Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town | Page 7

vision is all astray, You do think the place
is quiet. You do imagine that Mr. Smith is asleep merely because he
closes his eyes as he stands. But live in Mariposa for six months or a
year and then you will begin to understand it better; the buildings get
higher and higher; the Mariposa House grows more and more luxurious;
McCarthy's block towers to the sky; the 'buses roar and hum to the
station; the trains shriek; the traffic multiplies; the people move faster
and faster; a dense crowd swirls to and fro in the post-office and the
five and ten cent store--and amusements! well, now! lacrosse, baseball,
excursions, dances, the Fireman's Ball every winter and the Catholic
picnic every summer; and music--the town band in the park every
Wednesday evening, and the Oddfellows' brass band on the street every
other Friday; the Mariposa Quartette, the Salvation Army--why, after a
few months' residence you begin to realize that the place is a mere mad
round of gaiety.
In point of population, if one must come down to figures, the Canadian
census puts the numbers every time at something round five thousand.
But it is very generally understood in Mariposa that the census is

largely the outcome of malicious jealousy. It is usual that after the
census the editor of the Mariposa Newspacket makes a careful
reestimate (based on the data of relative non-payment of subscriptions),
and brings the population up to 6,000. After that the Mariposa
Times-Herald makes an estimate that runs the figures up to 6,500. Then
Mr. Gingham, the undertaker, who collects the vital statistics for the
provincial government, makes an estimate from the number of what he
calls the "demised" as compared with the less interesting persons who
are still alive, and brings the population to 7,000. After that somebody
else works it out that it's 7,500; then the man behind the bar of the
Mariposa House offers to bet the whole room that there are 9,000
people in Mariposa. That settles it, and the population is well on the
way to 10,000, when down swoops the federal census taker on his next
round and the town has to begin all over again.
Still, it is a thriving town and there is no doubt of it. Even the
transcontinental railways, as any townsman will tell you, run through
Mariposa. It is true that the trains mostly go through at night and don't
stop. But in the wakeful silence of the summer night you may hear the
long whistle of the through train for the west as it tears through
Mariposa, rattling over the switches and past the semaphores and
ending in a long, sullen roar as it takes the trestle bridge over the
Ossawippi. Or, better still, on a winter evening about eight o'clock you
will see the long row of the Pullmans and diners of the night express
going north to the mining country, the windows flashing with brilliant
light, and within them a vista of cut glass and snow-white table linen,
smiling negroes and millionaires with napkins at their chins whirling
past in the driving snowstorm.
I can tell you the people of Mariposa are proud of the trains, even if
they don't stop! The joy of being on the main line lifts the Mariposa
people above the level of their neighbours in such places as Tecumseh
and Nichols Corners into the cosmopolitan atmosphere of through
traffic and the larger life. Of course, they have their own train, too--the
Mariposa Local, made up right there in the station yard, and running
south to the city a hundred miles away. That, of course, is a real train,
with a box stove on end in the passenger car, fed with cordwood upside
down, and with seventeen flat cars of pine lumber set between the
passenger car and the locomotive so as to give the train its full impact

when shunting.
Outside of Mariposa there are farms that begin well but get thinner and
meaner as you go on, and end sooner or later in bush and swamp and
the rock of the north country. And beyond that again, as the
background of it all, though it's far away, you are somehow aware of
the great pine woods of the lumber country reaching endlessly into the
north.
Not that the little town is always gay or always bright in the sunshine.
There never was such a place for changing its character with the season.
Dark enough and dull it seems of a winter night, the wooden sidewalks
creaking with the frost, and the lights burning dim behind the shop
windows. In olden times the lights were coal oil lamps; now, of course,
they are, or are supposed to be, electricity, brought from the power
house on the lower Ossawippi