When I was a boy, we kept chickens, and before supper we used to go out with a pail of chicken-feed and holler chook-chook-chook, and tromp all directions the hens would come running like mad, the rooster leading. And as they came near, we would take the pail of feed and give it a fling and scatter the grain far and wide in the barnyard. That day is ended, too.”
“I’m dreadfully sorry to hear it,” I said earnestly. “I think that chicken-feeding time I was the most amusing hour of the day on the farm.”
“Sure it was,” said Jim, “but see what happened? The wise chickens used to get to know when feeding time was drawing near and they would start to gather in the barnyard. They learned to know when the lady of the farm appeared, from the back shed, with the pail of chicken-feed and they would start to run to get to a point of vantage. But the foolish chickens, the dreamers, the impractical chickens, were away off in the cabbage field, over the fence from the barnyard, absent-mindedly hunting grasshoppers and worms. Dreamy, hare-brained chickens, drowsily squawking away off in the field. And when that chook chook-chook rang out they had to wake up and run like the devil, down the cabbage rows, under the fence and come flying over the barnyard to get anything at all, if it was left after the wise chickens had had their fill.”
“It’s the way of the world, Jim,” I assured him. “The wise guys stay handy at feeding time. The dreamers are away out in the cabbage patch.”
Wanted: Eggs
“Yes,” conceded Jim. “But is it dreamers we want, amongst chickens? Or wise guys? It is neither. All we want from chickens is eggs. And food makes eggs. And we want all chickens to get the same amount of food, whether they are dreamers who wander off in the cabbage patch, or whether they are wise guys who linger handy when the feed pails are flung. A dreamy hen’s egg sells for just as much as a wise hen’s. And probably tastes no different. It is eggs we want. So we pen up our chickens, ration their feed, so that the dreamy hen gets just as much as the wisest hen.”
“Hard on me, Jim,” I cut in, “but don’t you realize that, this is interfering with the ancient laws of survival? It has taken millions of years to make hens as little wise as they are. What will happen to the poultry kingdom if you start rewarding chicken-headed chickens the same as the wise chickens?”
“It’s eggs we want,” declared Jim.
“Well,” I summed up, bitterly, “I seem to recognize in what you have told me about cows and hogs, and chickens, a certain resemblance to what is happening to human society. What they have tried out so profitably on cows and pigs and hens, they are starting to try out on us humans. We, too, are being rationed. We, too, are being penned. It is getting harder and harder for those of us who linger near the farmyard at feeding time to get more than the dreamy guys who wander afar in the cabbage patch. Like cows, to each according to his need; from each according to his means. We are being rationed according to how much we need and are being milked for all we are worth.”
“It makes better cows and hogs and chickens,” stated Jimmie. “Why shouldn’t the same principle make better men?”
“Jim,” I warned him, “there are certain principles of life laid down by nature. If you monkey with them, there is no telling what disasters may follow.”
“You’re a Tory,” said Jim.
“No, sir,” I replied. “I just happen to know that nature is vengeful.”
“Well,” said Jimmie, slackening the speed of the car, “here’s our first drift.”
And it was a dandy. One of those knife-edged drifts, about three feet deep, lying diagonally across the highway. It was undamaged. No car or sleigh had gone through it.
“Charge it,” I suggested.
“Did we bring a shovel?” inquired Jim.
“This is your car, you ought to know,” I reminded him.
“H’m, no shovel,” said Jim, slowly accelerating and then changing his mind at the last minute, and coming up to the drift so slowly that when we struck it, we stopped dead and the engine stalled.
“Back out,” I said, “and buck it.”
But the car would not back out. All drifts are the same. No matter how many times you come to one, you always make the same mistakes. I got out, shoved feebly, snow getting up my pants legs. Jim got out and waded around in the drift, as if that would do any good. We both got back in and Jim started the engine and backed and went forward, as far as gears were concerned, but the car never budged an inch.
“What a silly thing to do,” said Jim. “Why did you say to charge it?”
“You didn’t charge it,” I recalled to him. “You changed your mind at the last minute.”
“Well, I guess there is nothing for it,” said Jim, “but to go up to that farm house there and borrow the farmer’s shovel.”
“It would take half an hour to dig through this drift,” I protested.
“Would you rather just sit here until spring?” inquired Jim pleasantly.
So we waded across the drift and walked up the road a little way until we came to the farm lane. As we opened the gate, I saw three horses far up at the other end of the lane standing and looking at us. “Horses, Jim,” I informed him. “Horses won’t hurt you,” said Jim, who was born on a farm and therefore I trust him. “Come on.”
We started up the lane towards the farm house, which stood with that curiously solitary air that farm houses adopt in winter. The three horses wheeled sharply and stood staring down the lane at us with pricked ears and manes blowing in the wind.
“I like horses harnessed,” I happened to say.
“Pawff,” said Jim. “Horses never bother you.”
Suddenly the three motionless horses started to walk slowly towards us, their nostrils blowing snorts of steam and their hoofs making heavy sounds on the snow.
“Scare them, Jim,” I suggested.
Then the leading horse started to trot towards us and the others followed. All of a sudden they all started to gallop. And they charged straight down the lane at us.
“Whoa,” yelled Jim, masterfully.
But all three charged full tilt past us, as we leaped to the fence to let them pass. And as they passed, all three kicked up their huge feet and made swishes in the air, throwing clods of hacked snow in all directions.
I was already half over the fence.
“Jim,” I said. “Lookout.”
For the three horses, their ears wobbling forward and back and their eyes blazing, had all halted in a kind of shy jumble and were wheeling. Starting at a walk, then a trot, they suddenly burst into the gallop again and charged up the lane, lashing in the air with their hoofs as they passed us, snorting and stamping.
Jim took the fence much easier than I. With one hand on a post, he heaved his weight into the air and his long legs went soaring into space. But in his haste, Jimmie misjudged the height. Or maybe Jimmie just isn’t as young as he used to be. At any rate, one foot cleared the barrier nicely, but the other caught in the top wire. This dislodged his hold on the fence post, and Jimmie sailed through the air as pretty as you please. Down he went on the other side, sprawling face first in the snow. His nose carved a deep furrow through the new snow.
I managed to make the safe side of the fence as Jimmie finally lifted himself from the ground and began banging the matted snow off his clothes.
“They know you’re nervous,” explained Jim. “If they know anybody is nervous…”
“Would they know how brave you are?” I inquired sweetly.
“I Like Horses”
So we walked up to the farm and the dog heard us and barked the farmer out, and he came and met us. And when we asked to borrow his shovel, he said he would tow us out with the horses, because there was another and a worse drift a couple of hundred yards farther on.
“I’ll just tow you across my fields,” he explained. “I do it for everybody.”
And he went and got bridles and opened the lane gate and called the wild horses, and they came and very skittishly and jerkily submitted to the bridles and were led into the barn to be harnessed.
“You see,” said Jim, “if you know how to handle them, they’re like children.”
“Yes,” I said. “And they’re not fed any vitamins. They’re not kept in pens and doled out food.”
“All we want from horses,” countered Jim, “is work, not milk, not meat, not eggs, just work.”
“So,” I said, “we treat them, not like new-fangled beasts, but like old-fashioned human beings. And they work. And they kick up their heels. And they have fun.”
And like model children, in their harness two of them came out and walked eagerly down the lane and hooked on to our car and yanked it through the drifts, and the farmer charged only 50 cents, and the three of them went whooping back over the fields to the barn.
