The Work of Greg Clark and Jimmie Frise

Category: Other Story Page 1 of 8

Five and Nine

October 25, 1930

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Eileen Wedd, October 25, 1930.

“What makes the leaves fall off?” asked the five-year-old.

The two were staring up at the oak tree. With every sigh of wind, leaves drifted down.

“It’s God makes them fall,” said the elder.

“Why doesn’t God make them stick on?” demanded the small fellow with mild indignation. “They are prettier sticking on. It would be summer then, and we could wear gym shirts.”

“God makes the fall off,” said the elder, who, being nine, speaks with a fine note of scorn in making these explanations of life’s mysteries. “He makes them all fall off, and pretty soon the trees are bare naked. The way you are in the bath.”

“And you, too,” put in the small boy.

“I bath myself,” corrected the elder. There was a distinction. “Anyway, God makes the trees naked. He turns the grass brown, it rains and gets cold, and then comes the snow.”

“Sometimes He leaves it summer,” said the little one.

“Never!” said the elder. “It always comes winter. He never leaves it summer.”

“I remember when it was all the time summer,” began the lesser, about to give reminiscences.

“Haw!” snorted the big brother. “You’re only five. What do you know! God never leaves it summer. It just goes round and round, winter, summer, winter, summer. You’ll find that out.”

“If Dodo asked God to leave it summer, He would,” said Five.

“No, He wouldn’t.”

“For Dodo He would.”

“Dodo wouldn’t ask Him,” said Nine briefly.

“Why wouldn’t she?”

“For fear He wouldn’t,” said Nine. “But you don’t know about things like this. All you do is see the leaves fall down. Then comes winter. Wait and see.”

“Well,” said the small chap, “why does God go round and round like that? Why doesn’t He make it summer for a long, long time, and then winter for a long, long time?”

“Because,” said the elder, patiently, “God is just like Daddy. God is a man only very, very old. He is far older than granddad. He is older even than the world. Now you see daddy every morning. What does he do? He gets up, he goes downstairs and turns on the heater. Then he comes up and shaves.”

“First he looks in at me,” said Five.

“All right, but listen. This is how God is. Daddy shaves, and he stands there in front of the mirrow, putting powder on his chin, and he brushes his hair over and over, and puts on a clean shirt and then he goes in to mother’s room and says, ‘How do I look?'”

“He says,” cried Five, “’How does the old man look?’”

“Sometimes he says that,” proceeded Nine. “But anyway, he looks all fresh and shiny and his hair is wet and curls on the front. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Then,” said Nine, “he goes to work. And when he comes home, how does he look?”

“At me,” said Five.

“But how does he look? He isn’t shiny any more. His hair isn’t smooth. If he scrapes you, he has whiskers, even little ones. He doesn’t jump around. He just goes and sits down. Doesn’t he?”

“I sit on his knee,” said the small chap.

“Oh, you aren’t listening!” cries the elder impatiently. “Listen, will you? I am telling about God.”

“All right.”

“Well, God is the same way as daddy. Daddy has to shave all over again, every morning. He goes to work, and then he comes home all tired. God gets tired. He makes the world all beautiful and shining, with green leaves and grass and flowers.”

“And gym shirts,” said Five.

“Don’t talk!” commands Nine sharply. “And the world is lovely and new, like daddy in the morning.”

“Does God shave?” asked Five.

Nine favors him with a long, grim stare. Five looks abashed.

“But after a while,” continues the elder, “the world gets all used, the grass is used, the trees are used, the flowers get tired and lean over. So God just lets everything go. He just lets the leaves fall off, the grass turn brown, the flowers die, and He lets the winter come, so that He can get up in the morning and start all over again.”

Five had not been entirely attentive. He was only half watching the oak leaves fall. But Nine was carried away by his own philosophy.

“Every day,” he mused, “daddy tries to make himself all new. But every day he comes back and he didn’t stay new. Every year God makes the world new, but it doesn’t stay. So He just lets it go and starts again the next morning.”

“When will it be morning?” asked Five.

“After the winter is gone.”

“And do we go to bed now until the morning?” asked Five.

“Yes, and miss Santa Claus?” demanded Nine with a knowing smile. “And miss hockey in the back yard, and sleigh riding out at Lambton, and snow men and forts?”

“We could do that,” said Five.

“While we sleep all winter?” cried Nine.

“We could be dreaming,” said Five.

Whereupon he abandoned his philosophic brother and dashed down from the steps to get another acorn that had fallen.


Editor’s Note: The nine year old is Murray Clark, while the five year old is Greg Clark Jr. Daughter Elizabeth had not been born yet.

Ruins Amid Muskoka’s Gaiety Tell Pioneer Epic

August 4, 1923

By Gregory Clark, August 4, 1923.

Hundreds of Abandoned Homesteads Throughout the Lakes Region of the Great Summer Resort Bear Witness to a Past of Hardship and Despair.

To the world Muskoka means gaiety, ease and joy.

It is a bit of the earth, it seems, set aside at the creation for the delights of summer.

But in back of those bright shores that are studded with hotels and cottages are evidences of an epic struggle in former days.

Muskoka and winter, Muskoka and grim hardship, Muskoka and dark despair seem absurd contradictions in terms.

But back over those splendid hills of light green and dark green, on little side roads where lovers stroll, throughout that beautiful region now largely given over to the summer resort, you will come across hundreds of ruined and abandoned homesteads, the mute records of at least one defeat Ontario dealt her pioneers.

The lake region of Muskoka is peculiar in this respect, there is no average farmstead. As you motor through the district you pass some small areas that appear to be excellent farm lands. But when you leave the highways and the neighborhood of the larger towns you strike the great contrast. For miles you will traverse hills and dales of wilderness, with infrequent clearings where a pitiful, tumbledown little shanty, new or old, scrabbles a meagre existence from a small patch of ground. Then you will emerge all of a sudden on a wide and beautiful clearing of hundreds of acres, and in its midst a modern red brick house, large barns and out-buildings, in perfect repair, every evidence of being a very successful farm.

There is no average. Either they are very well fixed or very poor.

And to add a sinister touch to the poor ones, the wilds are filled with hundreds of these ruined and abandoned homesteads, most of them the log houses and rough barns of the pioneer, the picturesque, hand-made homesteads of the builders of the province.

The reason is simple enough. That part of Muskoka consists largely of sand and rocks. It is fine soil for pines and hollyhocks, but poor for potatoes and other fruitful crops. Scattered all over the district are deposits of better soil, valleys where great forests have stood for ages, flats where swamps have been easily or naturally drained away.

When the pioneers came thrusting into Muskoka from the south they knew not which was good soil and which was stones. The forest hid that vital fact. The shrewdest were rewarded with a hundred or two hundred acres of loam over and in the sand. The less shrewd came wearily into some gorgeous valley filled with the sunset which Muskoka alone can devise and proudly and gladly they made a camp and, unladed their ox-cars and cried to the dark hills:

“Home!”

And when with gigantic toil which this older part of the province has forgotten, even when it looks at its endless fields, the forest was torn down and laid in piles and burned, these less shrewd pioneers found under the strong and sturdy forest only hummocks of sand and countless boulders, and here and there outcroppings of the fundamental rock which lies shallow under the whole of that northern country.

If you look at some of these abandoned homesteads with a recreative eye, you will be able to reconstruct the whole tragedy. For the clearings about the log shanties are not regular and ordered, spreading out squarely, but are in patches, a couple of acres cleared here, and over a ridge in a neighboring gulley, a couple of acres more, and so on, as the pioneer, finding rocks and sand in this dark valley where he so gladly cried “Home!” searched each autumn, with fire and axe, for that stretch of hidden earth which would be black and smooth and soft to the plow.

