Ned was a good cricketer in his earlier days, and later an enthusiastic baseball fan. He played in cricket matches in England against some noted players, and would travel long distances to see a league baseball game in Canada or the United States. And he dearly loved a game of cards—Black Jack or Catch the Ten, an old Irish game, being his special favorite. He used to wire me Saturday mornings to come up sure—the first one being that Clifford Sifton wanted to see me. When I reached his home in Ottawa that evening, I naturally asked what Sifton wanted to see me about. And he looked apparently amazed, and asked:
“What Sifton?”
“Why, the Minister of the Interior.”
“Never heard of him,” he replied.
“But,” I said, handing him his dispatch, “here’s your telegram.” He took it, scrutinized it carefully, and returning it casually remarked:
“Can’t you see that’s not my handwriting—it’s a forgery.”
And then we would play Black Jack until three or four in the morning and important visitors would be told that “Mr. Farrer was very busily engaged, and could not see them.” He was very busy—trying to beat me, which he usually did.
I couldn’t tell you all the rich stories about Ned Farrer, but one will suffice. The two of us with Mrs. Farrer were on a westbound C.P.R. train. Ned was an early riser, so I asked him to awaken me when he got up as I was very tired.
He and Mrs. Farrer were in lower 11 and I was in lower 7. After they had retired a young lady from Yale, B.C., whom I knew, entered the sleeper and after a few minutes’ conversation told me that she didn’t know where she was going to sleep that night. I told her that I did—in lower 7. She said that she had no berth secured, and I explained that lower 7 was her’s, although it had been mine but I had another. In the middle of the night Mrs. Farrer had occasion to visit the toilet, and on her return accidentally got into the berth of our Mr. Cambie, of Vancouver. Then trouble commenced. She told him to lie over, and he told her to get out of the berth. “Don’t be a fool, Ned, get over farther,” was followed by Mr. Cambie saying, “My name is not Ned.” Then came a half-suppressed shriek, and the flitting of a female form to lower 11. All this I enjoyed from the upper berth in which I was supposed to repose. In the morning, I heard Ned pattering down the aisle, and saw him pull aside the berth curtains and give the poor innocent occupant a well-directed slap in the proper part of her anatomy, accompanied by: “Get up, you old devil, you.”
I think I put nearly all of one of the pillows in my mouth to silence the laughter that was racking my body.