This is hard to gauge, but I get the impression that more well-to-do people, including some middle-class people got a new car every year or two. Back in the early days of cars, there could be huge improvements in just a few years. Of course there would still be people who held onto a car until it fell apart, but the war forced everyone to keep what they had since civilian car production stopped for the duration. ↩︎
How they coming? shouted Lou with the slush slashing past his head.
By Gregory Clark, January 3, 1931.
Lou Marsh all his life has looked as if he were going some place.
Even when he is only walking from the sporting department to the composing room he looks as if he were getting a kick out of it.
And all my life I have wished I could be going with Lou wherever he was going. But I knew my legs wouldn’t hold out.
The other afternoon Lou went charging by with a little cigar butt wedged in the corner of his jaw and looking even more than ordinarily marshy. And twenty years of silence went bust.
Out we galloped to the street, around a corner and into Lou’s car, where it was parked under a “Strictly No Parking” sign.
He drives the way he writes. Lou is largely responsible for the state of traffic in downtown Toronto. The swells he leaves last for hours.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Dufferin,” said Lou. “Harness races. We are going to buy a pool.”
“There isn’t any racing this time of year,” said I.
“Isn’t there?” said Lou. “There isn’t any racing any other time of year, you mean.”
“What kind of racing is it?” I asked, bracing my feet against the floorboards.
“Harness racing. Trottin’ races, pacers. On ice. On slush. In the mud. Big fat man sitting on a little wee bicycle down under the horse’s tail. All races run in heats.”
“What are heats?”
“Sections,” said Lou. “Like tripe. You pick a horse. It runs four races. Comes second each time and yet can still win the race. You get to like a horse that way. Fall in love with a horse.”
“I never knew about this,” said I.
“Lots of people don’t,” said Lou. “But lots of people don’t know about rasslin’.”
“I agree with you about rasslin’,” I said. “Rasslin’ is terrible.”
“Rasslin’ is the greatest sport in world,” said Lou.
“But—but,” I stammered, “I thought you—”
“Sure,” said Lou. “I changed my mind. Good to change your mind every once in a while. Like your shirt. It’s cleaner and it feels better.”
With a swish and a swoop we pulled up at Dufferin race track, bumped over the curb and pulled up on the boulevard.
Dufferin race track2 is a little merry-go-round track from a country fair dropped down right in the heart of Toronto. Its grandstand is a little grandstand exactly like the one at Birdseye Center. Its betting enclosures are fussy little barn-beamed stables without paint or varnish. Its judge’s stand is on this side, the crowd side, of the track, so that you can holler up to the judges if you are so minded. It is a little bit of home in the heart of the big city to thousands of lonely people from up-country.
And in the winter, when the trottin’ races are on, it is more like Coboconk or Omemee than ever.
A Hunch on Commodore Fish
If the ground in front of the grandstand gets muddy they just bring the straw out of the stables In wheelbarrows and make a sweet-smelling path of it so that you can get your overshoes or storm rubbers and maybe the back of your overalls into as near a homelike condition as possible. Lou said that was atmosphere. I don’t know what he meant.
Lou led me up to the gate, where a fellow in an old beaver coat was standing guard, taking your cash money.
“I’m the lieutenant-governor,” said Lou. “and this is my aide de cong.”
“I never heard of you.” said the gateman, grinning and letting us past.
The boys who follow the trotting races are certainly worlds removed from the crowd you see at the common race tracks. There are no foreigners at the trottin’ races, no sports, no young brokers and no spats. The old beaver and coon coats are the only touch of the elegant. Plenty of peak caps with ear-flaps. Plenty of woolen mufflers. Pale faces, which are the majority at the Woodbine, cause you to go up to them, even if they are perfect strangers, and ask how they have been keeping lately.
It’s old home week when there is trottin’ at Dufferin.
The races hadn’t started when Lou and I got there, but there were several horses warming up on the track. Not the pretty sleek effeminate horses you see at the running races, but plain horses, just a little on the skinny side, with steam coming off them, sitting down behind them, on little gigs made with bicycle tire wheels, big fat men wearing rubber suits.
“Lou,” said I, “look at the gait of those horses!”
“Pacers and trotters,” said Lou. “Some roll like a woozy sailor. Action like a tandem bike, both legs together. A pacer puts both his right legs forward at the same time, then both his left. A trotter hits on all four corners alternately. But it’s a fast gait either way. They can sure pick ’em up and set ’em down fast when they’re let.”
He took me by the elbow add rushed me down past the grandstand to the little sheds at the north end where I could hear voices yelling.
In the gloom of the beamed sheds, with only rusty old braziers warming the air, a tight packed crowd was gathered around a sort of booth raised up, where men were chalking figures on a blackboard.
“That’s just Ching Hare takin’ bets on the heat,” said Lou, shoving me through the jam. “Come on down and buy a pool. That’s where you get some real gamblin’.”
At the back end of the sheds a pudgy little man with a hard hat over one eye, his coat open and thrown back and his hands jammed down into cross pockets in his pants, with watch-chain dangling across the bulge, was singing something. He was one of the sportiest, most charming little men you ever saw.
“Come—on,” he sang, “don’t—let—the—wheels—of—commerce stand—still! Who’ll buy—the—rest—of—this—pool? Take off your leather vests. Don’t—tell—me—that—you—are—going—to—let—a–chance—like—Bingo Boy—pass—by—for—a—buck—don’t—tell—me… Bingo Boy—Bingo Boy—best—horse—in—the—race… I just sold Molasses—there’s a sweet thing for you—for fifty for one if you like Bingo Boy. It’s the chance of your blooming life.”
Lou was studying his card.
“Look at that,” he said. “That one.”
I saw the name: “Commodore Fish.”
“A pure hunch,” said Lou. “Commodore for me, since I’m the admiral of the sea flea fleet. And fish for you. We’ll buy the pool on him.”
“How do you mean?” I asked.
“These fellows are selling pools,” said Lou. “When he finishes selling the pool he is on now we’ll up and say we will buy the pool on Commodore Fish—that’s in the third race—for twenty dollars. Then he will sell the other five horses in the race for whatever he can get. Maybe he will sell the other horses for two dollars each. That makes the pool thirty bucks. If our horse wins we take the whole pool.”
“That’s a lot simpler than ordinary betting,” said l.
“Simpler in more ways than you think,” said Lou.
Mingling With the Real Ammonia Boys
He listened while the quaint little man, who never took his hands out of his cross pockets, finished persuading the boys standing around to take up the rest of the horses in the pool he was selling. He had to lump the last three horses in one bunch and he sold them for two dollars the lot. The fellow who bought them had three chances for two dollars to win the race.
Then Lou stepped up.
“I’ll pay $20 for Commodore Fish in the third race,” said he.
“Twenty—dollars—on—the—Fish horse—in—the—third,” droned the little man. “I’ll get you thirty against that.” And right away several of the boys spoke up and took other horses in that race. The whole pool quickly came to fifty-six dollars.
“Not so good,” said Lou. I don’t like that. The boys don’t seem to like Commodore Fish. They jumped at our twenty.”
“Here’s my ten now,” said I.
“Listen,” said Lou, “Get out there and walk around the crowd and see what you can hear. Whenever you get close to anybody that smells strong of horse stay by him. The horsier they smell, the more they know. Some of them sleep with these skins. See if any of the real ammonia boys have anything good to say for Commodore Fish.”
I went out and mingled with the crowd.
I watched them run a heat. Instead of lining the horses up at a barrier they wheel them back, let them take off to a running start, and if they are in good order as they come past the judge’s stand the starter, yelling through a megaphone, shouts, “Go!”
it isn’t a good start, which happens three times out four, the starter up in the hencoop on stilts, hammers a little bell and the horses with their little buggies wheel around, go back down the track and try again.