You don’t have to travel far in from your cottage or hotel to find one of these tragedies clearly written in logs and boulders and brushy meadows already falling victim to the enfolding forest. Fate has played a pretty trick with Muskoka. For fifty years it was the scene of a thousand failures made more bitter by the few successes. To-day, it is a nation’s playground, full of ease and music and brightness. Its million dollar breezes dimpling lakes and driving light sails and cooling ten thousand screened verandahs, have touched far different scenes.

The opening up of the west and its prairies and the arrival of the summer resort saved Muskoka from being a tragedy for those who had pioneered into it. Hundreds who had struggled faithfully to find the black acres under the forest gave up and went to the west, from which, twenty-five to forty years ago, fabulous reports were coming into the east. Far away were boundless acres of black soil covered not with forests, but with grass. To select your homestead you had not to cruise a wilderness and trust to luck for what the clearing would show, but merely walk over your hundred and sixty acres and feel it with your feet. No clearing but to drive the plow through the sod and burn a little swale of willows.

And by the hundred from Muskoka, as from all other parts of the province where disappointment had sought out the pioneer, they packed up and set forth for the west.

Those who remained, either from doubt or from poverty, were persuaded to remain by the arrival of the summer resorters. The exploitation of Muskoka as a summer resort is thirty years old, and yet it has only begun.

When the first cottagers came they brought relief to the poorest settlers. Garden crops could be sold at the best of prices. Milk, butter and meat were in demand. The labor of the man was needed for clearing, building and well-digging about the summer cottages.

Other settlers took in a few summer boarders and so were put on the first step towards the summer hotel. The majority and many of the best of the Muskoka hotels are run by the descendants of pioneers. From keeping a few visitors in the homestead to the erection of a small hotel and from the small hotel to the modern Muskoka hotel were logical steps.

There are golf links in Muskoka on pastures that were regarded as hopeless by the pioneer who cleared them. There are farms in Muskoka found to be more profitable as pleasure grounds for two months of the year than as farms for twelve months.

One old lady in her eighties told me the story of her pioneering in Muskoka. She came as a girl of eighteen by ox-cart into the country now the heart of the gayest resorts. A party of fifteen entered the district. They cleared their acres and found sand and stones. But they added to their income by cutting lumber for the markets at Bracebridge and Gravenhurst. Winter was desperately hard. They were cooped up for five months, while wolves possessed the forests.

They lived poorly and lonely, and the men went off in the winter to the lumber camps and in the summer added small patches to their clearings and tended sparse crops of hay and wheat and a limited garden.

When the west boomed her brothers and brothers-in-law and other men of the community promptly abandoned their clearings and went west. Everyone of them proved successful farmers in the west, died, well off, and deeded over their little Muskoka clearings to their sister, who owns hundreds of acres of bush and scrub.

Yet she still dwells in a small and poor farmhouse amid about forty acres of cultivated soil, growing corn and vegetables for the summer resorts, and pasturing a herd of cows for milk for the same market. She is poor, but quite happy. Her grandchildren own and operate several tourist hotels throughout the lakes.

Not far out of Bracebridge I talked to a settler in his seventies. His two chums, after five years pioneering beside him in Muskoka, gave up and went to the legendary west. They sold him their clearings for three hundred dollars each, no cash down, to be paid in instalments as the remaining man found convenient,

Both the wayfarers settled out of Winnipeg and became very wealthy wheat farmers and cattle-raisers. Both are dead now. But for many years the two of them made trips every other year to Muskoka for fishing and hunting. They came and stayed with their old chum who stuck to Muskoka. In this way, be paid off the three hundred dollars each for the clearings, the westerners paying part cash for their accommodation and part the old debt until it was wiped out.

You would think they would have given him the clearings. That they would have persuaded him to give up his miserable stone acres and come out west with them.

“This is good land,” said the old man to me, “I have been very happy on it. I have more fun than those chums of mine. They died before me. They had to come back here for their fun. Ther coaxed me to come out west, but they knew I wouldn’t budge-“

Those two well-off westerners wouldn’t have insulted their chum by offering him their abandoned land for nothing.

“Still you have had to struggle hard for what you’ve got here?” I asked, waving at the little unpainted home, the rock bound pasture, the undefeated forest all about the clearing.

“No harder than anybody else. I had a strong time. My sons are doing well, some in the towns, some at the resorts.

“Nobody can dig a well like me. I have doctors and lawyers and millionaires coming to me for advice and help all the time. They would be no good without me. There was a bank president just drove up here to this clearing an hour ago to get me to tell him where to build his new boat house. Big blue car. I am going with him to-morrow to show him where-“

So it wasn’t a tragedy altogether. They had a strong time. The desolate homesteads you will find everywhere in the lake region of Muskoka were the original settlings of men who went west or moved out to the lake shores to meet the cottagers and the tourists.

Still, for all the joy and the fame and gaiety that have made Muskoka a beautiful, byword there has been a grim contrast of bitter struggle and disillusionment which somehow hallows the district and justifies the compensation of these days of dancing and idling and making merry.

The Terrible Corn Eating Problem

Someone high in the public esteem ought to go about to all the restaurants and give a frank and lusty exhibition of corn eating.

By Gregory Clark, July 30, 1921.

The corn-on-the-cob season is here; and, as usual, the souls of countless thousands of hungry but proper people are filled with perplexity.

It is a terrible thing to go into a restaurant and see great platters of beautiful golden corn and at the same time be afraid to order it for fear of your neighbors’ eyes.

It is too much to have to sit in a cafe and see some brave, courageous person across the aisle ecstatically sliding his face along the cob of corn, his eyes rolling dreamily, and melted butter dribbling down his chin; while you, over-civilized, hyper-socialized, are afraid to make a similar spectacle of yourself.

Thousands of people in Toronto alone, it is estimated, are either bringing their lunch downtown in a package or are lunching at home solely because this is the corn season. Their stomachs crave the corn, but their moral courage is not equal to eating it in public.

Cannot the medical officer of health or some other authority on eating issue a public announcement standardizing the eating of corn-on-the-cob, and thereby sanction it even for the most finicky?

A neat poster could be got out, in colors, showing with diagrams the proper way to hold the cob, whether one or two or three rows should be bitten at once, how far along the row the eater should go before coming up for air, and so on.

It seems as if corn was created to set at naught our most sacred table manners. A few years ago, some hostess, endeavoring to admit corn into the most conservative menus and at the same time to preserve the table manners, set a fashion of cutting the corn off the cob with the knife, to be then eaten with the fork, like peas. But treated this way corn loses all its charm, its savor.

To mock us, Nature has made corn-on-the-cob the most delicious and at the same time the awkwardest of foods. It is taboo to rest the elbow on the table. But on the best authority, it is stated that if you don’t rest both – both elbows on the table while eating corn, you get butter all over your necktie.

Then the cob is round. Two, or at most three rows are all that can be reached at one bite, yet one bite is not a fair mouthful. There fore, the eater must take two or three bites sideways. This manoeuvre constitutes one of the most absurd exercises ever required of the human face. When the mouth is opened, the eyes open with it, the eyebrows are raised, and the same muses which elevate the eyebrows cause the ears to move.

Nature has undoubtedly provided corn to prevent us taking ourselves too seriously.

Timid and proper people, of course, resign themselves to suffer when tempted by corn in public. Then they hasten home and have a private gorge on corn. At this season of the year, if you go to your back windows towards bed-time and look across the yards at the kitchen windows opposite, you will probably see half-a-dozen proper citizens indulging in an extra corn feed before bed, by way of reprisal for the day’s self-denial.

