Page:Letters from America, Brooke, 1916.djvu/113

Rh unconscious of an audience. Everything he thought of he said. He told me that his boots were giving in the sole, but would probably last this trip. He said he had not washed his feet for eight days; and that his clothes were shabby (which was true), but would do for Canada. It was interesting to see how Canada presented herself to that mind. He seemed to regard her as a kind of Bœotia, and terrifyingly dour. "These Canadian waiters," he said, "they jes fling the food in y'r face. Kind'er gets yer sick, doesn't it?" I agreed. There was a Yorkshire mechanic, too, who had been in Canada four years, and preferred it to England, "because you've room to breathe," but also found that Canada had not yet learnt social comfort, and regretted the manners of "the Old Country."

We woke to find ourselves sweeping round a high cliff, at six in the morning, with a lively breeze, the river very blue and broken into ripples, and a lot of little white clouds in the sky. The air was full of gaiety and sunshine and the sense of the singing of birds, though actually, I think, there were only a few gulls crying. It was the perfection of a summer morning, thrilling with a freshness which, the