It is the most personal sort of race.
“Come up that pole horse,” roars the starter as the horses come hurrying up for the running start.
But the pole horse always seems to be in trouble. It never does the right thing. But about the fourth or fifth try the starter gets tired and lets the race go anyway.
And while all these false starts are being made you hang over the rail studying the beasts and can get a good idea of which is the good one. Then you can run to the betting shed and get a bet up even after the horses have left the starting line.
I found one very horsey old man in a worn beaver coat.
“What about Commodore Fish in the third race?” I asked him.
“What about it?” demanded the old gent.
“Is he any good?”
“He’s the best horse in the race.” said the old chap, spitting brown. “He’s the best horse on the track, what’s more. I ought to know, cause I own him.”
So I hurried and told Lou.
Lou came and watched the heats with me.
“What do the horses wear all those garters and things for?” I asked Lou.
“To tickle them,” said Lou, “and make them step out smarter.”
“They’ve got a lot of junk on them,” said l.
“Everything but a windshield wiper,” said Lou. “Which is the thing they need most.”
It was very slushy that day.
A Swell Ride Anyway
One of the horses had a kind of billiard cue tied up along his neck and sticking up beside his head.
“That’s the pole horse, I suppose,” said l.
“Sure,” said Lou. He wears that billiard cue as a sign to the boys that he is shooting in this race.”
“He wears that billiard cue as a sign to the boys that he is shooting in this race,” said Lou.“Who’s holding up the wheels of commerce?”
The fifth start was all jammed up, with Commodore Fish rushing three lengths ahead of everybody.
“If you don’t keep back of the pole horse I’ll attend to you.” roared the starter. “The next time you cone down in front I’ll set you down!”
The sixth start, Commodore Fish bounded away four lengths ahead of the field.
“Out!” roared the starter.
“Just a minute,” growled Lou, grabbing me by the slack of my chest. “Old man, I’m going to drive that hoss.”
And with a bound Lou was over the fence, dragging me out amongst the wheeling, plunging horses and little hissing wheels.
“Get out of your pew,” said Lou, jamming his Borsalino down over his ears. The driver in the messy rubber overalls got down with a grunt.
“Charley Snow says I’m to team him,” said Lou as he leaped into the seat of the tiny buggy. Charley Snow was the starter, so there was no argument.
“Get up there behind me,” said Lou to me, grimly. “Get some kind of a holt of me and hang on.”
“What’s the idea?” I whinnied.
“My neck’s to short to be a good trottin’ driver,” said Lou. “You perch there and tell me how they’re coming behind me. I’m going away on the Bill Daly.”
The horse wheeled. There a cloud of horses, slush, spray, snorting, yelling, and in wild howling rush we were away on Lou’s Bill Daly—whatever that is.
Away on the Bill Daly
A wild yell.
It sounded like “go.”
I heard no bell.
And all I could see was a blur of fence, a great cloud of slush behind me, and I hooked my heels into Lou’s pockets, slang my arms under his, and let her go.
We were yards ahead. Then all the other horses faded from view. We were going to win by a lap.
“Wow!” I howled into Lou’s ear. “Let her go!”
“How they coming?” shouted Lou., with the slush slashing past his head as he laid the gad. We were throwing up a bow wave like a coal barge cleaving a wake like a destroyer.
“They’re a mile back,” I yelled.
I felt the curve of the second turn. Then I felt Lou straighten up and heave on the reins. I looked over his entirely ruined shoulder. Ahead of us, on the home stretch, the other horses in the heat were just breaking away on the start.
Lou hauled Commodore Fish to a lope.
“Did you hear any bell?” he demanded grimly.
“l did not,” said l, angrily.
“Why didn’t you tell me they weren’t behind us?” roared Lou.
“I couldn’t see for the slush,” said I. “Anyway, I thought we were winning.”
Lou pulled the Fish horse up at the stables, where the old gent in the worn beaver coat and the fat man in the soiled rubber suit were waiting for us.
“Your ears,” said the old gent, kindly, “has got to be more or less trained to hear that bell.”
“If this guy hadn’t been betting against us in that pool,” said Lou, “he could have won the race.”
“He’s my son,” said the old gent, “and we allus splits our winnings.”
Lou was plastered with slush, hat and all. I was not much better off, on my exposed side.
“Well,” said Lou. “it was a swell ride anyway, wasn’t it?”
“It was great.”
“You couldn’t run out and hop on a bangtail lake that down at the Woodbine,” said Lou.
“Not with all those swells there,” said I.
“That’s why I like trottin’ races,” said Lou. “Something personal and intimate and easy going about it.”
“You’re covered with slush,” said I. “Your outside clothes are ruined.”
“And we lost ten bucks each,” said Lou.
“I paid you mine,” said l.
“Sure. But it was worth it, wasn’t it?”
“It’s been swell,” said I.
“I’ll take you lots of places if you like,” said Lou.
“That will be great,” said I, scraping off some of the slush. It had oats in it.
But once every thirty or forty years is often enough to go places with Lou.
When I see him going by with that look on his face from now on I am going to have an engagement.
Editor’s Notes: This is one of those pre-Greg-Jim stories with a different partner, this time Lou Marsh, one of the pioneers of sports journalism in Canada, working at the Toronto Star for 43 years. In 1931 he was the sports editor, a position he held until his death in 1936.
Dufferin Park Racetrack was a racetrack for thoroughbred horse races located on Dufferin Street in Toronto. It was demolished in 1955 and its stakes races moved to Woodbine Racetrack as part of a consolidation of racetracks in the Toronto area. ↩︎
The two of them squared off, their feet wide apart, and began sparring…
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, December 27, 1941.
“It’s a queer Christmas,” sighed Jimmie Frise. “War on earth, ill-will amongst men.”
“Let’s go home,” I suggested. “At least we can preserve a little of the Christmas spirit in our homes.”
“I suppose,” surmised Jimmie, starting to rid up his drawing table, “I suppose Christians have always had to face this problem. There have always been wars. I guess there have been some pretty sad Christmases across the centuries.”
“None sadder than this,” I claimed, “because it is the most enlightened age in human history and is the occasion of the most savage war in human history. God could doubtless forgive war 500 or 1,000 years ago amongst benighted and ignorant men who blindly followed their masters. All men were foreign to one another a few centuries back. They had no communication with each other. There were no roads, few ships, hardly any books. But today, with every possible means at our disposal to know and understand one another, with radio and movies and marvellous communications by land, sea and air to help us mix with one another, we are locked in the most titanic and universal hate in history.”
“It isn’t just a couple of armies,” agreed Jim, “of professional soldiers bashing at each other. It is every man, woman and child, horse, cow, dog and cat.”
“When this war is over,” I declared, “mankind as a whole will have to enter into a long penance for its sins.”
“Thank heaven,” said Jim, “we didn’t start it.”
“Even so, what did we do to try to stop it?” I pointed out. “We were all pretty fat and comfortable and indifferent during the years all this was shaping up. We’ve got a penance to do, too.”
“Human nature learns,” said Jimmie, “by doing wrong. A child has to learn that fire burns. It is no use merely to tell him. Sooner or later, he has to find out. And it seems as if each new generation of men were like a child in that respect. Each has to learn for itself.”
“That is a grim and terrible prospect,” I declared. “It offers little hope for humanity.”
“Well,” explained Jim, “that is where Christianity comes in. It was Jesus who first taught the brotherhood of man through the fatherhood of God. Until we realize that God is our Father, we can never comprehend that we are brothers. Christianity has been patiently trying to get that into our heads for 2,000 years. One of these times, when our folly really gets too monstrous for any further refusal, we are likely to become Christians at last. The brotherhood of man is our only hope.”