No new methods need be sought. There is only one way to eat corn, and someone high in the public esteem ought to do a great public service by going about to all the different restaurants and giving frank and lusty exhibitions of corn eating to set at rest the minds of the pure and proper.

An Englishman just arrived in Canada was horrified at the first corn-eating exhibition he saw. It appeared a heathen sort of practice. After observing for a moment, he decided to demonstrate an improvement.

He ordered corn, and ostentatiously commenced eating from – the end, as one eats asparagus.

History tells that he made slow work of it, cob and all. But with true British doggedness, he stuck to the end.

His case is a warning to corn reformers. He is buried in Halifax.

Innocent Handbags

June 18, 1927

By Gregory Clark, June 18, 1927.

Mr. Bodkin, who works in our office, carries a handbag.

He has carried it for years, and with his handbag, umbrella and his rubbers on, he is so serious and dignified a personage, none of us has ever ventured to jolly him about the bag.

As far as we know, he never carries anything in it. It just seems to be a habit of long standing, and he would as soon go out with no collar and tie on and come to business without his faithful old handbag.

Now it so happens that he parks his car three blocks away from the office, half a block from one of the new liquor stores.1

And that handbag has taken on a new and horrible significance.

The first day liquor was on sale, Mr. Bodkin came down Church street and saw the line-up. And being an old newspaperman, the instinct to stop, look and ask naturally halted him.

He is a shy sort of man, however, who depends on his powers of observation rather than his tongue, and he stood about for all of five minutes before he spoke to one of his neighbors in the crowd, to ask what the line-up was for and where everybody was going, because everybody was carrying a bag of some description.

“Booze,” replied the neighbor. “This is the opening day.”

You can imagine Mr. Bodkin’s horror. He has been a prohibitionist since birth, a tremendous worker for the dries, the author of many a strong article and influential pamphlet on the liquor traffic.

And here he had been standing, bag in hand, in the liquor store line-up for five long minutes while curious crowds of onlookers stared.

He got out of there so fast, he was limp when he reached the office.

We helped him out of his coat, and he flung the old handbag to the floor.

“If it hadn’t been for that!” he cried, with a mortified air.

We gathered around him.

And he told us of the tragedy.

“Five long minutes I stood there!” he wailed. “Goodness knows who saw me. Hundreds and hundreds passed by and paused to look. Amongst them must have, been scores of acquaintances, and probably the telephones wires are at this moment being burned up with the scandal that Bodkin, the great prohibition worker, was amongst the first to line up for his liquor!”

We soothed him.

“Boys,” said Bodkin, “do me a favor. Help me out of this mess, will you? Pass the word around amongst your friends that I was standing there in all innocence, as a newspaper man. That’s good fellows!”

“But,” said Jimmie, “that handbag. It will be hard to explain away that handbag.”

“Oh, dear!” sighed Mr. Bodkin.

For two days, he came to work without the handbag, but he was like a lost soul. He wandered around like a man who has forgotten his pipe. The rest of us could do no work, with him wandering around. He would sit and stare moodily at the place beside his desk where he used to park the handbag.

“I don’t enjoy the walk anymore.” he confided to me. “I have carried that bag for twenty years, and I think it has become part of me. Little did I dream the liquor business would ever strike me in a vulnerable spot. Its ramifications are so insidious, reaching into a man’s most sacred life. Curse the liquor traffic, I say!”

Jimmie had the inspiration.

“Look here,” said he to Bodkin, “just have the words ‘MSS Only’2 inscribed in gold letters on the bag, good and big.”

So Bodkin has his bag again and all is well. He has the words “MSS Only” in letters two inches freshly gilded on the faithful old bag. And he comes down Yonge instead of Church street now.

“It’s a much finer way to come anyway,” he says.

There must be hundreds and hundreds of people who have been made self-conscious since the liquor stores opened, lawyers, doctors, salesmen, who have to carry bags in the daily vocation.

But they can all follow Mr. Bodkin’s lead. Doctors can quite excusably work in a little free advertising for themselves by inscribing their name and title on their bags in large characters. Lawyers can put “Legal Documents Only.” Travelers can have the name of their firm or commodity emblazoned.

Or, to put another interpretation on the idea, although this is hardly fair to Bodkin, now that he has employed the idea in self-defence, could not those who do line up at the liquor stores camouflage their bag’s contents by all sorts of disarming inscriptions such as “MSS Only.” “Dr. Smith. horse doctor,” “Use Squkm Gramophone Needles,” “Hokem and Pokem, Barristers, Etc.”

The clever concealment of the true function of a handbag that is solely employed for the purpose of carrying two crocks from the liquor store will now be one of those things that will tax the ingenuity of a necessarily ingenious section of the public.


Editor’s Notes:

  1. The Liquor Control Act overturned prohibition as legislated in the Ontario Temperance Act and established the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO), through which the province managed liquor distribution with government-run stores taking effect on June 1 1927. ↩︎
  2. MSS is an abbreviation for manuscripts.  ↩︎

Trout Fishing Not All It’s Cracked Up to Be–Not This Year!

Swish, thump! Out came a ten-inch beauty.



The Thrills Prove Chiefly to Be in the Anticipation – Farmers’
Minds Seem Hopelessly Confused on Some Things, But One of Them Breaks All the Traditions of Trout Fishing and Catches Three Beauties in Ten Minutes.



By Gregory Clark, May 29, 1920.

When you go trout fishing, take along a good supply of magazines, novels, an indoor baseball outfit and a ouija board.

For, about 2.30 o’clock of the afternoon of your first day on the fishing ground, you will begin to yearn for one or the other of the above forms of recreation.

Trout fishing consists, in the finer aspects, of anticipation and retrospection. There is no finer thrill than in picking early spring model fishworms in your backyard and visioning the swift stream and the flashing speckled jewel you will catch with each squirming wormlet. The planning, the talking it over, poetically, dramatically, with your friends, the packing, the first railway journey of the season – Ah! It is romance!

And the telling of it afterwards. In June, the eleven poor little trout you caught have multiplied to twenty-five. By midsummer, they are, fifty speckled beauties. By autumn, when a sportsman is at his best, from a literary point of view, that stingy little eleven has grown to many creels-full, with a whacking big realistic, dramatic lie attached to every fish.

There are three trout streams to the average trout expedition. The first is the brook you had in mind when you started on the trip. It is fished the first day, when enthusiasm is still high, and before the truth of the old adage about anticipation has sunk in. This first stream, the scene of all your spring dreams, yields three small trout of doubtfully lawful size.

The second stream is the one about four miles away which the natives inform you is full of fish. You visit it the second day, and after landing five three-inch chub, in one hour, you retire to a sunny bank and wait for the gang to re-assemble.

The third type of stream is the fabulous brook in which trout under one pound in weight are seldom if ever caught. The farmers and residents assure you that it is the real thing in trout streams But it is ten miles inland. And its a dirty and difficult stream to fish.

This third type renders up not even a chub. It runs cold and swift, full of dark, log-bound holes where beautiful trout should be lurking. But the most skilful sneaking of your bait in under these shadowy pools results in merely hooking a log.

At least, this was our experience up Lake of Bays way last week-end. We aren’t grouching, understand. We had our share of sport in planning, in the thrill of the journey, the arrival at Huntsville at 2 a.m., and the departure by boat from Huntsville at the still frostier hour of 7 a.m. But we hadn’t along any magazines or baseball kit.

The trout fisherman is advised to fish in the parts of the stream hardest to get at, because the easier places have been fished out. We tried that. We fought through acres of underbush and swamp and then found our rods were too long. They caught the line on all kinds of unexpected twigs. It is all nonsense to say that trees have no intelligence. After one day’s trout fishing, anyone who would say that all those branches grew where they were merely by chance is lacking in spiritual perception. Trees, especially alders, have a sense of humor, too.

