AMONG THE "THOUSAND ISLANDS." 349 



The Princess Louise drew up at the rough log wharf, choked with im- 

 mense piles of white-pine planks " lumber," as the American language 

 gracefully phrases it ; and even as we reached the tiny quay we saw 

 our hostess in her row-boat, already pulling round a granite bluff 

 from her retreat to meet us. By private arrangement with the cap- 

 tain, indeed so sweetly simple and domestic is life in these new coun- 

 tries the engineer " scooted," or blew, his whistle three times as he 

 passed the lighthouse whenever he had visitors on board for our 

 friends' chalet. The moment the " scoot " is heard on the cliff, the 

 chalet folks put out their boat at once, and row round to the landing- 

 place to take up their visitors without delay on arrival. 



It is one of the charms of our vast England that here a man is lost 

 in the crowd. The individual withers (much to the advantage of his 

 own comfoi't), and the world is more and moi'e. You can walk along 

 the streets of London any day with the serene consciousness that no- 

 body knows you or cares a pin about you, that to all the passers-by 

 you are merely another nameless passer-by, that your personality is 

 wholly merged in the recognition of your abstract existence as a single 

 unit of assorted humanity. That, I say, gives a man a delightful 

 sense of breadth and freedom. You feel yourself planted, as the in- 

 imitable Prince Florestan aptly phrases it, " at the strategic center of 

 the universe, for so I may be allowed to style Rupert Street," with 

 your individuality wholly obliterated, in the general consciousness of 

 our common human citizenship. But once in a while, as an incident 

 of a summer holiday, it is not wholly unpleasant, by way of contrast, 

 to find one's self for a time in such a narrower world of mutual recog- 

 nition, where the purser knows immediately you are going to stop with 

 your friends in their summer quarters, and gives notice to the engineer 

 to blow the whistle thrice accordingly as you pass the chalet where 

 they presently abide. A certain patriarchal colonial note in it all 

 attracts one's not unfavorable attention. If you were a duke in Eng- 

 land, the constituted authorities would refuse to whistle for you ; it is 

 agreeable now and again to feel yourself a duke, and to be recognized 

 and whistled for with more than ducal consideration. I much prefer 

 it to the South Coast Railway style, where my urbane inquiry, " Is 

 this the train for Brighton, please ? " meets with the crushing response 

 from guard or porter, " All right ! third class forward ! " 



We disembarked from the Princess Louise, and took our seats in 

 the chalet row-boat. Our hostess pulled ; politeness compelled me to 

 offer myself as an unworthy substitute, but, when she firmly declined 

 to surrender the sculls, I felt a secret twinge of satisfaction, for though 

 it's one thing to pilot a dingey from Oxford to Sandford Lasher, it's 

 quite another thing to pull a heavy hen-coop against the big waves of 

 the full St. Lawrence on a windy evening. Canadian ladies think 

 nothing of a mile or two of rowing, or of a stiff breeze ; and modesty 

 recognized the palpable fact that the sculls were in far more compe- 



