SARAH TERWILLIGAR’S ATTEMPT TO FLY TO HEAVEN. THE WORLD TO COME TO AN END.
BARCLAY, CLARK & CO. LITHO. TORONTO
in this car, except possibly aforesaid ancient maiden lady, who is still too deep in “church government” for the contagion to catch her.
With questionable zeal a young Salvation Army fellow and a couple of Salvation Army lasses, seated near the farther end of the car, boldly strike up. The tune may be melodious, suggestive of piety, musical, well-rendered, and withal nicely done, for one of the female voices is really sweet. It gets monotonous, however, at the beginning of the third verse, and we cannot enjoy our conversation. “Will you kindly stop?” Perhaps the word kindly is not suggestive enough—at any rate, it does not produce the desired quietus, and the hymn-singing goes bravely on.
Our uniformed conductor has come in again with his cry of “Tickets!” Someone suggests to him “Will you be good enough to ask those persons in the rear end of the car to cease their singing?” It has the desired effect, even if the “kindly” aforementioned did not. Yes, Canada is pre-eminently a free country, but the wisdom of such efforts among a mixed assembly of promiscuous railway passengers is just questionable. No doubt there would be in that coach Catholics as well as Protestants, agnostics as well as saints—and heaven only knows but Moslems and Greeks may have been there as well—so I think I am right in saying that their zeal is quite right, but its peculiar manifestation just a little questionable.
The next seat behind mine contains two young men who have so far on this journey pored with eager interest over the Globe’s columns. Church government, city boys’ ante-ball merriment, nor Salvation Army songs have as yet distracted their attention from these columns which they seem to be devouring. They explain, however, that they are Toronto University students on their way home, and have not for some days had an opportunity to find out what this world has been about.
Did you ever in your peregrinations encounter a veritable “talking machine?” Well, I did once, and I must ask you to allow me to leave this coach for a moment to describe that machine.
A few seasons ago I had occasion to go to Britain in the month of January. Now, it’s a long ride down to Halifax, and let the Pullman be ever so comfortable, one feels now and again like walking forward and seeing what the others are doing. In the smoker I found a long-featured, cadaverous, wizened, pinched, saffron “bag of bones,” with a wrinkled parchment cuticle drawn over them, made in the form of a “talking machine.” He was talking the first time I went into the car, and talking every time I entered it. There is just a dim recollection with me, that I went some ten times into that car on the way down to Halifax, and the “machine” was always in order, and always going. He went into the steerage, and I heard him several times when on the steamer, from the cabin deck, still in order, and always talking. At Londonderry he got on the tender with me. As he came down the gang-plank his voice was still raised, and for three mortal long hours I had to endure his idle “clack,” while the tender took us ashore. Next day, when purchasing a railway ticket, again I encountered him—still talking. I think I could with clear conscience take my oath that he talked all the way home (Belfast) while in that train. In fact, he had talked himself poor—poor in flesh, I mean, for I do not know what may have been his possessions in the coin of the realm.
This was my first real observation of a genuine “talking machine.” In this coach to-day we had another, but of the feminine gender, which, under ordinary acceptances, would seem to be more in the general fitness of things, when coming from the sex to whom speech is so easy.