Well, well! So we shortened our rods, and then found we couldn’t reach the best holes. About then, we began to yearn for a snappy detective story.

The confusion in the minds of the farmers and residents in the trout neighborhood is alarming. In the same family, father will say it is too cold for the trout to bite; son will say, it is too warm. At one farmhouse on the third or fabulous stream, where we were to get nothing but, one-pounders, the farmer said the trout hadn’t come up from the lake yet, and five minutes later, his wife assured us that the trout hadn’t come down from the spring sources yet.

Over near Baysville, I fished the second day until I had landed four chub out of a 500-yard stretch of creek. Not a trout did I flush. Not a fingerling. So I retired to a sunny bank and smoked, awaiting the gang’s return.

Down to the corduroy bridge came a young farmer and his small boy and a dog.

“Gettin’ any?” he asked, amiably.

“No. Not biting to-day. Too cold” I replied.

“Well, I’m counting on a couple for supper,” said he.

From behind a stump, he drew from concealment a seven-foot alder pole with a hook and line on it. Out of his vest pocket he produced a worm. The little boy scampered up and down the creek, peering and yelling into the pools I had so warily stalked. The dog excitedly followed the boy, barking at the creek. Dad threw his bait in and – swish, thump! Out came a ten-inch beauty. In 40 yards, be performed this deed three times, whistled for his boy and his dog, replaced his pole in hiding, bade me good evening and went home to a trout supper.

As soon as he was out of sight, I arose from the sunny bank and fished that stream inch by inch, carefully, carelessly; sneaking up to it one time, and standing boldly exposed the next; even yelling like a small boy and barking like a dog. But all I got was one pallid chub.

Where’s the sense in this, anyway?

However, the second phase of trout-fishing, retrospection, sets in early. When we got on the boat to go back to Huntsville, the purser asked us if we had any luck. And without collusion and nary a blush, we jovially assured him we had never had better sport, and we led him to believe our hand-bags were full of trout. By the time we reached the town, among the forty-odd passengers, we were pointed out as ardent trout experts returning from the kill. And thereupon began to form in our minds next autumn’s thundering tales of grand battles amid the alder groves of gleaming brooks.

At the hotel in Huntsville, we found two Presbyterian ministers standing beside a wooden box that was leaking water on the floor. They had ordinary 50-cent brass-jointed bamboo rods tied with string.

We manoeuvred into converse with them.

“Fish?” we asked, glancing at the big leaky box.

“Yes,” they said. “Speckled trout. We only had a couple of days, and we only got seventy. And now, it the ice doesn’t hold out, we’re afraid they might spoil.”

They were ministers. We had to believe them.

Sex War

…they are not much impressed with the new recruit.

(I am publishing out of order today, April 9th, in honour of the birthday of Greg’s daughter, Elizabeth (Clark) Wakabayashi. She is the only one of Greg’s children still with us. Please enjoy this story about her).

By Gregory Clark, October 15, 1932.

When a string of male offsprings comes to bless a home without the interruption of a little girl, that home takes on a definite masculine character.

No matter how tastefully a bride and groom may have furnished their living room, by the time their union has been blessed with a series of boys, it has assumed a clubby air. Many of the more tasteful articles and objects d’art are gone forever. The chesterfield that was born pale smoke-blue now wears a slip-cover of sturdy leather brown. The original fine Persian rug is almost forgotten even by the bride, and in its place is a stout dullish floor covering that is without character, but which serves admirably as a setting for the quarrels and the drama of a tribe of arrogant small males.

The hopeless war waged against toys, roller skates, aside-flung wind-breakers, hockey sticks propped against the fireplace, has long ago been lost. By the time the oldest boy is eleven, no clothes closet designed by twentieth-century man could hope to contain the essentials of juvenile life. So the walnut hall table, the buffet, the kitchen drain-board all share the burden, and you are just as likely to find a motor truck in the flat-silver drawer as a pair of orange and black rugby stockings in the book case.

Then comes a girl.

At first, the fact seems a little preposterous.

“Was it mother took a girl or you?” asks the eleven-year-old. “Who chooses?”

“Well, sir,” says I, “you just take what God sends you.”

“But don’t you speak to God first? What is praying for?”

“Wait till you see her,” says I. “The dearest wee little thing. With dark hair like fine spun clouds of night on her head, and a little mouth, like a mouth seen at a great distance…”

But when the boys, all done up in their Sunday blue suits and wearing that slicked look which betrays the unaccustomed hand of the father, line up and march into the glowing hospital room to see their proud mother lying with her face sideways on the pillow, they are not much impressed with the new recruit.

The seven-year-old will not look at her at all, and the eleven-year-old, after one horrified glance, retires to the foot of the hospital bed and says:

“Does it sound like a cat?”

Mother says:

“You are mighty lucky little boys to have a sister.”

A Family Show-Down

So after depositing their gifts of flowers and clumsily kissing their mother’s hand, the boys depart leaving behind them no uncertain air of reproach.

For some time, several months in fact, the disturbing presence of the young lady is not felt. Indeed, with the feeding and bathing and sleeping and washing connected with the new arrival, the boy brigade achieves further freedom and wider powers than they had ever enjoyed. They can stay out later. They often get by with washing their own faces before school.

But the first hint of tyranny comes one day when the Princess is put out in her carriage on the front lawn.

“Take those shabby bicycles off the front walk,” commands mother. “And pick up that board you’ve got there. Take them around to the back!”

And the Princess, sitting up, has a lovely tidy stage on which to shed the beauty of her presence. In about a week the boys come to me in deputation.

“Dad, we can’t play in front at all!” they complain. “We have to stay in the back all the time. Why can’t they put HER in the back sometimes?” The next step in the emasculization of the house has to do with dress and appearance. Mother can be seen at all hours of the day brushing or stroking the Princess’ hair, which is clouding out into curls. The Princess is old enough to have pretty little dresses. She wears two and sometimes three a day.

“Mother plays with her all the time just as if she was a doll,” complains the eleven-year-old. “Dressing her and undressing her. And carrying her around.”

“You boys look terrible!” mother begins saying. “I’ll have to be getting you some clothes.”

And both boys slink from the room.

“I don’t want any more blue suits!” yelps seven-year-old from the staircase, “as long as I live!”

But the fact is, mother is slowly growing feminine again, under the inspiration of her daughter. She has an ally. Her sense of the fitness of things is being restored. We had made a man of mother but it was a victory by force of numbers.

“Some ladies,” said Mother, “are coming to see Elizabeth this afternoon. I want you two boys, when you come home from school, to come in by the side door quietly, go upstairs, wash and put on your blue suits and then come down and be introduced.”

They saw a strange lady being admitted at the front door, which reminded them of the side door and the fateful instruction about being introduced. So the two of them hid behind the garage until nearly six o’clock. That night we had a family show-down.

“We are going to have a little system around here,” says mother. “You boys have had this house all to yourselves for more than ten years. Now we are going to divide it. The downstairs living room, dining room, front lawn are Elizabeth’s and mine. The den, your bedrooms and the back yard are for you men. No more playthings, hockey sticks, wagons, funny-papers downstairs here. If I find any of those things around, outside of the den and your bedrooms or the back yard, I’ll take them and give them to the gardener for his little boy.”

Over the Favor of a Lady

We men hang our heads, realizing that mother is a lady again.

It takes nearly a month for the full realization of the division in our house to sink in. But it works. Eleven-year-old has his bike locked up in the fruit cellar for three days for leaving it in front when Elizabeth was sunning in her carriage. Seven-year-old missed entirely The Star Weekly colored comics of the date of Sunday, May 29th.

