The next time the hospital wards housed me was out in Vancouver, where I had acquired a pretty badly smashed knee while witnessing a lacrosse match at New Westminster where that club played the Shamrocks of Montreal. Thanksgiving Day came round about a week after, and it was a dour, gloomy day, and my game leg ached worse than ever. After a very light lunch, Denah O’Connor, my pretty Irish nurse, quietly informed me that I was to have no evening meal. I thought that dreary afternoon would never come to an end, and conjured up all sorts of things. Would they cut off my leg above the knee, or below the thigh, and would not it be better and save a lot of bother if they knifed me around the neck. Five-thirty came—six o’clock—six-thirty—seven and no visible signs of even tea and toast. I was sure then what was coming and when I heard a bustling outside I said to myself, “There come my executioners, and they’re bringing the undertakers with them just to save time.” * * * * These asterisks, kind reader, represent my unprintable thoughts. And then the door opened and in came two Japanese boys with a huge hamper sent to me by the people of the Vancouver hotel. The hamper contained everything from soup to nuts, and there was enough to feed a dozen people. The nurses and some other patients were called in, the banqueting board was spread, the aching pains thoughtfully diminished, and we had a whale of a time. I was out of the hospital three days later.
Down in Pictou, Nova Scotia, I was laid up with a very serious attack of rheumatism, and my attending physician was Dr. McMillan, a brother of Duncan McMillan, then M.P. for Meddlesex, Ontario, whom I knew very well. After the third daily visit, the doctor came two or three times a day, and I anxiously asked him one day if I was so seriously ill that such frequent visits were necessary. “Not at all, old man, not at all. But I like to hear you talk of the doings at Ottawa and of my brother Duncan. You’ll be out in a couple of days.”
Thus doubt and uncertainty and anxiety were quickly dispelled.
To be “Queen of the May”
Out in the Winnipeg hospital, where I had an attack of pneumonia for a change, another patient was enjoying the weird pleasures that only delirium tremens can furnish the devotees of Bacchus. He would insist on visiting me, and quickly ascertaining that the arm of a big chair was loose, always grabbed it, and the way he slashed it around was a caution. I had plenty of exercise dodging that chair-arm without leaving my bed. Of course, he wouldn’t have hit me for the world, but people with the D. T.’s have a largely distorted vision, and I didn’t know exactly at what juncture he would mistake my pillow for a whale or myself for a fiery dragon. He compromised when the matron came in, and led him out by the ear, notwithstanding his incessant pleading that he owned the hospital, and that I was to be Queen of the May. So you see, even illness has its compensating advantages.
Of course other accidents happened to me and there was no hospital to give treatment. A broken foot in a football game, a broken finger at cricket, and a couple of broken ribs in a bath-tub were amongst them. The latter occurred on a fine Sunday morning when I was getting ready to go to the train to meet Miss Agnes Laut, the well-known Canadian writer, who was then living in New York. A piece of soap—now I know why so many hate soap—and kerflump I went against the side of the porcelain tub. It pained a good deal, but I didn’t know the full meaning of my mishap until evening when the doctor came and telling me I had two broken ribs, proceeded to put that part of my body in plaster. Just then I remembered an appointment made with Brent Macnab for next day, and sent a note that I had been laid up with a couple of broken ribs and informing him that: “While it’s not as bad a smash as that of the Ville Marie bank, I was in plaster and never felt so stuck up in my life.” Which made Brent snicker.
Down in Washington
Washington, the capital of the great United States, is one of the finest cities in the Union. It is well laid out, has fine residential and business sections, and the Capitol itself occupies a commanding position. The city is the great political centre of the Republic and a swell social centre as well. It is a pleasant place to visit, especially if one has lots of friends like I have—the boys of the press gallery and some who are just ordinary, and a few who are not ordinary statesmen. Before the Civil war, it was an almost entirely southern city—but of course it is not now.
Under the big dome of the Capitol is a rotunda on whose walls are pictured historic scenes. One is of Pocahontas, where one of the figures has six fingers on the one hand, and in another work of art two girls are painted, and I’ll be hanged if one of them hasn’t got three arms—one hanging by her side and another around her companion’s waist and—the third around that young lady’s neck. Suppose the artist didn’t like the lay of the second arm and after painting the third forgot to remove the other. The artist’s error has never been corrected.
The dinners of the Gridiron Club at Washington were swell affairs, and the press men had as their guests some of the biggest men in the land. One time I was present. It was during the scandal when prominent people for obvious reasons were accused of paying big money to have their portraits published in the New York Town Topics. Elihu Root, perhaps the brainiest man in the United States political life of the time, but whose cast of countenance was the reverse of jovial, began a speech this way: “At the last Cabinet council (President Roosevelt quickly looked at him in surprise at his publicly mentioning the doings of a cabinet in private session) when you, Mr. President, and we considered (the President very uneasily twisted and turned in his chair) that is, we were considering the advisability (Mr. President looked daggers at him for daring to publicly repeat what was always considered confidential, but Mr. Root went unconcernedly on) the advisability of getting—of getting our pictures in Town Topics—”