My “Fidus Achates.”
There could be no warmer friend or congenial spirit or lovable companion than William Stitt, general passenger agent of the C.P.R., who represented the company in Winnipeg and Montreal and for several years in Sydney, Australia. He had a great personality, was generous to a fault, and had a happy knack of making and keeping friends. A pleasant-faced Scotchman from Kirkcudbrightshire, which he always contended I could never pronounce properly, though I could—“Kirk-cu-brig-sheer”—he was happily mentioned by a lady writer in one of the Australian papers upon leaving that country: “No man could possibly be as innocent as William Stitt looks.” That was William to a T. Full of Scotch wit, always affable, and pleasant spoken, he had gained the undying friendship of a host of friends, amongst whom was myself. Circumstances frequently brought us together in our work in Windsor Street Station and on the road. To tell all our experiences would require a volume by itself, but a few incidents should be recalled:
Once we were occupying a drawing-room on the C.P.R. train to Quebec. During the night, I went to the toilet, and the opening of the door awakened him.
“What time is it, George?” he drowsily asked.
“It’s 4.10, Weelum,” I replied. I always called him “Weelum” after the character in “Bunty Pulls the Strings.”
Weelum immediately resumed his slumbers, but I didn’t, and after tossing around for half-an-hour or so, I grabbed him by the hand—he was sleeping opposite me—and cried, “Weelum, Weelum, wake up.”
He accommodatingly did, and then I very seriously said to him: “Weelum, do you know that when I said it was 4.10 it wasn’t. It was 4.15.”
“Oh, go to blazes, you old heathen yon. What did you want to wake me up for to tell me that?”
“Weelum, say, Weelum,”—but he would not listen to what I had to say.
Finally I managed to make him hear me, and I explained that I had been brought up by good God-fearing parents, who had admonished me never to go to sleep with a lie on my lips, and that my conscience wouldn’t let me sleep until I had confessed my sin.
His unmistakable directions as to my immediate destination, which wasn’t Quebec, were forcibly given, and to the sweet music of his impassioned declamation as to the innumerable varieties of a blithering idiot that I was, I peacefully fell asleep, while his continued sarcastic remarks were rendered inaudible by the roar of the wheels.