And every week Elizabeth has a new dress, and her curls cloud more richly, and her very presence seems to work miracles in her surroundings, so that battered chairs glow and shine and the dining room has flowers on the table, new draw-curtains appear as if by magic, a spickness and spanness seems to blossom wherever Elizabeth goes.

Then, a month ago, she learned to walk.

“I taught her!” shouted eleven-year-old. “It was to me she first walked when Mother let go of her!”

“It was me taught her,” snarled seven-year-old. “I’ve been walking in front of her every day, showing her how. I said ‘lookit,’ and then she did it!”

“Let’s take her for a walk out on the street,” cried Eleven.

“Go and put your blue suits on, then,” said Mother.

And they raced upstairs.

Winks went round the living room.

From walking to riding piggie-back, from going on a long hike to the foot of the garden to pick the last ragged asters to exploring all the low-down cupboards and pantry closets has been a swift ascent, in which two ill-assorted boys have fought, even to drawing blood, over the favor of a lady.

And she had to have creeping overalls.

“She can have those old sailor pants of mine,” said seven-year-old, “when she’s big enough. And my old wind-breaker.”

Mother had a funny look on her face. Then Elizabeth learned to climb the stairs.

The turn of the tide came last Sunday. “Where is Elizabeth?” cried Mother suddenly, conscious of the silence.

“Upstairs,” said Eleven, in passing, “having some fun!”

And great thumps above proved it.


Editor’s Note: This story also appeared in So What? (1937).

The Good Thing That Soured

April 7, 1923

This illustration went with a story by Frank Mann about crooked hockey games.

Dollars are Cheaper

You could see by the slow way he walked over to the cashier that he was doing arithmetic

By Gregory Clark, February 20, 1932.

The city of Buffalo wishes the Canadian dollar were back at par.1

I stepped up to the news-stand in Buffalo’s finest hotel and picked up a newspaper.

I held out to the clerk a Canadian nickel. “I’m sorry,” said he, hastily, for they are very quick in Buffalo at feeling a coin, “I can’t take this.”

Take three cents out of it, instead of two,” I suggested. “Wouldn’t that look after the exchange?”

“You can’t compute exchange on a nickel,” said he.

So I produced a Canadian dollar. He took it.

First he deducted 17 cents exchange. That was at the rate at the moment. Then he. took two cents for the Times.

And he handed me back 81 cents, U. S.

Which, as change from a dollar in a deal involving a 2-cent newspaper, brings home the exchange problem nice and clearly.

My expression, however, as I stared down at those very high class coins in my palm was not any more pained than the news-stand clerk’s.

“Gees, it’s tough!” said he.

And like everybody else in Buffalo, he meant it. They really are pained by the situation. It is a nuisance every way you or they look at it. Buffalo has plenty of factories and therefore she can feel bad, the way hundreds of manufacturing cities and towns in the States feel bad, over the loss of millions of dollars worth of juicy orders for spring goods from Canada. But as $1,000 Canadian worth only about $800, Canadians can’t see that a $4 hat is worth $5. So while Canadians are patiently waiting for their dollar to rise – and doing a lot of buying at home meanwhile – the Americans are wishing the Canadian dollar would stand up and come walking across the border in millions again in the good old-fashioned way.

But Buffalo has a lot of private grief ever the Canadian dollar that is not shared by the rest of the U. S.

First of all, that all year round parade of amateur Canadian smugglers, of whom there are only about 9,000,000 in the Dominion, has sadly dwindled in the past few months. Every day in the week, including Sunday, there was a procession across all the bridges from Canada of people who think that goods are cheaper and more stylish in Buffalo. Or maybe it is just that they want to buy something in a foreign country to show the gals back home. Or possibly they think they can smuggle a pair of stockings in the hip pocket.

Buffalo has practically lost all that amateur smuggler trade.

“We made a special study of this exchange thing,” said Mr. A. T. Gerstner of the Buffalo Chamber of Commerce, introducing me to Mr. Percy Fahnstock, the financial editor of the Buffalo Times, with whom he was sadly communing when I called at the chamber. “And we couldn’t make head or tail of it. We had a special committee of selected intellects follow the exchange question as far as they could go. But when it ended in a swamp they came back to us with their tails dragging. In the meantime American industries are suffering for the want of Canadian orders. Every storekeeper and taxi driver in the city has to check up every morning on to-day’s exchange rate. There is bad feeling. We feel very sorry about it, because we like Canadian dollars just as much as you like American dollars. It’s too bad.”

And in the meantime, while the incoming traffic over the Peace bridge has fallen to a trickle, the outgoing traffic of Buffalonians in quest of Canadian goods at the Fort Erie liquor store shows no signs whatever of diminishing.

Buffalo Learns Arithmetic

“The funny part of it is,” said the financial editor, “that those Canadian liquor stores don’t know anything about this exchange thing. A bottle costs $3.75, Canadian. So we put down $3.10, American, which is the equivalent of $3.75, Canadian; but the clerks say they haven’t heard about that.

“‘Over on the American side, maybe,’ says the vendor, ‘but over here $3.75, anybody’s money.’ And there you are.”

“But you could change your money into Canadian before you get there,” I suggested.

“Yes,” said the financial editor, “but nobody thinks of it in time. And, anyway, it’s a nuisance changing it.”

“You should know something about a nuisance!” I exclaimed. “I bought a pair of silk stockings to-day for my wife in one of your big stores. They cost $1.65. When I handed the girl a Canadian $5 bill she asked me if I wanted exchange on the whole $5 bill or just on the sale. I said just on the sale.

“So she gave me back, with my parcel, three Canadian $1 bills and three cents. I asked her how she figured that.

“‘Well’, says she, ‘exchange to-day is 16 cents, isn’t it? On $2 that makes the exchange 32 cents. So $1.65 for the stockings, plus 32 cents exchange, is $1.97. Isn’t that right?’

“‘Yes,’ says I, ‘but all I am buying is the stockings. You should take,’ says I (working it out with a pencil on the paper the stockings were wrapped in), ’16 per cent. of $1.65, which is only 26 point 4 cents. Say 26. And that makes $1.91 and gives me back 9 cents instead of 3.’

“By this time three other sales girls and a department manager were hovering around. The girl was mixed up, but she raised her eyes to the ceiling, bit my pencil with her teeth and figured it out. They are well trained in arithmetic by now in Buffalo.

She raised her eyes to the ceiling bit her pencil with her teeth, and figured it out

“Suddenly she saw it! ‘Yes,’ she cried,’ but I would have to give you back your 9 cents change in Canadian money.’

“‘Then,’ said I, ‘do you mean to say that 3 cents American is as good as 9 cents Canadian?’

“And at that the manager stepped forward and said, ‘Excuse me, mister, but if you will come up to the office we will get the accountant to go over this with you.’ But I beat it. I took the 3 cents American, be- cause I wanted to buy another newspaper and I didn’t want to spend 19 cents out of my Canadian dollar to get one.”

The Chamber of Commerce man listened to my story.

“‘Well,’ said one, “there were five Americans in that mix-up and only one Canadian. You see how it adds up.”

Yes, Buffalo is very distressed, but very patient.

The hotel I stayed at is so good-natured about the exchange question that they take our Canadian money at par.

When I paid my room bill they took $4 Canadian. I got a $4 room for $3.32. At dinner, when I offered Canadian money to the waiter, he said:

“If you sign the cheque and charge it to your room you will get the meal at par, but if I go and get it changed at the desk they will take exchange out of it.”

So I charged it.

But I had my experience with a waiter all the same.