The common men of all races,” I submitted, “are willing to be brothers. But somebody is always rising amongst us who believes that not only is he no relation to us but comes of a far finer family than the human. This is true not only of Germany now, amongst the nations; it is true of every city, town and village. There is always somebody in every community to whom the idea of being a brother or even a distant cousin to the rest of us is horrible. And he’s the one who generally holds all the mortgages on us.”
Precious Things to Guard
“It costs something to be a brother,” admitted Jim. “I think that is what scares us off this brotherhood of man idea. We are afraid bur brothers would expect too much of us. So the minute we start to collect some of this world’s goods, we begin to cut down on the number of our friends and relations. By the time a man has a million dollars he has hardly any kinfolk at all – much less brothers.”
“Well, Jim,” I said, “put your coat on and let’s get home. They can steal Christmas away from the world. But they can’t take it away from the home. It’s in the homes that Christmas is being preserved in times like these.”
“In fact,” said Jim, “now that you come to mention it, I don’t ever remember a more tender Christmas in my home than this one has been. It is as if we knew we had a precious thing to guard.”
“Will you bring your family around to my place,” I demanded, “for an old-fashioned Christmas visit? There will be Christmas cake and a cup of tea…”
“I will,” said Jimmie kindly, “and will you come and visit my house in turn? Let’s be old-fashioned. Let us make this Christmas the occasion of visiting around among our friends and relations instead of treating it as a day of selfish domestic celebration.”
We locked up the office and walked along the hall. One of the office caretakers laboring past us under a huge jute bag of waste paper and office junk. Jim took him by the arm, signed for him to deposit the bag on the floor. And when he had done so, Jim took his hand and shook it warmly.
“A merry Christmas,” cried Jim. “To you and yours.”
When the elevator came, there was barely room for the two of us, but Jim stood back and said to all the strangers packed like fingers in a fist, “a merry Christmas, everybody.”
And while one or two mumbled a reply, the rest of them just shoved back to make room for us.
At the main floor, we let everybody out ahead of us which sort of slowed things up, since Jim and I were nearest the elevator door. But beaming with Christmas kindness, Jim drew in his chest and smiled them all out. Then he seized the operator’s hand.
“A merry, merry Christmas, brother,” said Jim.
And the elevator man returned the shake most heartily until he had to withdraw his hand from Jim’s in response to the angry buzzing of the signal calling him back aloft.
Full of Charity
In the lobby, Jim lingered, smiling and nodding to friend and stranger alike, and went over to the little newsboy and bought both our paper and its evening contemporary, so full of charity was he; and walked away without waiting for his change from 10 cents.
The street was filled with that intense purpose and hustle characteristic of Christmas, and we strolled along exchanging shy and friendly glances with all and sundry. At Christmas there is just a faint suspicion in our minds that all our fellow men are not rogues. And that suspicion struggles in our faces.
At the corner, a Salvation Army lass jingled her bell beside a kettle on a tripod and both Jim and I dropped a coin in the kettle. An old lady paused at the corner crossing in hesitation before the whirling Christmas traffic, and Jim very gallantly offered his arm to help her across.
At the far corner, he got into conversation with an elderly newsboy of his acquaintance and I saw him shaking hands heartily and buying another newspaper.
Coming back, he took the hand of a little girl whose mother was laden with parcels and escorted her safely over.
“Ha,” said Jim, rejoining me. “When you really let yourself go, it’s astonishing how warm you can feel towards all the world.”
“Don’t catch cold,” I warned him, “from using up all your heat.”
“You’re a terrible old Scrooge,” cried Jim, slapping me on the back. “Come on, loosen up, let your heartstrings slack.”
Up the street towards the parking lot we walked, with Jim fairly bulging with goodwill and I trying to see how many people I could smile at in one block. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that most of the ones I smiled at turned around after they had passed, with a puzzled air.
I smiled at one man before I realized he had had a drop too much and he charged through the traffic to seize me by the coat front and address me as a long lost friend, though I am sure we had never laid eyes on each other before. He would not let go. He wanted me to come with him to a place he knew where there was a grand old party going on. When Jim drew near, he included Jim in both the invitation and the clutch on the coat front and the more we argued that we had to get home, the more loud and vociferous did our friend become.
“Aw, home,” he scoffed, “who wants to go home on Christmas? What’s the matter with the world? What are men coming to? Where’s the good old-fashioned Christmas…”
“Come on,” said Jim peremptorily, taking my sleeve.
“No, you don’t,” maudled the stranger, seizing both Jim’s sleeve and my coat front in a dying grasp.
Jim lifted his foot and brought it down smartly on the gentleman’s toe.
“Ow,” he wailed, releasing us.
And we were quickly lost to him in the crowd.
“That was a shame,” said Jimmie, his face recovering the Christmas expression, “but it’s the only way to handle those drunks.”
Only Play-Acting
When we reached the parking lot, Jim went over to the little shanty where the watchman sits and while I got the car started, I could see Jim dispensing the hearty Christmas spirit by shaking the crusty old watchman’s hand. In fact, so surprised was that bad-tempered old man that he even came out of the shanty and stood to wave us good-by when Jim got in the car.
“Ah, well,” said Jim happily, “most men are pretty good guys when you cut through the crust. Now, that old skinflint…”
“Jim,” I said sadly, “I’m afraid this spirit of Christmas is only play-acting with you. It’s like dressing up at Hallowe’en. Only, instead of putting on a false face, you put on a false front.”
“If we only half tried,” retorted Jim, “we could keep up the Christmas spirit right through the year.”
“And would we ever be sick of one another,” I exclaimed.
Along the lake shore, a chauffeur-driven car passed us at a lively speed and just as it did so oncoming traffic forced it to brake suddenly and cut in ahead of me. Not often do professional chauffeurs get themselves in jams. But when they do, they are more helpless than ordinary drivers. This bird simply swerved ahead of me. I tooted my horn furiously, in warning. But he had to cut in or get smacked from in front by oncoming cars. So cut in he did. And sure enough, I bumped him.
It was a good sharp bump. But nothing broke. Nothing was damaged except all our feelings.
The chauffeur steered slowly off to the side of the road, I after him. He got out and walked with great dignity back to look at his back bumper. He was a huge fellow, stately wide skirted greatcoat. And it has always been my custom, on account of my own small size, to be very fearless with extra large men.
“You great big chump,” I declared in a loud, angry voice.
He halted, straightened up, took two strides and glared in the window at me.
“You big ape,” I repeated furiously. “Don’t you know better than to cut in like that? At your age. And professional chauffeur.”
“Who is an ape?” he inquired in a dainty little way, twisting his lips up into a curious imitation of a smile, but his eyes were like ice.
“You’re an ape,” I said, “you’re a fathead, you’re a chump, whizzing along and suddenly cutting fair in front…”
“Did I hear you call me an ape?” repeated the chauffeur, again twisting up his lips in that queer grimace.
“Yes,” suddenly bellowed Jim beside me, “you big baboon, go on about your business or your mistress will be wearing out her fat finger ringing for you. Beat it.”
The chauffeur ducked down to look in at Jimmie and then all of a sudden started around the end of the car.
Jimmie saw him coming and quickly opened the car door and got out to meet him. No words were spoken. The two of them squared off, their feet wide apart, and began sparring.
Whack! Right in the eye. And Jim went flat on his back.
Ex-Champ Opposition
The chauffeur continued to circle and spar but Jim just sat up.
I hurriedly got out and tried to help Jim to his feet but he preferred to sit for a moment.
