Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town | Page 4

IV The Ministrations
of the Rev. Mr. Drone V The Whirlwind Campaign in Mariposa VI The
Beacon on the Hill VII The Extraordinary Entanglement of Mr. Pupkin
VIII The Fore-ordained Attachment of Zena Pepperleigh and Peter
Pupkin IX The Mariposa Bank Mystery X The Great Election in

Missinaba County XI The Candidacy of Mr. Smith XII L'Envoi. The
Train to Mariposa

Preface
I know no way in which a writer may more fittingly introduce his work
to the public than by giving a brief account of who and what he is. By
this means some of the blame for what he has done is very properly
shifted to the extenuating circumstances of his life.
I was born at Swanmoor, Hants, England, on December 30, 1869. I am
not aware that there was any particular conjunction of the planets at the
time, but should think it extremely likely. My parents migrated to
Canada in 1876, and I decided to go with them. My father took up a
farm near Lake Simcoe, in Ontario. This was during the hard times of
Canadian farming, and my father was just able by great diligence to pay
the hired men and, in years of plenty, to raise enough grain to have seed
for the next year's crop without buying any. By this process my
brothers and I were inevitably driven off the land, and have become
professors, business men, and engineers, instead of being able to grow
up as farm labourers. Yet I saw enough of farming to speak exuberantly
in political addresses of the joy of early rising and the deep sleep, both
of body and intellect, that is induced by honest manual toil.
I was educated at Upper Canada College, Toronto, of which I was head
boy in 1887. From there I went to the University of Toronto, where I
graduated in 1891. At the University I spent my entire time in the
acquisition of languages, living, dead, and half-dead, and knew nothing
of the outside world. In this diligent pursuit of words I spent about
sixteen hours of each day. Very soon after graduation I had forgotten
the languages, and found myself intellectually bankrupt. In other words
I was what is called a distinguished graduate, and, as such, I took to
school teaching as the only trade I could find that need neither
experience nor intellect. I spent my time from 1891 to 1899 on the staff
of Upper Canada College, an experience which has left me with a
profound sympathy for the many gifted and brilliant men who are
compelled to spend their lives in the most dreary, the most thankless,
and the worst paid profession in the world. I have noted that of my
pupils, those who seemed the laziest and the least enamoured of books
are now rising to eminence at the bar, in business, and in public life; the

really promising boys who took all the prizes are now able with
difficulty to earn the wages of a clerk in a summer hotel or a deck hand
on a canal boat.
In 1899 I gave up school teaching in disgust, borrowing enough money
to live upon for a few months, and went to the University of Chicago to
study economics and political science. I was soon appointed to a
Fellowship in political economy, and by means of this and some
temporary employment by McGill University, I survived until I took
the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 1903. The meaning of this
degree is that the recipient of instruction is examined for the last time
in his life, and is pronounced completely full. After this, no new ideas
can be imparted to him.
From this time, and since my marriage, which had occurred at this
period, I have belonged to the staff of McGill University, first as
lecturer in Political Science, and later as head of the department of
Economics and Political Science. As this position is one of the prizes of
my profession, I am able to regard myself as singularly fortunate. The
emolument is so high as to place me distinctly above the policemen,
postmen, street-car conductors, and other salaried officials of the
neighbourhood, while I am able to mix with the poorer of the business
men of the city on terms of something like equality. In point of leisure,
I enjoy more in the four corners of a single year than a business man
knows in his whole life. I thus have what the business man can never
enjoy, an ability to think, and, what is still better, to stop thinking
altogether for months at a time.
I have written a number of things in connection with my college life--a
book on Political Science, and many essays, magazine articles, and so
on. I belong to the