DWIGHT-WIMAN CLUB. 



17 



heard them. A veritable Scheherazade was our dear 

 Louis, entertaining by the hour the Canadian and 

 American Caliphs who listened to him. Hedley's De- 

 troit River story of the drunken but penitent French 

 Canadian fisherman, whose relation of his religious ex- 

 perience, in meeting, was that he felt " most d n com- 

 plete," was deemed worthy of repetition, as an honest, 

 artless statement of a physical and mental condition ; 

 while Matthews brought the seance to an explosive finish 

 by his recital of the peculiar fix of a young person. 



A discussion arose as to whether the United States 

 Government should assume the business of telegraphy, 

 and take over the wires of all companies. The experi- 

 ence of Great Britain in this direction was not deemed 

 very favorable to the success of such an experiment. 

 Our talk took a wide range over modern inventions in 

 electricity : insulation — transmission, — the telephone, — 

 the electric light, — the storage battery. What Mr. 

 Preece, the English electrician, told Dwight at the 

 Philadelphia Electrical Exhibition, about telephoning 

 from London to Royalty at Windsor was found very 

 entertaining. And the jovial, burly, all-persuasive, 

 official-looking Captain Bedford Pim, with his brass but- 

 tons and gold-laced cap ! An amphibious Marryat he 

 had seemed to some of us at the Windsor hotel, narrat- 

 ing his adventures on the Canadian Pacific Railway 

 with sundry other members of the British Association. 



Before sundown the rain had ceased and the clouds 

 parted, so that half of us went out in our canoes for a 

 constitutional paddle around tne lake. 



It was with great difficulty that the Vice-president 

 got us to bed at 10.30, after songs sung in Albert's 

 charming way, "Somebody's waiting," from Billy Wilk- 