“Why, you… you…” I said, “at Christmas, a fine thing, hitting a man in the eye on Christmas, giving him a black eye…”
“Nobody’s going to call me an ape,” said big fellow, reaching down and helping me lift Jim up.
“A fine thing,” I continued, “hitting a man on Christmas…”
“Besides,” said the chauffeur, “I’m an ex-champion boxer, and an ex-policeman, and nobody is going to call me an ape.”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” I repeated firmly, but not standing up very tall for, fear he would remember who it was that called him an ape.
“Well, I’m sorry,” he said, dusting Jimmie off in a hazy sort of way, but still looking very hot in the cheekbones, “but if anybody calls me an ape, I just don’t like it. And I did it before I knew what I was doing. And anyway…”
Then he stopped and looked at us for a minute and wheeled and slammed into his car and drove off with that professional chauffeur style.
“Oh, oh,” said Jim, holding one hand over his eye.
“A black eye for Christmas,” I sympathized, as I eased him up into the car seat.
“What did you call him an ape for?” demanded Jimmie angrily. “If you had devoted your efforts to stopping your car instead of blowing your horn at him, you never would have bumped him.”
“Nobody is going to cut in like that on me,” I declared, resuming my seat behind the wheel.
“It was you who called him an ape,” accused Jim. “You called him a fathead and a chump.”
“Okay, then,” I inquired, “what did you have to horn in with calling him a baboon?”
“I wasn’t going to see him hit any friend of mine,” cried Jim. “Besides, how could I see how big he was? He was on your side.”
So we nagged until we reached Jim’s house, all lighted up for Santa Claus.
“Aw, Jim, “I said, as he backed out of the car, “look, old-timer, a merry Christmas.”
“The same to you,” said Jim; holding out one hand to me and covering his darkening eye with the other.
This picture has nothing to do with the article, but it was on the same newspaper page and I thought it looked good.
Surveys Now Being Made of City to Determine Best Types of Social Meeting – Places to Take Place of Old “Poor Men’s Clubs” – To Use Old Barrooms?
Br Gregory Clark, December 27, 1919.
Toronto has had a happy old year, in which has come peace, and the marching back of tens of thousands of her sons, the overturning of the rickety political wagon and the final and irrevocable ousting of booze.
A fairly happy and industrious old year!
In the Happy New Year, which, out of old custom, is being predicted with Dickensian fervor these few days by one and all, such matters as prices, wages, the building of a new political bus, the embalming and final burial of the remains of Old Bill Booze, stand out as demanding some of the happy industry such as dispensed in 1919.
But one of the most interesting undertakings of the coming year is the discovery of a substitute for the bar, something to take the place of the saloon in the social arrangement, the provision of the “poor man’s club.”
And it speaks well for the powers that be that already the united churches of Canada, the Y.M.C.A., the Salvation Army, and other agencies vitally interested in the needs of man are all seriously bent to the task of finding a substitute for the bar.
When even the liquor interests reluctantly admitted that the bar-room was doomed as a social institution, everyone recognized that something had been taken away from a certain great class of our citizenship. There was some justice in the claim that the saloon was the “poor man’s club.” With its passing, the man who could not afford to belong to institutions for human intercourse such as clubs and societies, had to fall back on the pool rooms, bowling alleys, barber shops, and public meetings.
Home life has been stimulated. The married man who used to frequent his “club” down at the corner and commune with his fellows over a scuttle of beer, has found new pleasures in the company of his family.
Hundreds Hunt Companionship
But all men are not married. Hence the success of hundreds of piffling public meetings in the past year. Hence the hordes of young men aimlessly wandering about down town after business hours, seeking entertainment and accepting whatever chanceth.
Since the passing of the bar, movies, poolrooms, bowling alleys have met the social needs of men. The well-to-do still have their tea rooms, cosy and congenial, where they can sit and relax. But tea rooms are no places for the working man, with their atmosphere of gush and giggle, oolong and macaroons.
Can Toronto successfully operate coffee houses to take the place of the bar rooms?
Quiet, leisurely places where coffee, tea, sandwiches, etc., are sold at a modest price, where plain men can sit of an evening as long as they like, as our fathers did of old in the coffee houses of Britain, and as our American brethren are attempting to do across the border now.
The Interchurch Forward Movement is studying that question.
Rev. Peter Bryce is now making a social survey of Toronto, one object of which is the investigation of the social needs of every district of the city, and the discovery of what form the social and recreational centres should take.
The Y.M.C.A., which is now operating the Red Triangle Club1 at Queen and Victoria streets for returned soldiers, proposes to maintain the premises as a down-town social organization when, in due course, the military work comes to an end.
The Salvation Army has been operating its Soldiers’ Hostel in the old Krausman Hotel2 at King and Church streets for four years. Its military nature has been undergoing a gradual change, weaving itself back into the civic fabric. And Commissioner Richards of the Salvation Army is studying its development closely, with the idea of discovering the most complete form of social agency for the present day.
The time may not be far distant when many of the old saloons of Toronto may flourish again, not as fountains of evil, where homes were poisoned and lives withered, but as coffee houses where men can gather for the simple and ancient pleasure of being together.
Roosevelt Coffee Houses
In the United States this problem is receiving different treatments from different organizations.
The latest development is that undertaken by the three sons of Theodore Roosevelt. They are leading a movement for the re-establishment of the coffee house as it was before the advent of the saloon. For, three hundred years ago, saloons were unknown in Britain or the United States. There were taverns. But men gathered in coffee houses for relaxation and recreation, not in the gin mills. Coffee houses date back to the thirteenth century. Saloons were a modern development, the product of the Georgian era, the drunken era.
The first in the Roosevelt boys’ chain of coffee houses is on West Forty-fourth street, New York. It is a quiet, humble shop, formerly a barroom. It is filled with tables. Coffee, tea, milk, cheese sandwiches are sold. It is a sort of leisurely soda parlor. But there is none of the hustle and rush of a restaurant about it. It is designed for fellowship.
And it is not run for profit, but to be self-supporting only.
The survey of Toronto now being made by Rev. Peter Bryce is not a complete accounting of the entire area of the city, but covers a number of typical and representative districts.
The intimacy of the study of these districts, which is being made by professional sociologists can be judged by these headings, which direct the workers to the information required:
Total population of district, nationalities and numbers of each, principal occupation, special industrial groups in area, what changes in area in ten years; what educational institutions, what attendance; what churches in area, attendance, with charts and maps; what missions, Sunday schools, settlements, with attendance; what playgrounds, movies, theatres, poolrooms, bowling alleys; what places of evil influence. And the student of each district is to enquire into what policy or change of policy is required.
As to the Salvation Army, Commissioner Richards says:
“The Army that has taken over the lepers of Java, the Inebriates Island of New Zealand; which patrols the shores of Norway and Denmark for wrecked sailors, and has raised the Lord’s banner in every part of the world, will not fail to give Toronto just what it needs for the social welfare of its people.”
Editor’s Notes: The Toronto Star was editorially in favour of Prohibition, so Greg had to write the way he did about the evils of alcohol, though I don’t think he believed it personally.
“My Christmas list,” growled Jim, concentrating on a slip of paper. “Twenty-seven fifty, thirty-one forty, thirty-five. How horrible.1“
“Horrible what?” I inquired.
“How horrible,” said Jim, angrily, “to be rating my loved ones and friends according to their price. Behold me, in the name of Christmas, pricing my love and my affection.”
“Don’t be silly,” I laughed.
