LIFE IN CANADA.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XI, Issue 80, 21 March 1876, Page 4

LIFE IN CANADA.

(From Macmillan's Magazine.) All GaVadian towns are much alike. The approach to Kisawlee is by a long, straight, dusty road, lined on each side by rows of little painted frame-houses, standing within wooden railings, separated only from each other by a few yards of burnt-up grass, or a feeble attempt at a flower-bed, and fronted by a plank sidewall raised high above the road, a trap for the unwary ou dark nights. Gradually the long, straight suburban road merges into a street — the street of the town — a ghastly array of hideous brick houses, everyone of them crammed from cellar to garret with merchandise, the names of their owners painted in -flaming characters oni boards of all shapes and sizes a V Americaine. Cross streets run in at intervals, up which are to be found the churches, with tin spires gleaming in tl^e sun, hotels and taverns, banks, post office, and town hall, fading away into private residences, the same little red and white villas, and so on, till we get to country road once more, and wind about among the snake fences, brown fields, and grasshoppers. Let us glance at the principal hotel. The bar of course fa full, for the Canadians drink * in summer on account of the heat, and ih winter to keep out the cold. We enter our name and place of residence in the book, as the custom is; the landlord reads it, and is ot once all civility. He, sees we are English, Ihinks of course we are green; and sniffs the spoils of war afar. Presently he lifts one finger and beckons with his head. This, I afterwards learnt, is tho Canadian fashion of asking you to drink; or, in their own parlance, " to have a horn." If -you are passing through as strangers, aud. more especially Englishmen, he will oharge you 3dols. a day. If a friend introduces you, winks oue eye, an.d gives him a dig in the ribs or some otlier familiar sigD, you will only be 1 dollar per diem the poorer for your sojourn in bis esfablsbroent, and if you board there for six mon-.hs you will get off far cheaper even than that. Such are the anomalies of the charges in Canadian hotels ! Of wbat does the upper-crust of society consist in Kisawlee? Let us try and define it. Four or five half-pay officers with their wives and families, the managers and clerks of three banks (bank clerks in Canada, by the way,- hold a higher position in Bociety than their confreres in the old country, from the fact of its being a profession worth entering from a pecuniary point of view, and consequently much sought after by the most influential families in the country for their sons), several lawyers, most of whom are in society, a judge, a parson or two, three or four doctors, and a miscellaneous bevy of people, most ot them English, attracted by the cheapness of living. The rear is brought up by a phalanx of bachelors, a large proportion of them young Englishmen, some farming, and more who have made a hash of it, and quietly subsided iuto being pursers on lake steamboats or clerks in stores and lumber shanties. It is no uncommon thing in Kisawlee to find a clerk in a store with 20 dols. a month going everywhere and made much of in society, while his chief, who lives in a 'stone house, with an annual income of 5,000 dols., would knock in vain for admission at houses where his poorlypaid clerk reigns supreme. Greatly to <the credit of the Canadians generally, it may be said that, let a man be a gentleman, no occupation, so long as it be honest, will at all affect his place in society ; while at the same time there are many men retaining th_ir placea there, and even courted as favorites, who in England would long ago have been confined to inebriate asylums, or at all events care would have been taken that their faces should live only in the memory of their acquaintances. There is probably neither a greater nor a less consumption of, spirits in Kisawlea than throughout the restof Canada ; that, however, is not saying much. Rye-whisky is cheap, and fortunately rather mild : almost all liquors are retailed over the bar at five cents (2^J.) a drink, while the decanter each time is banded over, American fashion^ tothe discretion of the drinker. Tbe temptation is too strong for about one-third of the male population ; another third, >we will say, steady themselves down to about half-a-dozen 4 * horns" a day , ' while for courtesy we will suppose tbat the remainder take refuge in total abstinence, although I are* afraid it is making rather a rash statement to say so.