A lady told me that Lady Tupper, who has just left the Colony for England, where, it is said, her lord and master hopes to find a seat in the Imperial Parliament—a consummation devoutly to be wished, as to my mind it is clear that all our colonies should have representatives in Parliament—made a similar complaint as to the effect of the place on her children, and I have it on the best authority that scarcely a session passes but an M.P. pays the penalty of a residence in Ottawa.
In my case I was preserved, as the man in the ‘Arabian Nights’ says, for the greater misfortunes yet to befall me by the use of Dr. Browne’s far-famed ‘Chlorodyne’—an indispensable requisite, I am bound to say, when an emigrant takes his trial trip to Canada. I know not who is the inventor—I believe it is what we call a patent medicine—that is, a medicine not sanctioned by the faculty—but, as has been observed of the Pickwick pen, it is indeed a boon and a blessing to men. I used ‘Chlorodyne,’ and was soon all right. Sir Leonard Tilley told me he did the same, and no one should go to Ottawa without having a small bottle of it in his carpet-bag.
Yet Ottawa is not without a certain freshness of beauty that one associates primâ facie with perfect health. The stately Government buildings, all of grey stone, are placed on a hill, whence you have a peerless view of river and country and distant hill, and far away forests all around. A more picturesque site it would be assuredly most difficult to find. As to the town itself, it is a curious compound—almost Irish in that respect—of splendour and meanness. There are magnificent shops—and then you come to wooden shanties, which in such a city ought long ere this to have been improved off the face of the earth. If on a rainy day, unless very careful, you attempt to cross the streets, you are in danger of sticking in the mud, which no one seems to ever think of removing, and in many parts there are disgraceful holes in the plank pavement on which you walk, which are dangerous, especially to the aged and infirm.
In Ottawa the contrasts are more violent than I have seen elsewhere. Everyone comes to the place. It is the headquarters of the Dominion. I met there statesmen, adventurers, wild men of the woods, or prairie, deputies from Manitoba, lawyers from Quebec, sharpers and honest men, all staying at one hotel; and it seemed strange to sit at dinner and see great rough fellows, with the manners of ploughmen, quaffing their costly champagne, and fancying themselves patterns of gentility and taste. In one thing they disappointed me. Sir Charles Tupper was to leave for England, and his admirers met outside the hotel to see him off. There was a carriage and four to convey him to the station, and other carriages followed. There was a military band in attendance, much to the disgust of the Opposition journals—and yet, in spite of all, the cheers which followed the departing statesman were so faint as to be perfectly ridiculous to a British ear, and seemed quite out of proportion to all the display that had been made. Certainly they seemed quite childish compared with those which greeted a certain individual, whose name delicacy forbids my mentioning, when, on the last night on board the Sarnia, he ventured humbly to reply to the toast of the Press which had been given in the smoking-room by a Quebec artist returning home from study in Paris.
In Ottawa, certainly, there is no demand for emigrants, unless it be good female servants, who are wanted much more, and can have much more comfortable living, at home. A lady asked me to send her a few good servants from England. I replied that my wife wanted them as much as she did, and that it was my duty to attend to her requirements first.
It is curious the airs the raw servant-girls from Ireland give themselves out here. One day, when I was at Peterborough, one of the head-quarters of the lumber trade—which yesterday was a dense forest, and is now a town of 8,000 people—I heard of the arrival of a lot of girls from Galway. The drill-hall was set apart for their use, and there they were respectfully waited on by the chief ladies of the district in need of that rarest of created beings—a good maid-of-all-work. In this particular case one of the arrivals was fixed on.
‘What can you do?’ said the lady.
The girl seemed uncertain on that point.
‘Can you wash?’
‘Oh no!’