I am one of those plain country fellows that is friendly with waiters. This one I made great friends with. By the time lunch was over he figured I was just as nice as any waiter even. We talked about the meal, Germany, German food, German beer, how long he had been with this hotel and canaries.

But with a craftiness this good Dutchman of a waiter would never dream me capable of, I carefully schemed my lunch to cost exactly 80 cents!

Exchange that day was 17 cents.

When the table was cleared and the finger-bowl dibbled, my good fat friend laid down the cheque – 80 cents.

He figured, happy man, that a nice friendly customer could not do less than lay down a dollar bill and leave him the change.

But I laid down a Canadian one-dollar bill!

And then, in the mirror on the wall beside me, I watched the waiter’s face.

Computing is the New Sport

Slowly he reached out a dazed hand and picked up the cheque and the dollar. Slowly he turned and walked away. He walked with bent head. You could see by the slow way he walked over to the cashier that he was doing arithmetics.

My dollar was worth 83 cents over at that desk.

With a shamed look he walked slowly back to me, with bowed head, looking with distended eyes at a spectacle he had perhaps never before seen in all his years in that handsome and noble dining room.

It was 3 cents.

On a silver tray.

Speechless, he laid the offensive objects before me.

I looked at them.

Then I looked up at him.

Slowly he shrugged his shoulder, up, out.

So I dipped down and laid beside the three U. S. coppers a Canadian nickel and a Canadian dime.

And when I looked back from the dining room door at him he was standing with a pencil and a piece of paper translating his tip into terms he could understand.

Computing is the great Buffalo sport these days. It is like cross word puzzles.

I spent the evening at a movie. Admission was 65 cents and on the glass of the ticket booth was a card reading, “Canadian exchange to-day 17.”

I handed the girl a Canadian $1. She handed me promptly back 18 cents.

She was a pretty girl and I supposed therefore dumb.

“Just a minute,” said I, spreading out my change on my palm. “But how do you figure 17 per cent. of 65 cents?”

As quick as a flash she replied:

“I changed your dollar into American money, 83 cents, and then deducted the price of admission, 65 cents. Change, 18 cents.”

I was shoved from behind in the line-up or I might have attempted a feeble argument. But even the pretty girls in Buffalo can do arithmetic. I guess it is the practice they get.

The next adventure was in a taxicab.

I drove forty cents worth and then handed the driver two Canadian quarters.

“Hey,” he said; “that’s Canadian money!”

“It certainly is,” said I. “Note the King’s head on it. His name is George.”

“That’s only 40 cents, just the same,” said the driver, with a pleasant smile. “We count 20 cents for two bits, just to make it handy.”

“Well,” I retorted, “how much do I owe you?”

“That’s right,” said the driver, “forty cents.”

He didn’t want to let me get away with the idea that I was tipping him.

And I didn’t. This is why.

Outside the hotel, after nightfall, where the wind howls and whoops off Lake Erie around corners that must surely be the windiest in a windy land, I was held up by a panhandler.

“How about a cuppa coffee?” mumbled this member of a free and equal nation where even the panhandlers don’t know how to be beggarly.

“Aren’t you participating in the President’s Relief Fund2?” I asked, rejoicing in this chance to take a dig at the people who think my nickels aren’t worth taking.

“Huh?” said the startled bum.

“It’s presidential year,” I assured him. “Things ought to be booming now.”

“Well, they ain’t,” said the bum. “I was over to the American Legion for a suit of underwear and they was fresh out of them.”

I went over to a lighted window and drew forth my change. I selected the brightest Canadian quarter I could find.

“Here,” said I.

He looked down at it eagerly. Then a look of disappointment. And he half-handed it back to me. But I was looking as dignified as possible, with my stomach out and a kind of three rousing British cheers and a tiger sort of look. At least that’s what it felt like from the inside. You never know what these things look like from the outside.

“Well?” I demanded.

“You haven’t a – you wouldn’t happen to have a -” he said, holding the quarter out, but gripping its edge firmly.

“No,” said I, “they’re too expensive.”

“Well,” said he, taking another half-warm, half-cold look at the shining King’s head, “thanks very much anyway.”

And while I stood resenting that “anyway” right down to my boot heels the bum faded into the night.

I suppose he was at the Ar-gawn!3

Embarrassing a Customs Man

The only person I really gypped in Buffalo, outside of the telephone company, whose telephone booths take Canadian dimes as readily as American, was the little cigarette girl at the hotel, who walks around the dining rooms and corridors carrying a tray of cigarettes. I can’t smoke those American cigarettes. They taste to me as if the cigarette industry was trying to help out the American farmer.

But I beckoned the girl and took a package of those well-known cigarettes that are basted, sunburned and fricasseed.

And I handed her a Canadian quarter. Her highly burnished fingers at once detected the fraud.

“I can’t take this!” said she. “It’s on’y worth tway-unty say-unts!”

“Well,” said I, “here’s a Canadian nickel. That makes it even, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, sir; thank you, sir,” said she and went innocently on her way.

But I had done her wrong.

“I can’t take this!” said she. “It’s only twa-unty say-unts!”

The exchange rate that day, broadcast by the banks throughout the city of Buffalo, was 17 per cent., and 17 per cent. of 30 cents is 5 point 1 cents. So I had really only given. her 24 point 9 cents for a 25-cent package of cigarettes.

I felt bad for a little while. But later I gave the smokes away to a bellboy who had a very bad cough, so I figured I was even with my conscience.

It remained for Canada, however, to do the job to a royal and ancient finish.

I had a pair of stockings, $1.65, and a little baby girl’s padded pink kimono, $2.95, with me when I drove back over to the Canadian side.

The customs man asked if I had anything to declare, so out of my hip pocket where I had so carefully hidden them I drew the stockings and out of the inner lining of the car cushion I drew the kimono.

“Yes, sir,” said I to the shocked and embarrassed customs man.

And what do you think that arithmetician did?

First he added the two bills together, to $4.60.

Then he added the exchange, 17 per cent., to bring the amount I had spent to Canadian money, total $5.38.

And then he proceeded to figure the duty on that amount.

“Don’t you birds allow a man to bring home a couple of little gifts like this?” I demanded in a hurt tone. “That pink thing is for a dear little girl that would be just heart broken if I didn’t bring her home something. And anyway, after being gypped all over Buffalo, now you go adding what I was gypped on to what you are going to collect. Gee, you birds are trying to run yourselves out of a job. Pretty soon there won’t be any Canadians crossing over the border and then you will have to go back to the gas station.”

I think my act of pulling those two items of contraband out of their hiding places really softened this hard guy’s heart.

“Are they gifts?” he asked, with tears in his voice.

“Are they gifts?” asked the customs officer with tears in his voice

“One for my wife and the other for my dear little daughter, who would just -“

“Away you go!” commanded the customs man. Anyway, it was a pretty cold day to do figuring with a little stump of pencil with numb fingers.

Maybe you thought when I started this story that I was going to explain in some sort of Queen and Yonge street way the mystery of exchange. But that isn’t the idea. It is just a day in Buffalo, with the little things that happen to a Canadian’s pride and an American’s patience.

And while the lords of finance stir their mystic witches’ cauldron – out of which the lords of finance doubtless take something nice and juicy – the Yanks and the Canucks break about even.

Anyway, next summer when the little American shinplasters start rolling into these parts once more, let’s be good sports.

Let’s accept them at par.