“It’s tragic,” declared Jim. “That’s what it is. Just tragic. We make a list, carefully, we set down all the names of those from whom we expect presents. We go over it, pruning with the utmost exactness all names that might not return a gift. Then we set opposite each name a price. Big prices for our immediate family, and getting smaller and smaller as we go down the list. Memory comes to our aid, as we recall what each one gave us last Christmas. We estimate the cost and value of that gift, and set it down as a working basis on our own list for this year.”
“Nothing,” I said, “is more embarrassing than to receive a Christmas gift from somebody you did not send one to.”
“Nonsense, Jim,” I explained. “It’s a convention. I can’t think of any more sensible way of handling the Christmas giving than the way we do it.”
“We should set apart ten per cent, of our Christmas funds,” said Jim, “for giving anonymous gifts to people from whom we have no earthly expectation of receiving anything. Then it wouldn’t be so wicked, this cold-blooded exchange business.”
“I’m afraid this is a practical age, Jimmie,” I demurred. “And mystical things don’t happen.”
“I believe,” stated Jim slowly, “that there is some strange thing happens to all human hearts at Christmas. And I think it happens outside of all human control. Nothing makes me a true believer more than the strange miracle that occurs every Christmas to every sort and condition of men.”
“You’re romancing,” I smiled.
Jim stood up and put on his coat.
“Let’s go out,” said Jim, “and prove it. Have you the afternoon? I tell you what we do. We’ll fill the car tank. We’ll drive down here to the lakeshore highway. At all the corners of the city streets leading into it, there are two or three or more men, hitch-hikers.”
“Ah?” I said, getting up.
“Young chaps, with suit cases and white silk scarves,” said Jim, “and gleaming smiles, thumbing their way home to some country town or village for Christmas. Older men, shabby, trying to get home for Christmas. Bums, too. Bur Bums with nothing to redeem them in any man’s eyes. Where are they heading, at Christmas?”
“Aha,” I agreed.
“I show you,” said Jim. “We’ll pick up a bum. An oldish bum. A life-long flop of a man. A man without a single attractive or appealing thing about him. And we’ll drive him where he is going, even if it takes all night.”
“What if he’s heading for Vancouver?” I asked,
“Be reasonable,” huffed Jim. “We’ll pick up this derelict, and we’ll deliver him home. Not to the middle of some town. Not to a cross roads somewhere. But right to his door. And we’ll so befriend him. He’ll have to invite us in. We’ll get into his house some way.”
“And you’ll show me this miracle?” I laughed.
“I’ll show you this miracle,” grinned Jim. “At random, deliberately picking every gamble against us, I’ll show you this miracle.”
“Probably,” I snickered, as we went down the elevator, “they’ll kick him out and sock us for bringing him home.”
“Probably,” said Jim.
“Or else, it will be some dumb little cottage, in some dumb little village,” I surmised, “and some dowdy old lady ill say to him ‘Hello, George,’ and she’ll offer us a cup of tea.”
“Probably,” agreed Jim, heading out into the gray day and the threat of sleet.
“Because,” I pointed out, “if you have a loafer in the family, you are never surprised to see him when he turns up.”
“I’ll show you,” said Jim.
And we had the tank filled with gas, and Jim borrowed a couple of rugs from a friend’s car, and we set out for the lakeshore highway.
Down the highway swept a wintry wind with sleet in it, and under the concrete bastions of the subways leading down from the city huddles of men stood, young and old, well dressed and shabby, with bags and bundles, signalling in the old fashion, and watching eagerly the outbound cars for a lift.
“Some miracle you’ll show me,” I said, as we coasted past the first corner and saw no one to fit our bill. “The only miracle will be Jim Frise giving some dull cluck a free ride home.”
Jim coasted past the second subway. Five men stood there. But none were old, and none were ragged, and none looked like derelicts.
“We only have about three more spots where the hitch-hikers stand,” I remonstrated. “And then we’ll be outside the city.”
“Keep watch,” said Jim. “It’ll happen. Around Christmas, it always does.”
“Heh, heh,” said I.
We passed two of the remaining city streets touching on the highway. At one, a boy stood. At the other, two young chaps with those paper shopping bags. The last point was the Humber. And as, through the murk and wind, we came in sight of this last hope, there was no one at all waiting there.
“Ho, hum,” said I.
“We’ll go a little way out,” said Jim. And drove on past the Humber and through the suburban villages westward, until we passed the golf clubs and before us stretched a lonely road, with shut cars snoring along, heads down homeward.
“So much for miracles,” I said. “Where do we turn around?”
“We don’t turn around,” replied Jim. And I looked ahead, where his eyes were fastened, and saw a figure trudging by the side of the pavement.
Jim slowed as we drew near to it. It was, by the legs, an old man, for they were bent, and they picked themselves up and put themselves down the way the legs of old men do. He had no overcoat, but a leather windbreaker, and a heavy gray muffler high about his neck and ears. A battered fedora was drawn low.
“Maybe,” said Jim, “he is only going up the road to the next farm. But something tells me not.”
And with a last shove on the gas, he ran the car alongside.
“Mmmmm,” said I.
For the face that turned up to us as we paused, was an unattractive face, the eyes were small and gray and cold in their expression, with red rims. The face was withered, and out of it stood a beaked nose. The mouth, hidden by a ragged white moustache, seemed only to be a slit.
After Long Absence
‘Lift?” I called, winding down the window. “Thank you,” said the old man. I reached back and opened the door for him and he got in back.
“Going far?” asked Jim.
“Far enough,” said the old man.
“How far can we take you?” Jim requested.
“How far are you going?” the old man retorted. No smile broke the stoniness of his face. His bleak eyes regarded us levelly.
“We are not going any place in particular,” said Jim. “We’re out scouting around for some Christmas trees, so one way is as good as another.”
The old man studied us in silence. I nudged Jim on the leg.
“Going out Guelph way?” the old chap asked finally.
“Sure,” said Jim. “I was just thinking about Guelph or somewhere even beyond there.”
“Stratford?” inquired the old man.
“Stratford would be great,” said Jim. “Are you going to Stratford?”
“The other side of Stratford,” said the old man, leaning back on the cushions, and loosening his muffler around his neck.
I twisted around in the seat to chat with him, but he was looking out the car window with that far away expression or lack of expression you see in people looking out train windows. He did not turn to face me. I saw his ancient boots, his patched trousers. His hands were knuckled and harsh.”
“Have you come far?” I asked.
“Province of New Brunswick,” he answered, without turning from the window.
“Hitch hiked?”
“Yes.”
I nudged Jim again. I was smiling to myself. Miracles. What a stuffy old stager was for the manifestation of miracles. Between Clappison’s Corners and Guelph, I got from him that he had not much luck at hitch hiking. That he had stood four days at Toronto’s corners but finally had started on foot for Stratford.
When we reached Guelph, he sat up and stared with great interest at the streets, the people, the busy pre-Christmas scene.
“You’ve been away from Ontario a long time?” I asked.
“Since 1920,” said he.
“You were born up here?”
“Born and raised and spent all my life in Mannering,” said he.
“Is that the name of the village you’re going to?”
“That’s it. The other side of Stratford. I’ll soon be there.”
“We’ll be delighted to take you there,” said Jim. “One place as good as another to us.”
And the old chap relaxed on the cushions and continued his endless blind staring out at the winter fields and drab little villages.
Through Stratford, he sat up and twisted, this way and that, eagerly scanning the streets, stores. But when we stopped for a red light, he sat back and sank his head on his breast, as if to prevent the people crossing from seeing him in the car.
“Mmm, mmmm,” said I, this time giving Jim a pinch and a sly nod in the mirror.
