Your affectionate Brother,
J. Seton Cockburn.
202, Bank Street,
Ottawa,
October 22nd, ’84.
Dear Mother,
As I am also writing to Daddy by this post, I am afraid you will not get a very long letter. There’s a confisticated great buzz-fly knocking about, and I can’t kill him. I told you in my last letter I would give you some idea of what Ottawa was like, but now the time has arrove for the ordeal, I don’t like it; descriptions of scenery are not my forte, and they’re always uninteresting both to write and to read. By-the-bye, before I begin, how’s old Frank’s ear, poor old chap, I suppose he growled away by himself, till it was found out by accident by some of you. I hope it will soon be all right again, and that he will be able to let me know how he is getting on at the Works, though three words will probably describe the state of affairs to perfection, “same as usual.” Still, I should like to know what Major says to him, and if he or any other members of that fossilized firm are beginning to wake up to a consciousness of his merits. You know, it’s always been my idea, that they will find out that they have let the two best men they ever had slip through their fingers, namely, the two senior engineering members of this remarkable family, and that it will eventually occur to them that they had perhaps better hold on to the third. The fact of their giving him 22/- a week while they are sacking other men looks promising for my theory, and if only he can establish a claim to any particular qualification, he may yet succeed in drawing some sort of a prize, where I, and even Pot, have only succeeded in drawing blanks. I believe Frank does possess a special qualification, and that is a power of managing and organizing work. Drawing or designing, etc., is not his strong point, though he would often succeed in that, as the tortoise, where many a hare would fail; but give him an erecting job or anything of that sort, and he would so arrange that the work first wanted should be first ready. This does not sound very much to boast of, but it is a very useful knack to have. I certainly do not possess anything of it, and many a scrape I get into at the Works through forgetting to order certain things at the proper time. For instance, when I had a dredger to get ready for action, it was found, when it came to the scratch, that there was no scum cock for the boiler, no posts for the handrails, etc.. etc. I was more sinned against than sinning that time however, as the job was suddenly thrown on my hands, when Pot left the Works in a state of semi-completion, and I did not know, and in the hap-hazard way things were done there, I could not find out whether certain details had been ordered or not. I believe, had Frank been given that job and told the dredger was to be chiefly the same as number so-and-so, that every drawing would have been sent out in proper order, and every question as to alteration, etc., broached in proper time, so that, when the bosses came to see it tried, it would have worked well without delay.
That’s a very long eulogium on the poor dear “smiler;” let’s hope it will also turn out to be true of him. Do you ever hear from the old Coke? I suppose you do too, though it seems as if from London to Dawlish was so short a distance it was scarcely worth writing. How’s he getting on, and which is he? A manager or a millionaire, or, peradventure, a clerk? Tell Pot to let me know as soon as he makes his first tanner from his invention, and I will stand myself a cigar in honour of the occasion. I ought to write him a jaw too, but in case I shouldn’t be able to at present, just tell him, please, that even supposing he fails in getting the advantages of his machine recognised in England, he would stand quite as good, if not a better chance, of doing so here. This country, or better still as I believe, the States, is far more ready and willing to accept and make use of improvements than the old one, and he may possibly not know that an English patent does not hold good here, and vice-versa, though both countries are under English rule. Just to give you an instance of the go-ahead nature of the Works here, I can tell you that Hartley, my employer, has had sixteen patents to procure from one Works alone, in the space of six months. I believe it is a large saw mill, or any way there’s a large saw mill connected with them, for the machine I am engaged upon now is for sharpening saws, and they light their Works by gas. “made from sawdust,” which is another of their patents.
Well, I’ve got off the scenery so far, and there’s the weather to come yet, lots of it too. We’ve been having no end of weather lately. Sunday was cold and dull, nearly freezing the whole day. Monday ditto, with the addition of a breeze. Tuesday, no breeze, and as warm as toast, simply a beautiful summer’s day. Wednesday just as hot, but blowing hard, and to-day. Thursday, cold as ever, and still blowing. I suppose at this time of year it’s bound to change any five minutes. Friday.—I must mail this in about an hour, but half that time would suffice to run me dry. By-the-bye, I may as well tell you that my watch goes beautifully. It needed a good deal of regulating, and that took a long time, but at length I have got it quite near enough to perfection for all practical purposes. It gains steadily now at the rate of about a minute and a half a week. I have timed it by a gun that is fired every day at noon from the grounds of the Houses of Parliament. It goes off by electricity, I believe, or the time is given by electricity from Montreal. Doesn’t it sound rather funny, to hear of the grounds of the Houses of Parliament? It would to a Londoner, I know, but such is the case. There is such heaps of room everywhere in this great draughty country, that they may just as well take twenty acres for their buildings as two, that’s just about it, I should think; it must be quite twenty, and not a single flower or, even as far as I know, a flowering shrub in the place; nothing but level lawns and walks or roads, beautifully kept, I admit. Anyone of the lawns would make half-a-dozen first-rate tennis courts, but the whole affair, seen from a little distance, looks like a painted scene. It’s just a mass of even green relieved or embarrassed, as the case may be, by the straight up and down yellow houses, which houses also, in my opinion, have precious little architectural beauty to boast of, bar the centre one, perhaps, which is the house of Parl., par excellence, the others being only departmental ones. There is a very jolly walk, though round at the back of them, where I went last Sunday, you see the houses with their grounds occupy a sort of promontory, which juts out into the river, or rather into a little lake formed by it at its bend. The lawns must be from eighty to one hundred feet above the level of the water, and it is about half way down the banks, which are more than steep, that the walk in question runs. Fifty years ago this must have been one of the prettiest spots in Canada, and now anyone standing there has only the great wooden-looking houses at his back, and a colony of saw mills in front. The saw mills are out-and-out the most interesting of the two. The amount of wood cut up there every day is enormous. I believe Ottawa is the lumbering centre of Canada; any way, there are acres and acres of wood all cut up into planks or battens, and stacked thirty feet high and as close as possible, yet it all looks new, which shows that it must be shipped away at an enormous rate. Going to shut up now suddenly. Give my love to Miss Harley, or something a little milder if you would rather, and believe me, with love also to the rest of the family circle, which will now, I suppose, include a Mrs. Daddy Cockburn,
Your loving Son,
J. Seton Cockburn.