Editor’s Notes:

  1. Economics was complicated during the Great Depression, as politicians tried all sorts of solutions. A History of the Canadian Dollar, indicates some of the challenges. The Canada-U.S. exchange rate was basically at par for years (except for briefly after World War 1), so having to deal with exchange rates was something new. ↩︎
  2. This was one of President Herbert Hoover’s attempts at relief in 1931. ↩︎
  3. This is a slang term for Argonne, a reference to the Meuse–Argonne offensive at the end of World War 1. Unemployed former soldiers were a symbol of the times, so Greg is implying that he was a veteran. ↩︎

House Husbandry Course at the “Tech” to Train Young Men to be Useful Bridegrooms

“House-husbands qualified in all the domestic arts from, washing celery to basting a roast of beef”

Ornamental Hubbies Have Gone Out of Fashion – The Lad Who Has the Call To-day Is He Who Knows How to Prepare a Dainty Breakfast to Be Served to Milady in Bed.

By Gregory Clark, February 12, 1921.

The technical school, it is said, is about to institute a course in domestic science for young house-husbands.

In the last couple of years a very considerable demand has arisen for some sort of instruction for young men in light housekeeping, such as preparing dainty breakfasts, knocking out omelettes, tastefully arranging tea trays, and the like.

For in the most advanced feminine circles of younger Toronto the first requisite in a good husband is not his good looks, nor, indeed, how much money he makes; but whether he is handy at preparing a dainty meal on a tray to be consumed in bed.

And it is with regret that I must bring credence to this astonishing rumor.

When Jack married Ysobel six months ago, no one was more confounded than I. Jack is an amiable fellow, of course. But he is a shabby, moth-eaten little fellow, with a pet dog sort of an expression – perky, you know, but tame. And as for his other qualifications for marrying the magnificent Ysobel, the debonnaire, the almost boyish Ysobel, well, he is one of those bond salesmen who spend a busy day between the five soda fountains of Yonge street.

His income, as far as any of us ever knew, is equal to four sodas and one chocolate-egg1 per diem,

But he married Ysobel. And there they live, in their sporty apartment, amid a bliss that is the envy of all their friends, an ill-mated but preposterously happy couple.

What was the attraction Jack possessed? He tried to intimate to me that it was his war record that turned the trick. But I knew that Ysobel had been pursued by D. S. O.2‘s in her day, and Jack had not even the M. C.3

Only last week I made the amazing discovery.

I was passing Jack’s apartment house about ten in the morning, and decided to call and see if he would walk down town with me.

I rang his apartment bell, and Jack himself answered the door.

Jack, not yet shaven and partly dressed, with a print apron tied under his arms.

“Jack, partly dressed, with a print apron tied under his arms”

“Come in, old bean!” he cried, with a false joviality. He was blushing through his stubble.

He led me into the sitting room and sat down with me in an awkward silence.

“Thought I’d call to see if you are walking down,” I said.

“I’m hardly ready,” replied Jack.

“I’ll wait,” said I, cheerfully, with the cunning of a wolf on the scent.

And just at that moment, the sleepy, muffled voice of Ysobel rose from behind the bedroom door:

“Jack, Jack! What are you doing? When do I get my breakfast?”

It was out. The secret was mine. Before I left with Jack, Ysobel, magnificent and drowsy in her kimono, had spilled all the beans to me.

“Why, Jack is the dandiest house-husband imaginable,” she said. “His breakfasts are delicious and endless in their variety. And on Sundays he can cook a dinner and serve a tea that would knock your eye out!”

There lay his charm.

Since last week I have made great progress in this discovery. By dropping unexpectedly on all my young married friends, at odd hours of the day. I have found that almost without exception the husbands of the past couple of years are house-husbands, qualified in all the lighter domestic arts from washing celery to basting a roast of beef.

Is this the beginning of the revolt of women? Thus quietly and secretly are they inserting the thin end of the wedge of domestic equality?

Possibly the war had something to do with it. All these young fellows overseas, saying “Yes, sir,” and “No, sir,” for four years, clicking to everybody. And when they got home habit got the better of them, and they weren’t happy unless they were clicking to somebody. So they click to their wives.

It is a widespread and dangerous thing. Where will it end? I know one young fellow whose mother-in- law, who lives with him and his wife, informed him that the reason she supported his suit for her daughter’s hand was that all her life she had yearned to have a son-in-law who would get her her breakfast in bed. And he had looked promising to her!

It is a conspiracy, that’s what it is. We men should get together. Anyway, I purpose this article to serve as notice to certain parties who shall be nameless that in future they need not expect me to get their breakfasts for them except on Sundays and statutory holidays.


Editor’s Notes: Yes, this story is pretty sexist, but still highlights the confusion over changing roles after World War One and the “flapper” women.

  1. A chocolate egg cream was a popular soda fountain drink. ↩︎
  2. Distinguished Service Order ↩︎
  3. Military Cross ↩︎

Wine and Water

She rose quietly and came over to Hubert, who had removed his hat and was looking at her dumbly.

By Gregory Clark, February 4, 1922.

Three generations in the city, and the wine of life becomes water.

The third generation born and bred in the city has lost its spring, its sparkle, its flavor. It does one of two things. It seeks artificial and erotic stimulation, and so becomes that type of sophisticated and effete waster common enough in cities. Or it succumbs to the enfeeblement it feels within its veins, and joins the lower ranks of those drab, mechanical tollers who are the chief inhabitants of cities, the fourth or tenth or fiftieth generation of dwellers in cities.

For there appears to be an energy in the soil that man must absorb. The city man goes away in summer for a two-week holiday close to the soil, and sucks enough of this mysterious energy out of the earth to revive him for a year. But presently there comes to town a young man born and raised close to the earth and abounding in this primitive energy. And he drives the city man to the wall; outlasts him, out-moves him, skins him, picks his bones.

But this new man’s grandson is in turn the victim of a newcomer, fresh from the soil. All about us are examples of the third urbane generation putting up its unconscious struggle against a soily Fate. In some of the wealthier families, so filled were the first generations with energy, as the wealth they accumulated bears witness, that the fourth generation is sometimes left still in the ring.

But we have made the pursuits of the soil so hard, unpleasant and unprofitable that the enfeebled generation finds it easier to slip back into the permanent category of the city’s damned than to return boldly to the soil to recuperate in a few generations the supply of vital energy.

There is a way out, nevertheless.

And J. Hubert Waterberry found it.

Hubert was the third generation in Toronto. His grandfather, son of an immigrant who fought with Mackenzie’s rebels in 1837, came to town and built up a great contracting and building business. Scores of houses still standing south of Carlton street were built by Hubert’s grandfather.

Hubert’s father, however, was sent to school and became a lawyer. A good lawyer, too. He had offices in Victoria street and developed a big practice. But he found professional life to be merely the service of business life, and he determined that his son Hubert should be a business man.

Hubert was twenty-one in the year 1900. He was a sophisticated, elegant young man, fresh from college. His father got him into a prosperous firm of insurance brokers.

When Hubert was thirty, he was a bachelor. He had been hectically in love with several girls, but all had rejected him, in an indifferent way, as if they had sensed a want of energy in him. At thirty, he was feeling that want of stamina. On his father’s death, he used up every atom of his energy in breaking away from the big insurance firm with another young member of it, and starting a business of their own with the old man’s money.

But after five years, Hubert’s partner became restless for some reason and left the partnership.

At forty, Hubert was not so much a bachelor as an old maid. His office was a dim, dusty mausoleum in that remote district behind the King Edward Hotel. His business was reduced to those old accounts which had not yet been won away from him by live competitors. Hubert lived in the same select boarding house on Sherbourne street which he had taken on his father’s death.

Hubert’s only employe was elderly Miss Murdagh, who had been middle-aged when Hubert brought her with him from the old company.

In the dim office, with its maps, calendars and directories, these two sat from nine a.m. to five p.m., writing letters, issuing renewals of policies, but rarely going out for new business.

