Her husband is one of her chief “things to be thankful for,” we discover at once. And where did he come from? Oh, his parents came out here from some corner of the old Austrian Empire, and settled next door to an Ontarian farmer with a Nova Scotian wife. These must have been the best kind of neighbors, for they treated the newcomers like brother and sister. Well, that Canadian couple, having a wealth of natural affection and no children to spend it on, had adopted three orphans, who were part English and part Scotch, with a dash of Irish; and our hostess was one of them. Her elder brother also had married into the Slavonic [a]“Pure Canadian”] family. “And a good family they are,” she exclaims; “there’s none better; right-down good Canadians”—thanks largely to the “neighboring” they got when they first came in.
We look at each other. One of our party smiles. “I’m what they call a pure Scot,” he says, “and never heard of a single ancestor who wasn’t. But if I could see a little farther back I know I should find Norsemen among my forbears, besides Celts, and the folk who held Scotland before the Celts came in, and fought them like Indians. To tell the truth, there’s no such thing as a ‘pure’ race in the world—or, if there is, it’s a poor one, too. I hadn’t thought of it before, but with such a threefold inheritance I’m thrice as rich as if I had only one.”
“Then my children are richer still,” says the mother, laughing.
“To be sure they are—a dozen times as rich; for every one of the races they inherit from is a blend in itself.”
“And when neighbors ask what ‘race’ my children belong to,” the mother goes on, “I say I can’t guess a riddle—they belong to so many, and all good. But this I know, the children are what their father and mother are, just pure Canadian.”
The mother is right. We need not and should not forget the roots from which we spring; we cannot pull up and burn those roots, if we wanted, and we should not want. Every cause for love and pride that we have in the lands of our past, we ought to cherish. Those who best remember the past and rightly value it are the least likely to forget their duty to the present and the future. Valuing our distant roots, we shall value more highly [a]A Picture of Home] and love with more devotion the tree which has sprung from them, this many-rooted, many-gifted tree, the united brotherhood of the Canadian people.
A last flight through the air, and we glide to rest on a gently sloping hillside. At our feet is a lovely picture, reminding me of a famous view in the garden of England, in spite of differences in detail. A picture of softly undulating green and gold; wide fields of yellow grain, with many a copse of poplar and willow, and here and there a darker grove of stately spruce; herds of fine cattle, teams of big horses—and yonder a big school, chief glory of a little town. We have done with adventures of travel; we must plunge once more into all the adventures of Home.
See the children playing under the maples, beside that gabled farmhouse on the knoll. That is Home. The biggest boy, a son of the Stars and Stripes, runs a sister flag up to the mast-head. Wherever we were born, we are all true Canadians now. True Westerners too. The better Westerners we are, the better we can serve Canada; and the better Canadians we are, the better we can serve the West.
That is the flag of our own world-wide brotherhood, our royal commonwealth,—his flag, and yours, and mine—the Union Jack. It is a signal. The children are running to meet me at the gate. As soon as I have landed you other Westerners at your own doors, I must get into my overalls—only first we must see our visitors off by train.
“No,” they protest, “we had rather stay and get into overalls ourselves.”