He might as well come
round to talk to his father about the pig. But old man Butler meant
fox-hunting from the first, and what he wanted to do was to borrow
Buck's dog, who had been duly brought over with the calf, and left on
the mountain. No old man Butler did not go hunting alone, but waited
till Buck came back from town. Buck sold the calf for a dollar and a
quarter and not for seventy-five cents as was falsely asserted by
interested parties. Then the two went after the fox together. This
much learned, everybody breathes freely, if life has not been
complicated in the meantime by more strange counter-marchings.
Five or six sleighs a day we can understand, if we know why they are
abroad; but any metropolitan rush of traffic disturbs and excites.
LETTERS TO THE FAMILY
1908
These letters appeared in newspapers during the spring of 1908, after a
trip to Canada undertaken in the autumn of 1907. They are now reprinted
without alteration.
THE ROAD TO QUEBEC.
A PEOPLE AT HOME.
CITIES AND SPACES.
NEWSPAPERS AND DEMOCRACY.
LABOUR.
THE FORTUNATE TOWNS.
MOUNTAINS AND THE PACIFIC.
A CONCLUSION.
* * * * *
THE ROAD TO QUEBEC
(1907)
It must be hard for those who do not live there to realise the cross
between canker and blight that has settled on England for the last
couple of years. The effects of it are felt throughout the Empire, but
at headquarters we taste the stuff in the very air, just as one tastes
iodoform in the cups and bread-and-butter of a hospital-tea. So far as
one can come at things in the present fog, every form of unfitness,
general or specialised, born or created, during the last generation has
combined in one big trust - a majority of all the minorities - to play the
game of Government. Now that the game ceases to amuse, nine-tenths of
the English who set these folk in power are crying, 'If we had only
known what they were going to do we should never have voted for them!'
Yet, as the rest of the Empire perceived at the time, these men were
always perfectly explicit as to their emotions and intentions. They said
first, and drove it home by large pictures, that no possible advantage
to the Empire outweighed the cruelty and injustice of charging the
British working man twopence halfpenny a week on some of his provisions.
Incidentally they explained, so that all Earth except England heard it,
that the Army was wicked; much of the Navy unnecessary; that half the
population of one of the Colonies practised slavery, with torture, for
the sake of private gain, and that the mere name of Empire wearied and
sickened them.
