The Imperialist | Page 3

run if you, a
person of honest livelihood and solicited vote, adopt any portion of a
habit not familiar to you. and go marching about with a banner and a
band. Two children may be standing at the first street corner, to whom
your respectability and your property may at once become illusion and
your outlawry the delightful fact.
A cheap trip brought the Order of Green Hats to Elgin; and there were
cheap trips on this great day to persuade other persons to leave it. The
Grand Trunk had even then an idea of encouraging social combination
for change of scene, and it was quite a common thing for the operatives
of the Milburn Boiler Company to arrange to get themselves carried to
the lakeside or "the Falls" at half a dollar a head. The "hands" got it up
themselves and it was a question in Elgin whether one might sink one's
dignity and go as a hand for the sake of the fifty-cent opportunity, a

question usually decided in the negative. The social distinctions of
Elgin may not be easily appreciated by people accustomed to the rough
and ready standards of a world at the other end of the Grand Trunk; but
it will be clear at a glance that nobody whose occupation prescribed a
clean face could be expected to travel cheek by jowl, as a privilege,
with persons who were habitually seen with smutty ones, barefaced
smut, streaming out at the polite afternoon hour of six, jangling an
empty dinner pail. So much we may decide, and leave it, reflecting as
we go how simple and satisfactory, after all, are the prejudices which
can hold up such obvious justification. There was recently to be pointed
out in England the heir to a dukedom who loved stoking, and got his
face smutty by preference. He would have been deplorably subversive
of accepted conventions in Elgin; but, happily or otherwise, such
persons and such places have at present little more than an imaginative
acquaintance, vaguely cordial on the one side, vaguely critical on the
other, and of no importance in the sum.
Polite society, to return to it, preferred the alternative of staying at
home and mowing the lawn or drinking raspberry vinegar on its own
beflagged verandah; looking forward in the afternoon to the lacrosse
match. There was nearly always a lacrosse match on the Queen's
Birthday, and it was the part of elegance to attend and encourage the
home team, as well as that of small boys, with broken straw hats, who
sneaked an entrance, and were more enthusiastic than anyone. It was "a
quarter" to get in, so the spectators were naturally composed of persons
who could afford the quarter, and persons like the young Flannigans
and Finnigans, who absolutely couldn't, but who had to be there all the
same. Lorne and Advena Murchison never had the quarter, so they
witnessed few lacrosse matches, though they seldom failed to refresh
themselves by a sight of the players after the game when, crimson and
perspiring, but still glorious in striped jerseys, their lacrosses and
running shoes slung over one shoulder, these heroes left the field.
The Birthday I am thinking of, with Mrs Murchison as a central figure
in the kitchen, peeling potatoes for dinner, there was a lacrosse match
of some importance for the Fox County Championship and the Fox
County Cup as presented by the Member for the South Riding. Mrs

Murchison remains the central figure, nevertheless, with her family
radiating from her, gathered to help or to hinder in one of those
domestic crises which arose when the Murchisons were temporarily
deprived of a "girl." Everybody was subject to them in Elgin,
everybody had to acknowledge and face them. Let a new mill be
opened, and it didn't matter what you paid her or how comfortable you
made her, off she would go, and you might think yourself lucky if she
gave a week's warning. Hard times shut down the mills and brought her
back again; but periods of prosperity were very apt to find the ladies of
Elgin where I am compelled to introduce Mrs Murchison --in the
kitchen. "You'd better get up--the girl's gone," Lorne had stuck his head
into his sister's room to announce, while yet the bells were ringing and
the rifles of the local volunteers were spitting out the feu de joie. "I've
lit the fire an' swep' out the dining-room. You tell mother. Queen's
Birthday, too--I guess Lobelia's about as mean as they're made!" And
the Murchisons had descended to face the situation. Lorne had by then
done his part, and gone out into the chromatic possibilities of the day;
but the sense of injury he had communicated to Advena in her bed
remained and expanded. Lobelia, it was