One of my pleasantest recollections of Niagara is a conversation I had with the porter at the hotel where I stopped on the Canadian side. He was an American negro, extremely urbane and chatty. He told me that he guessed I was an Englishman. It was pretty easy, he said, to tell that. I did not feel sure whether to feel flattered or not, but I felt sure later, when he introduced me to the lift-boy—a typical little stunted anæmic street arab from one of our northern cities—with a wave of the hand and the remark, 'Thar's one of your fellow-countrymen.' Afterwards, in self-defence, I steered the conversation towards Canada, and the porter, who regarded himself as an American citizen only, told me that the Canadians were a slow, stupid people, who could not be trusted of themselves to do anything but cultivate a little land badly.
'Look at Toronto,' he said; 'do you think there'd be any hustle in that place if the Canadians had been left to themselves? No, sah. But we came along and lent them our brains and our enterprise, and I guess now it's a big fine city.'
CHAPTER X
MASKINONGÉ FISHING ON THE FRENCH RIVER
A friend, acquainted with Canada, met me in Toronto, and I told him I was tired of cities and thought of going to the Muskoka Lakes.
'What do you expect to get there?' he asked.
'Scenery,' I said—'camping, fishing. A Fenimore Cooper existence in the backwoods. Isn't it to be had there?'
'The scenery's all right,' he said, 'and you can camp out of course, and there are some fish. But if you mean you want a quiet, unconventional life——'
'I do for a few days,' I said.