Chapter I: Toronto a Fair Matron

Two gentlemen friends saunter arm in arm up and down the deck of the palace steamer _Chicora_ as she enters our beautiful Lake Ontario from the picturesque Niagara River, on a perfect day in delightful September, when the blue canopy of the heavens seems so far away, one wonders that the mirrored surface of the lake can reflect its color.

"Do you know, Buckingham, you puzzle me; you were evidently happier in our little circle at the Hoffman House than in billiard, smoking, or reading-rooms, and just now in the saloon you seemed so content with Miss Crew, my wife and our boy, that I again wonder a man with these tastes, and who has made his little pile, does not marry," said Mr. Dale, in flute-like tones, distinctly English in accent. "I really think, my dear fellow, you would be happier in big New York city with some one in it to make a home for you."

"I am quite sure your words are kindly meant, Dale, but look at me," he says tranquilly, "I am not dwarfed by care, being six feet in my stockings, I have no worrying lines written on my forehead, and between you and I, I am fifty; to be sure I am bald and grey, but that is New York life, a bachelor life, then, has not served me ill; there is a woman at Toronto I should like as my wife, but until I can give her the few luxuries I now deem necessities, I shall remain as I am."

"I regret your decision, Buckingham, it is a rock many men split on, this waiting for wealth and missing wifely companionship."

"Perhaps you are right; but I should not care to risk it," he says, calmly.

"And you a speculator!" his friend said, smiling. At this they drifted into business and some joint investments in Canadian mineral locations, when Dale said:

"You must excuse me now, Buckingham, I promised my wife to go and read her a letter descriptive of Toronto, as we, you know, have not been there."

"Who is the writer, if I may know?"

"Our mutual friend at Toronto, Mrs. Gower."

"Oh, I am with you then," he said, with unusual eagerness, a fact noted by his friend.

Entering the saloon, Mrs. Dale, a pretty little woman, fashionably dressed, with Irish blue eyes and raven hair, said, lifting her head:

"Excuse my recumbent position, but I feel as if my head wasn't level, if I try to sit up; ditto, Miss Crew."

"Where is Garfield, Ella?"

"Over there with those boys; now read away, hubby, it will do my head good."

"Very well, let me see where the description commences (the personal part I may pass). Here it is:

"Toronto is a fair matron with many children, whom she has
planted out on either side and north of her as far as her great
arms can stretch. She lies north and south, while her lips
speak loving words to her off-spring, and to her spouse, the
County of York; when she rests she pillows her head on the
pine-clad hills of sweet Rosedale, while her feet lave at
pleasure in the blue waters of beautiful Lake Ontario.

"Her favorite children are Parkdale, Rosedale, and Scarboro';
Parkdale to her west, ambitious and clear-sighted, handsome and
well-built, the sportive lake at his feet, in which his
children revel at eve; her daughter, charming Rosedale, in
society and quite the fashion even to the immense bouquet she
carries at all seasons--now of autumn leaves, from the hand of
Dame Nature; now of the floral beauties from her own gardens
and conservatories, again, of beauteous ferns gathered in her
own woods across her handsome bridges.

"Scarboro', fair Toronto's favorite son, of whom she is justly
proud, is a handsome young warrior, fearless as his own
heights, robust as his own trees, which seem as one gazes down
his deep ravine, like so many giants marching upwards as though
panting to reach the blue pavilioned heavens where they would
fain rest their heads.

"From the time spring thaws the sceptre out of the frozen hand
of winter, until again he is king, the breath of Scarboro' is
redolent of the rose, honeysuckle and sweet-briar, with a rapid
succession of the loveliest wild flowers in Canada beneath
one's feet, a veritable carpet of sweet-scented blossoms has
her son Scarboro'.

"Fair Toronto is also herself richly robed and jewelled, her
necklet being of picturesque villas, in Rosedale and on Bloor
Street; under her corsage, covered with beauteous blossoms from
her Horticultural Gardens, her Normal School grounds, etc., her
heart throbs with pride as she thinks of her gems, the spires
from her one hundred and twenty churches glistening in heaven's
sunbeams; of her magnificent University of Toronto, with its
great Norman tower, which cost her nearly $500,000; her
handsome Trinity College, in third period pointed English
style; her Knox College, her hotels, her opera houses, her
stately banks; with her diamonds, of which she is vastly proud,
and which are her great newspaper offices--the most valuable
being those of first water, viz., her Church papers as
finger-posts, with her _Sentinel_ as guard; her independent,
cultured _Mail_; her mighty clear-Grit _Globe_; her brilliant,
knowing _Grip_; her often-quoted _World_; her racy town-cry
_News_; her social _Saturday Night_; her _Life_, her _Week_,
her _Truth_, with her _Evening Telegram_, the whole set being
so valued by fair Toronto, that she would as soon be minus her
daily bread as her newspapers.

"It would take too long to enumerate the many attractions fair
Toronto offers--some of those within her walls having throats
full of song, others in the 'Harmony Club,' others
elocutionists, with orators and athletes; her Cyclorama of
Sedan, her Zoo--to which only a trifle pays the piper--her
interesting museums, her fine art galleries.

"And again, one word of her pet river, her picturesque Humber,
where lovers meet, poets dream, and fairies dwell; yes, as
Imrie says:

"'Glide we up the Humber river,
Where the rushes sigh and quiver,
Plight our love to each forever,
Love that will not die.'