Back To the Old Village
Mannering, which, of course, is not its true name, nor anything like it, is a few miles beyond Stratford, and neither will I say northwest or southwest. But in a few minutes we came to the village of Mannering, just a wide place on a second-class highway, with painted cottages and old and somewhat faded red brick and yellow brick mansions, and a street of shops and cottages and two banks and one motion picture theatre.
“Which house?” asked Jim, as we started into the village asphalt.
“Just drop me anywhere,” said the old chap, his voice husky.
“Not at all, not at all,” cried Jim, heartily. “We’ll set you down right by your door.”
“Right through,” said the old chap in a low voice; and, turning, I saw he was almost crouched down in the back, yet stealing eager looks over the rim of the windows at the passing scene. It was growing dusk. Snow had begun. The houses seemed cuddled down, and soft lights were glowing in a few of the windows.
After we passed through the store section, the old chap sat up and leaned forward to watch ahead.
“On the left,” he said, clearing his throat. “A white house. Second past this church.”
But second past the church, when Jim slowed down, there was no white house. There was brown house. A two-storey frame house, painted brown. And about it, every sign of neglect. The lawn all high-grown with weeds. It was dark. A pane of glass was broken in one of the downstairs windows.
Jim and I both felt the hands grip the cushion of our seat back.
“Vacant,” said Jim, cheerfully. “Well, a couple of inquiries…”
“No, no,” gasped the old chap, “just drop me off outside the village a bit.”
“Miracles, miracles,” I said casually.
Jim turned the car around on the gravel. He drove slowly back to the store section, where the lights were bright and colored bulbs were festooned from store to store. In front of a little restaurant and candy store he stopped.
“Come in,” he said firmly. “And we’ll have a cup of coffee and a bite to eat.”
The old man, bending his joints, got off the cushions and slowly stepped out of the car.
I got out and Jim and I started to escort the old fellow into the candy store. His head was bent. His hands, as they fumbled with his old gray muffler, were shaking.
A man standing in the doorway next the candy shop. festooned with boots and shoes and goloshes, suddenly stepped forward.
“Ed,” he cried at our old man. “Ed.”
The old man straightened and stared with his curiously bleak eyes at the stranger.
“You’re Ed Stout,” accused the stranger, his eyes bulging, his mouth wide in a wild grin.
Clamor and Bedlam
“Hey,” roared the stranger to the wide world, to the street of Mannering, to the men and women and boys and girls busily coming and going along the street now sparkling with new falling snow. “Hey, here’s Ed Stout!”
And as if a thunderclap had sounded, as if we had driven our fist into a hornets’ nest, as if we had set fire to Mannering, there rose such a clamor and bedlam. “Ed Stout, Ed Stout,” they shouted and squealed and yelled, and men in coon coats and men in smooth coats shouldered us aside to touch Ed Stout, and women, yammering, pushed sideways past us to seize Ed Stout’s hands, and children pushed and shoved underneath the throng, to stand and stagger and stare at Ed Stout, and from stores people came running, wiping their hands on white aprons, and above the mob, the first stranger stood roaring for somebody to run and tell the Stout boys, any of them, any one will do, that Ed Stout is home. And in less than two minutes a bell was ringing in a church or a fire hall, and cars came rushing and slithering down the street; and farmers driving teams; and the crowd grew and grew and the big stranger led Ed Stout inside the shoe store, and up and down and whirling around the store front, the mob, with faces gleaming and eyes shining and mouths jabbering “Ed Stout, Ed Stout is home, Ed Stout, Ed Stout.”
“Miracle,” said Jim, pulling me out to lean against our car.
“What the heck is it?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” said Jim. “But anyway, Ed Stout is home.”
And while the mob was at its height, and two handsome men in their forties arrived in a big dark car and thrust their way into the store with everybody making way for them when they saw who they were, the tall stranger who had first seen Ed Stout came through the mob and beckoned to us.
“Come in, gentlemen,” he cried.
“But what is it?” we asked.
“It’s Ed Stout,” said he, “home!”
“But what’s the excitement?”
“Ed Stout.” said the stranger, is the greatest man this country ever grew. The greatest sport, the greatest friend any man ever had, and the greatest soldier. He came home from the war. He quarrelled with his young sons, who were too young to go to war at that time. You know the age?”
“Yes, yes.”
“He quarreled with his family and disappeared,” said the stranger, his face like a high priest’s. “And they and we and everybody all over this country have been looking for him for twenty years.”
“We’re glad we picked him up,” I confessed. “I guess we ought to go in and shake hands with him before we go.”
“The boys took him home out the back way,” said the stranger. “But I was to bring you a message from them to come up right now and have dinner with them at the Big House.”
“Big House?”
“The Stout boys’ house; we call it the Big House,” explained the stranger.
Things Have Greatly Improved of Late, But There Is Still Considerable Confusion as to Authority, and Our Heroes and Their Families Suffer – Suggestions as to Remedying Conditions.
By Gregory Clark, December 18, 1915.
Toronto, the city that Ottawa called “the place that put the kick in kick,” has already begun to speculate as to how long the present organization for the care of returned soldiers can last. That it fails utterly to recognize the tremendous proportions and the hidden dangers of the problem is evident from the fact that no permanent and far-reaching plans are being laid, even though the problem is already posed in no small figures. That the present organization is shifting of responsibility from one place to another until no responsibility remains is pitifully plain.
It is six months since the first of our heroes began return to us. Three of those six months were passed in what might be called indifference to the problem. Originally the returning men were landed at Halifax, lodged in a jail, given a typewritten sheet of flimsy paper that purported to be a discharge, and were so launched over the Dominion home. After a few weeks the Discharge Depot at Quebec began to deal exclusively with the men. It was hopelessly undermanned. What short-sighted, foolish, and ineffectual means were taken by the Discharge Depot to cope with the problem are well-known now that the tragedy, oft-repeated, of sick men being discharged and left to court death with their own devices.
The last three months have seen the awakening. These tales of woe, of consumptives discharged, of money promised but never coming, have been written up fully in the press, despite very plausible charges that the press was attempting to hamstring the Government.
Now, after six months of battle with the problem the soldier who returns has a much better and more considerate reception than his comrades who preceded him. When he lands at Halifax, instead of being lodged in Melville Prison or on the docks, he is taken by train to Quebec in the best of coaches, and three square meals. At Quebec a sufficiently increased staff of doctors meet him. If, like 75 per cent. of returned soldiers, he is in need of medical care, he is sent forward to a central convalescent home. In the past he would have been lodged in none too clean immigration sheds, taken before a medical board, given his discharge, and a sum of money, and tuned adrift. Now he travels with a party to the convalescent home. He is enrolled on the books, and allowed to go home for a few days. His money is forwarded to the divisional officers. Thus far all is ship-shape. He is the charge of a well-conducted system. He cannot, even if he will, go out and kill himself by superinducing pneumonia or tuberculosis.
Discharge Depot Regulations
These matters are very clearly dealt with in the regulations of the Discharge Depot at Ottawa, which are here given for the first time:
Class No. 1: Men who are cured and ready for discharge are given discharge with pay and arrears, also fifteen days advance pay, so as to enable them to procure a situation in civil life, and, if deemed necessary, one pair of boots and their choice of a civilian suit of clothes and overcoat or the regulation allowance of $13.00 for purchase of same.
“Class No. 2: Men suffering from complaints which will probably respond under treatment or who require time and rest to be restored to normal health; men in this class are privileged to go to a Military Hospital or Convalescent Home, or if the case appears to be one which could be so disposed of, will be permitted to return to their homes and families until formally discharged. They are entitled to pay and arrears to date and advance pay for one month; boots, if required, and their choice of either civilian clothes or an allowance of $13.00 for same, and are not given a Discharge Certificate, but instead, a descriptive certificate stating that the holder is in Class No. 2, and entitled to the privileges provided for in such class.
