It
Was The Spirit In The Thin Dancing Air - The New Spirit Of The New
City - Which Rejoiced Me.
Winnipeg has Things in abundance, but has
learned to put them beneath her feet, not on top of her mind, and so is
older than many cities.
None the less the Things had to be shown - for
what shopping is to the woman showing off his town is to the
right-minded man. First came the suburbs - miles on miles of the dainty,
clean-outlined, wooden-built houses, where one can be so happy and so
warm, each unjealously divided from its neighbour by the lightest of
boundaries. One could date them by their architecture, year after year,
back to the Early 'Nineties, which is when civilisation began; could
guess within a few score dollars at their cost and the incomes of their
owners, and could ask questions about the new domestic appliances of
to-day.
'Asphalt streets and concrete sidewalks came up a few years ago,' said
our host as we trotted over miles of it. 'We found it the only way to
fight the prairie mud. Look!' Where the daring road ended, there lay
unsubdued, level with the pale asphalt, the tenacious prairie, over
which civilisation fought her hub-deep way to the West. And with asphalt
and concrete they fight the prairie back every building season. Next
came the show-houses, built by rich men with an eye to the honour and
glory of their city, which is the first obligation of wealth in a new
land.
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