"Such, dear Mr. and Mrs. Dale, is my lay of Toronto, which I
hope you will like well enough to come and sojourn here awhile.
You say, Mrs. Dale, that you have 'willed' to go to an hotel,
if so, I shall say no more of my wish, for 'a woman's will dies
hard on the field, or on the sward;' but when your will is
carried out, should you sigh for home-life come to me--even
then Holmnest will have open doors. You may be grave or gay,
you may be _en deshabille_ in mind and robing, or you may have
your war-paint on for the watchful eye of Grundy, be it as you
will it, you are ever welcome, only tell dear Diogenes not to
come in his tub. I can give you both amusement enough in many
subjects or objects at which to level your glass, for Toronto
society is in many instances an amusing spectacle, a droll
conglomeration.

"Yours as always,
"ELAINE GOWER."

"Well, Buckingham, what think you of fair Toronto?" asked Dale, as he finished reading.

"I think that, though unusual, a Fair Matron has had ample justice from a fair woman."

"I want to-morrow and Mrs. Gower right now," said Mrs. Dale, "as Garfield says when he is promised a treat."

"Toronto must be a fine city, and covering a large area," said Miss Crew.

"Mrs. Gower has a taste for metaphor; I never heard her in that style before, that is to any extent," said Buckingham.

"I am intensely practical," said Dale; "but confess Toronto described in metaphor sounds more musical, at all events, than in plain brick and mortar style."

"Emerson says," said Buckingham, "men are ever lapsing into a beggarly habit in which everything that is not cyphering is hustled out of sight, and I think he is right."

"We cannot help it, it is the tendency of the age; but what have we here, Buckingham? What's the excitement about?"

"Oh, we are only nearing Hanlon's Point; the ladies had better come outside; every scene will be in gala dress. Miss Crew, can I assist you?"

"Where the blue hills of old Toronto shed
Their evening shadows o'er Ontario's bed,"

said Dale, coming with the crowd to view the scene.

But since Moore so sang, the hills of the noble red man have disappeared, save as a boundary to our fair city; the pale faces, in the interests of progress and civilization, would have it so; and Bloor Street, to the north, is now reached by a gradual ascent of one hundred and fifty feet above the lake level. But now the stately and comfortable palace steamer, _Chicora_, with a goodly number of souls on board, is rounding Hanlon's Point, and entering our beautiful Bay, when the illumined city, with the Industrial Exhibition of 1887 in full swing, burst upon the view. The bands of music in and about the city, at the Horticultural Gardens and on the fair grounds, with the hum of many voices, fill the evening air with a glad song of joy.

"What a sparkling scene," cried Mrs. Dale; "see, Garfield, my boy, all the boats lit from bow to stern."

"They look as pretty as you in your diamonds, mamma."

"It is quite a pretty sight, and the city also," said Miss Crew; "I had no idea Canada could attempt anything to equal this."

"So much for England's instructions of her 'young ideas how to shoot,' as to her colonies, Miss Crew," said Dale; "Come, confess that a few squaws, bearing torches, with their lordly half smoking the calumet, was the utmost you expected."

"Oh, Mr. Dale, please don't exaggerate our ignorance in this respect; I am not quite so bad as a lady at home, who thought Toronto a chain of mountains, and Ottawa an Indian chief."

"One of Fenimore Cooper's, I hope," laughed Buckingham, "who hunted buffalo on the boundless prairie, instead of your lean gophers who hunt rusty bacon from agents who, some say, use him to swindle the public and line their own pockets. But listen; what a medley of sounds."

"And lights," cried Mrs. Dale; "it looks as if annexation was on, and they were firing up some of our gold dollars as sky rockets."

"It's pretty good for Canada, mamma," said Garfield, patronisingly.

"You say Toronto is quite a business centre, Buckingham?"

"Oh, yes; quite so; it makes one think of commercial union. Do you advocate it, Dale?"

"Well, as you know, Buckingham, I am not even yet sufficiently Americanised to look upon it from other than a British standpoint, and so do not advocate it, as it seems a slight to the Mother Country. What is your idea of advantages derived by Canada were it _a fait accompli_?"

"She would gain larger markets; her natural resources would be developed, especially her mineral, in which I am," he added, jokingly, "looking out for the interest of that most important number _one_, while also number two would benefit in home manufactures."

"You amuse me; I honestly believe number one is a universal lever; yet still in a way we are each patriotic; but, again, you must see that commercial union would be the forerunner of annexation."

"Yes, likely, though not for some time, but evolution will bring that about in a natural sort of way, as a final settlement of all vexed questions, whether," he added laughingly, "of humanity or--fish."

"Oh, I don't know that, but you have the fish at all events and mean to keep them too; humanity may follow, but I should not like to see the colonies hoist another flag. But here we are at last, at the portals of the Queen City, and such a multitude of people makes one feel as if one might be crowded out," he said, uneasily, as the _Chicora_ came in at Yonge Street wharf.

"Don't bother your head about your rooms, Dale, you secured them by telegram."

"I did, ten days ago, though."

"You never fear, they will be all right, the manager is a thorough business man," he said quietly, gathering up the belongings of the ladies.

"You are invaluable, Mr. Buckingham," said Mrs. Dale, "and are as gallant as if you had as many wives as Blue Beard."

"Rather a scaly compliment, Buckingham," laughed his friend.

"She means well, but the fish are not far off," he answered, picking up Garfield, and giving his arm to quiet Miss Crew.