“Class No. 3: Men permanently disabled in such a way as to be not likely to be needing other treatment, such disability having been caused by military service. Men in this class are riven a Certificate with a description of the individual and stating that he is in Class No. 3. He is given pay and arrears to date, with advance pay for one month; pair of boots, if necessary, and is choice of civilian clothes or an allowance of $13.00 for same. In the case of the above class an advance in cash, not to exceed $20, will be paid to every man, and immediately upon departure of the men from Quebec, a cheque for a sum not exceeding $100.00 will be forwarded to the A.A.G.1 of the Division to which the man belongs issuable to him on reaching home, after his case has been dealt with by the Division authorities. Each man’s address and last pay certificate will be immediately forwarded from the Discharge Depot at Quebec to Ottawa, where a special branch has teen formed to handle all future, payments.”
Things are Better Now
The scores who returned before this new order of things have a terrible tale of suffering and neglect to tell. It is a joyful thing to be able to say that at last after months of neglect, these splendid fellows are being looked out for. Numbers of them have been taken into the military hospitals. The others, who are not so badly off in health, have received the back pay that has been so outrageously neglected.
But this is only the medical side that is so excellent. May it improve! May it continue the good work! And no doubt it will under the guidance of Lieut.-Col. Marlow, the A.D.M.S., whose ideas have been largely followed out in the recent reorganization of the system. It is proposed to institute a series of branch convalescent homes all over the Province. And a further improvement is that the Discharge Depot is to move over to Liverpool, and all the clerical work will be done on board ship, so that the returned men will have no heel-kicking to do around to do around Quebec.
The fault, however, lies in the fact that there is no central head, no single office or officer responsible for this great work that will be with us for a generation. The Military Hospitals Commission was appointed by the Government to deal with the problem generally. Then sub-commissions requested in the Province, and the Soldiers’ Aid Commission was appointed to deal with the problem generally. Then the municipalities were requested to do a little something, and the Mayor of this city appointed a Soldiers’ Welcome Committee, and a military secretary, who opened a special office in the City Hall where returned soldiers are directed.
A Confusion of Authorities
Thus, the Military Hospitals Commission wrote the returned soldiers for full particulars. The Soldiers’ Aid Commission wrote likewise and enclosed a blank form of questions to the number of dozens to be filled in. The city wrote to returned soldiers asking them to enrol on a list in the City Clerk’s office. Military Hospitals Commission has a local office.
From the Military Hospitals Commission, from just plain Militia Department, from the Pensions and Claims Board, and from the Paymaster-General, the returned soldier receives equally authoritative letters. When it comes to his writing, he has not the faintest idea to which he should refer. He is confused by the multiplicity of departments, the variety of authorities. It is an almost unheard of thing for a man to receive an answer to a letter within a week. And I have seen answers coming a month after the original letter was sent.
Such confusion must surely go. The duty of attacking and solving the problem is certainly the duty of the State. And the only solution can be in the formation of a distinct department, or at least a very distinct branch of the Militia Department, with powers over the pay, pensions, and medical departments. The longer we dawdle along under the present system and larger the problem becomes, the harder will it be to break away from it in time to avoid the great dangers and the grave injustices and cruelties that are in it.
No scattered commissions, not knowing what the other is doing, but a single, clearly defined department. permanent and fully manned, with its officers, in every city and town. The Pensions Board cannot deal with the problem. For it is vastly greater than mere pensioning. It is the reinstatement into civil life of those whom the State has removed from civil life. It is the fathering of those forever helpless in the nation’s name. It is the work of re-making as many as possible into contributors again to the nation’s life.
Permanent Jobs Wanted
The present system is so vain. The human element has gone out of it. Money is being sent, very late. Jobs are being got by the Provincial organization, the Soldiers’ Aid Commission. But what is a temporary job? The men must be re-made fit to go into a job permanently. Christmas mails are not forever. But remade muscles, remade lungs, built by a period of rest with a liberal allowance, and then a job that to the best of the commission’s and the soldier’s belief is a permanent job – these are different matters. The State must remake the man and then find him one job. If the commissions flutter about, getting job after job or giving money in place of lacking jobs to men, all will end in disillusionment, disgust, confusion.
Samples of the confusion arising out of too many authorities are not scarce. One man who was given subsistence for three. months was neglected for one month, left on his uppers, in fact. When he raised complaint the medical officers of the division came to him and said, “If you are too sick to work, then enter the convalescent home.”
The soldier had a wife and three children to support. He was doing it at the expense of his health, which was officially marked “unfit,” from wounds and trench exposure. The military officials, however, acting on the belief that it is safer to discount such cases as this as false, put it up to the man. He entered the home. His wife and three children went unprovided for. He had written to the Militia Department, to the Hospitals Commission, and to the Pay Department about his case. He did not receive money for his family until his story was printed in The Star Weekly and Daily Star.
In such a case as this the divisional authorities were in no way to blame. Not until the recent reorganization of the Discharge Depot were the divisions fully notified of their returned men.
Princess Pat a Peddler
Another case in point is that of a Princess Pat man whom I discovered peddling metal polish.
“Why are you doing that?” I asked.
“To make ends meet,” said this man who had taken part in some of the greatest battles around Ypres.
From his papers I learned that he had come home in October, was discharged, and was recommended to have $50 a month for three months. He received his $50 in October, but in November he only received $30. He wrote at once to Ottawa and received a reply from Mr. E. H. Scammell, secretary of the Military Hospitals Commission, explaining that $20 had been deducted on account of assigned pay for August and September, 1914, over a year ago, which had not hitherto been deducted from pay.
“I have a wife and six children. I unable even to do the lightest kind of work, but seeing that the officials do not consider these things and send me only $30 for the month, rent and all, I am obliged to peddle metal polish.”
“Man, didn’t you write back and explain at once?” I cried.
“Oh, yes,” said the soldier.
But he got no reply. Furthermore, he is of the opinion that there was no such thing as assigned pay that early in the war. It was, he believes, instituted later.
The Militia Department is overloaded, as it is, with the business of sending soldiers away from Canada. That department at least cannot be blamed for regarding the returned soldiers as of secondary importance There should be department to consider the returned soldier as of prime importance. It should take charge of every soldier the moment he is released from the hospital in England, and should thereafter never let go until the man is fit again, working at a job; or, if unfitted for life, pensioned and cared-for for life. There should be none of these horrible cases of neglect. There should never be a soldier peddling pencils because his money did not come from Ottawa. There should be no referring from one department to another, long, dreadful days to the returned men: light, busy, chatty, and talk full days for the officials.
The Soldier Who Spat Blood
I shall not soon forget an experience in this regard. At the street entrance of the Toronto office of one of the committees I met a returned soldier coming out.
“Hello, Bill!”
“Hello,” said Bill, the soldier with three wounds and destroyed lungs. “I’ve just been listening to a lady and gent telling me I’m no soldier. Why? Because I grew peeved when they said, for the fourth time in ten days, that they had written to Ottawa about my case. I want money! My kids need food! My God!”
And in a sort of fury he spat.
He spat blood!
When I reached the offices the soldier had come from I was assured that the soldier was a kicker and a drinker, and a greedy grasper-
“He is a hero, twice in action, thrice wounded, and now in our midst with tuberculosis on him,” I pointed out.
“Well, we’ve written to Ottawa and that’s all that can be done,” replied the officials.
