The withdrawal of this lively trader will be a blow to the enterprise
of the place.
When I returned to the hotel for breakfast - which was exactly like
the supper, and consisted mainly of green tea and dry toast - there
was a commotion among the waiters and the hack-drivers over a nervous
little old man, who was in haste to depart for the morning train. He
was a specimen of provincial antiquity such as could not be seen
elsewhere. His costume was of the oddest: a long-waisted coat
reaching nearly to his heels, short trousers, a flowered silk vest,
and a napless hat. He carried his baggage tied up in mealbags, and
his attention was divided between that and two buxom daughters, who
were evidently enjoying their first taste of city life. The little
old man, who was not unlike a petrified Frenchman of the last
century, had risen before daylight, roused up his daughters, and had
them down on the sidewalk by four o'clock, waiting for hack, or
horse-car, or something to take them to the station. That he might
be a man of some importance at home was evident, but he had lost his
head in the bustle of this great town, and was at the mercy of all
advisers, none of whom could understand his mongrel language. As we
came out to take the horse-car, he saw his helpless daughters driven
off in one hack, while he was raving among his meal-bags on the
sidewalk. Afterwards we saw him at the station, flying about in the
greatest excitement, asking everybody about the train; and at last he
found his way into the private office of the ticket-seller. "Get out
of here!" roared that official. The old man persisted that he
wanted a ticket. "Go round to the window; clear out!" In a very
flustered state he was hustled out of the room. When he came to the
window and made known his destination, he was refused tickets,
because his train did not start for two hours yet!
This mercurial old gentleman only appears in these records because he
was the only person we saw in this Province who was in a hurry to do
anything, or to go anywhere.
We cannot leave Halifax without remarking that it is a city of great
private virtue, and that its banks are sound. The appearance of its
paper-money is not, however, inviting. We of the United States lead
the world in beautiful paper-money; and when I exchanged my crisp,
handsome greenbacks for the dirty, flimsy, ill-executed notes of the
Dominion, at a dead loss of value, I could not be reconciled to the
transaction. I sarcastically called the stuff I received
"Confederate money;" but probably no one was wounded by the severity;
for perhaps no one knew what a resemblance in badness there is
between the "Confederate" notes of our civil war and the notes of the
Dominion; and, besides, the Confederacy was too popular in the
Provinces for the name to be a reproach to them.
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