He had no clubs, no recreations. He read his newspaper at night, sometimes he went to a theatre or a lecture. His only hobby was his health, which, finding its self an object of interest, became steadily more complex.

His hair grew thin and grey. At forty he looked fifty.

Then one day old Miss Murdagh failed to turn up at the office. Hubert phoned her boarding house and learned that she had died during the night, quite unexpectedly.

Hubert was badly upset. He could handle the work all right, but it meant hustling. And Hubert had not hustled in fifteen years. three weeks after Miss Murdagh’s funeral at which Hubert was the chief mourner, he struggled alone in his dusty office, but found a wave of untidiness, disorder and tangled business engulfing him. Several faithful old accounts phoned him impatiently. Each night he went home later and more distressed.

He decided he would have to get help. After writing and re-writing half a hundred ads., he went down at noon one day to the newspaper offices with this:

“Wanted a mature woman acquainted with insurance business and office work. Telephone Mr. Waterberry, Main –”

At three o’clock that afternoon, girls began phoning him and calling at his office. They had looked up his address in the phone book. Hubert got into a panic. Suppose he picked the wrong girl? He couldn’t tell what they, were like over the phone. All who called at the office were young, flippant girls with powdered faces–

At three forty-five, with the telephone ringing. Hubert breathlessly seized hat and coat, locked up his office and fled home.

As he sat in his room waiting till dinner time, Hubert was filled with alarm. What would he do? Doubtless, when he went down to his office in the morning, there would be a queue of girls a mile long. He’d have to pick one. And Hubert didn’t want to have to pick one. He had lost his nerve. He would perhaps pick some horrible, hustling, cocksure creature.

Hubert decided he would be ill, in bed tomorrow, and maybe the ad. would blow over.

Just before supper-time, there was a knock on his door, and the housemaid said:

“You’re wanted on the phone, sir!”

Hubert went down.

“Mr. Waterberry?” asked a pleasant feminine voice.

“Yes,” His heart sank.

“I am answering your ad. in the paper today,” said the voice. “I hunted you up in the directory, finding your office, closed. Am I too late?”

Hubert was reassured by the softness of the voice. He could picture another Miss Murdagh.

“No,” he said.

“Then, I’ve had experience in insurance office work, not in Toronto, but in a small town in western Ontario,” said the woman. “I am very anxious to get any work, so whatever you regard as a fair salary I am willing to take.”

“Yes. All right,” said Hubert.

“Shall I call at nine or earlier?”

Hubert had an inspiration.

“Yes. And – and would you mind – I’m not very well – perhaps if you would take charge of the office for the morning and deal with the other applicants?”

“Why, yes!” said the woman. “The key?”

“Could you call here at my boarding house to-night? I’ll leave it with the housekeeper,” said Hubert.

“Very well.”

And Hubert, leaving the office key in an envelope, fled out and had dinner at a restaurant and spent a most enjoyable evening at Shea’s1.

The following morning Hubert went down town before lunch. He couldn’t help walking past his office, just to see–. There was no line-up of painted girls. He entered the building and paused outside his office door to listen.

There was a strenuous sound as of someone house-cleaning.

Hubert could scarcely eat his lunch, he was so excited. What if this woman he had engaged turned out to be one of those energetic, aggressive, chirpy women? What if she were young and bouncy? And Hubert spent a few minutes in prayerful remembrance of quiet, stodgy old Miss Murdagh.

Bracing himself, at two o’clock Hubert shoved himself down the back streets to his office. With leaden feet he climbed the old wooden stairs. He rapped nervously on his own office door and entered.

At the typewriter sat a big, splendid, brown-haired girl in a blue skirt and white waist.

She rose quietly and came over to Hubert, who had removed his hat and was looking at her dumbly. She smiled at him.

“Yes?” she said.

“I-I-ah!” said Hubert.

He looked expectantly at her. “Are – are you-?” he began.

“I’m in charge of the office. Mr. Waterberry is not in yet? Is there anything I can do?” said the pleasant young lady.

“Well,” said Hubert, immensely confused, and laying his hat down on a desk with an attempt at the proprietorial air. “I’m – ah – that is to say you see, I am –!”

“Ah, you’d care to wait?” said the girl, pulling out a chair.

And nodding pleasantly to him, she returned to the typewriter.

Hubert sat down weakly. He gazed around the office, noting its tidiness and order. “I – ah” he began.

The girl swung on her chair.

“You see,” said Hubert, “I’m Mr. Waterberry!”

What happened afterwards was a golden memory all his life to Hubert. The girl leaped up and helped him out of his coat. She escorted him over to his swivel chair. She was blushing furiously.

“Why – when you knocked,” she was saying, “you see, I was expecting Mr. Waterberry – but when you knocked, I thought you were a client. And then, when you stood there, with your hat in your hand –“

Her eyes were glimmering with laughter. Hubert looked sheepishly up at her and smiled. Then out came the laughter, boiling and bubbling. And Hubert suddenly joined in. He leaned back and laughed till he wept. They looked at each other and laughed again. It was years since Hubert had laughed with anybody. Years and years. It was a wonderful sensation. He hated to stop laughing. So he confessed about his fear, and how he ran away from the office yesterday -and – and –

So they chuckled and laughed. They exchanged confidences. Hubert how he detested these modern office girls. The girl, how she had come to move to Toronto. The minutes passed. Then an hour. Still they were talking. Hubert was zestfully explaining to her her work, the various accounts.

It was a long time since Hubert had been intimate with anyone.

When dusk caught them in the dim office. Hubert regretfully closed the discussion. He bade her a most cheery good night and went home feeling better than he ever remembered feeling in his life.

It was a new world for Hubert. It was a pleasure to go to the office. He felt infinitely younger, boundlessly young. The girl talked before a week was out, quite boldly about the need of new business. She discovered openings for it in old accounts. Hubert went and got it.

At the end of a year, the business and Hubert were so changed that Miss Pigeon – that was her name -found it necessary to hire another girl, and a little later, a young man.

She won Hubert over to joining a golf club. On business grounds.

Hubert and she still kept sacred their regular daily laugh and exchange of confidences. It was found necessary, after a while, to go to lunch together in order to complete these conversations. And finally, it came to theatres and movies.

Naturally, the whole thing had but one end. Hubert felt himself drawing the very breath of life through this vigorous, splendid girl. He depended on her more and more, in countless little ways, and in big ways.

Finally, she helped him select a new overcoat and hat.

He looked in the mirror of the hat store and beheld a mere lad of forty – a swagger, upstanding fellow–

And when they closed up the office that evening, the juniors having gone, Hubert helped Miss Pigeon with her ulster2. As he did so, something that had been smoldering in him all afternoon, broke loose. He felt as if an electric current were flowing from her to him, a magnetic, swirling current. And he released his hold on the collar of her ulster only to seize her shoulders, turn her around to face him and stare breathlessly and foolishly at her, and then enfold her in a vast, stupid hug.

Romance: thou art as sly of foot in Wellington street as in the castled fastnesses of Rosedale.

They were married in no time. They live in a bungalow out beyond High Park, in an atmosphere of the most absurd happiness, forty-four and twenty-five.

“You’ve made a new man of me,” says Hubert, at least once every twenty-four hours.

But while Hubert is aware of it, he doesn’t give proper value to the fact that his pigeon was born and raised on the farm.


Editor’s Notes:

  1. Shea’s Hippodrome opened in 1914, and was the largest movie palace in Canada, and one of the largest vaudeville theatres in the world. It was demolished in 1957 to make way for Toronto’s new City Hall. ↩︎
  2. An Ulster coat is a Victorian style working daytime overcoat, with a cape and sleeves. ↩︎

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