For Another, The Law In Canada Exists And Is Administered,
Not As A Surprise, A Joke, A Favour, A Bribe, Or A Wrestling Turk
Exhibition, But As An Integral Part Of The National Character - No More
To Be Forgotten Or Talked About Than One's Trousers.
If you kill, you
hang.
If you steal, you go to jail. This has worked toward peace,
self-respect, and, I think, the innate dignity of the people. On the
other hand - which is where the trouble will begin - railways and steamers
make it possible nowadays to bring in persons who need never lose touch
of hot and cold water-taps, spread tables, and crockery till they are
turned out, much surprised, into the wilderness. They clean miss the
long weeks of salt-water and the slow passage across the plains which
pickled and tanned the early emigrants. They arrive with soft bodies and
unaired souls. I had this vividly brought home to me by a man on a train
among the Selkirks. He stood on the safely railed rear-platform, looked
at the gigantic pine-furred shoulder round which men at their lives'
risk had led every yard of the track, and chirruped: 'I say, why can't
all this be nationalised?' There was nothing under heaven except the
snows and the steep to prevent him from dropping off the cars and
hunting a mine for himself. Instead of which he went into the
dining-car. That is one type.
A man told me the old tale of a crowd of Russian immigrants who at a big
fire in a city 'verted to the ancestral type, and blocked the streets
yelling, 'Down with the Czar!' That is another type.
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