I Wish I Had
Thought Of Something More Insulting To Say.
By noon on Friday we came to New Glasgow, having passed through a
country where wealth is to be won by hard digging if it is won at
all; through Truro, at the head of the Cobequid Bay, a place
exhibiting more thrift than any we have seen.
A pleasant enough
country, on the whole, is this which the road runs through up the
Salmon and down the East River. New Glasgow is not many miles from
Pictou, on the great Cumberland Strait; the inhabitants build
vessels, and strangers drive out from here to see the neighboring
coal mines. Here we were to dine and take the stage for a ride of
eighty miles to the Gut of Canso.
The hotel at New Glasgow we can commend as one of the most
unwholesome in the Province; but it is unnecessary to emphasize its
condition, for if the traveler is in search of dirty hotels, he will
scarcely go amiss anywhere in these regions. There seems to be a
fashion in diet which endures. The early travelers as well as the
later in these Atlantic provinces all note the prevalence of dry,
limp toast and green tea; they are the staples of all the meals;
though authorities differ in regard to the third element for
discouraging hunger: it is sometimes boiled salt-fish and sometimes
it is ham. Toast was probably an inspiration of the first woman of
this part of the New World, who served it hot; but it has become now
a tradition blindly followed, without regard to temperature; and the
custom speaks volumes for the non-inventiveness of woman. At the inn
in New Glasgow those who choose dine in their shirt-sleeves, and
those skilled in the ways of this table get all they want in seven
minutes. A man who understands the use of edged tools can get along
twice as fast with a knife and fork as he can with a fork alone.
But the stage is at the door; the coach and four horses answer the
advertisement of being "second to none on the continent." We mount
to the seat with the driver. The sun is bright; the wind is in the
southwest; the leaders are impatient to go; the start for the long
ride is propitious.
But on the back seat in the coach is the inevitable woman, young and
sickly, with the baby in her arms. The woman has paid her fare
through to Guysborough, and holds her ticket. It turns out, however,
that she wants to go to the district of Guysborough, to St. Mary's
Cross Roads, somewhere in it, and not to the village of Guysborough,
which is away down on Chedabucto Bay. (The reader will notice this
geographical familiarity.) And this stage does not go in the
direction of St. Mary's. She will not get out, she will not
surrender her ticket, nor pay her fare again. Why should she?
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