TORONTO OF OLD. 335 



cymbal-player was fonnerly often to be seen. The two men just named, after obtaining a dis- 

 charge from a regiment here, gained an honest livelihood by chance employment about the 

 town. Joe, a well-formed, well-trained figure, was to be seen, .^tiU arrayed in some old cast-off 

 shell-jacket, acting as porter, or engaged about horses ; once already we have had a glimpse of 

 him in the capacity of sheriff's assistant, administering the lash to wretched culprits in the 

 market-place. The other, besides playing other parts, oflBciated occasionally as a sweep ; but 

 his most memorable accomplishment was a melodious and powerful stj'le of whisthng musicai 

 airs, and a faculty for imitating the bag-pipes to perfection, — For the romantic sound of the 

 name, the tall, comely negress, Amy Pompadour, should also be mentioned in the record. But 

 she was of servile descent : at the time of which we write slavery was only just dying out in 

 Upper Canada, as we shall have occasion to note hereafter more at large. — Then came the 

 " Jack of Clubs." Lord Thurlow, we are told, once enabled a stranger to single out in a crowd 

 Dunning, afterwards Lord Ashburton, by telling him to take notice of the first man he saw 

 bearing a strong resemblance to the "Jack of Clubs." In the present case it was a worthy 

 trader in provisions who had acquired among his fellow-townsmen a sobriquet from a supposed 

 likeness to that sturdy court-card figure. He was a short, burly Englishman, whose place of 

 business was just opposite the entrance to the Market. So absolutely did the epithet attach 

 itself to him, that late comers to the place failed to learn his real name : all which was good- 

 humouredly borne for a time ; but at last the distinction became burdensome and irritating, and 

 Mr. Stafford removed in disgust to New York. — A well-kiiown character often to be seen about 

 here, too, was an unfortunate English farmer of the name of Cowper, of disordered intellect, 

 whose peculiarity was a desire to station himself in the middle of the roadway, and from that 

 vantage-ground to harangue any crowd that might gather, incoherently, but always with a 

 great show of sly drollery and mirthfulness. — On occasions of militia funeral processions, 

 observant lads and others were always on the look-ont for a certain prosperous old cordwainer 

 of York, Mr. Wilson, who was sure then to be seen marching in the ranks, with musket 

 reversed, and displaying with great precision and solemnity the extra-upright carriage and 

 genuine toe-pointed step of the soldier of the days of George the Second. He had been in the 

 regular army, and it was with pride and gusto that he exhibited the perfection to which he had 

 in other days attained. The slow pace required by the Dead March gave the on-looker time to 

 study the antique style of military movement thus exemplified. — It was at a comjjaratively late 

 period that Sir John Smythe and Spencer Lydstone, poets, were notabilities in the streets : the 

 latter, Mr. Lydstone, recognizable from afar by a scarlet vest, brought out, ever and anon, a 

 printed broadside, filled with eulogiums or s.atires on the inhabitants of the town, regulated by 

 fees or refusals received. The former. Sir John Smythe, found in the public papers a place for 

 his productions, which by their syntactical irregularities and freedom from marks of punctua- 

 tion, proved their author (as a reviewer of the day once observed) to be a man siqrra grammati- 

 cam, and one possessed of a genius above commas. But his great hobby was a railway to the 

 Eacific, in connection with which he brought out a lithographed map : its peculiarity was a 

 straight black line conspicuously drawn across the continent from Fort William to the mouth 

 of the Columbia. In a tract of his on the subject of this railway he provides, in the case of 

 war with the United States, for steam communication between London in England and China 

 and the East Indies, by "a branch to run on the north side of the township of Cavan and on 

 the south side of Balsam Lake." " I propose this," he says, "to run in the rear of Lake Huron 

 and in the rear of Lake Superior, twenty miles in the interior of the country of the Lake afore- 

 said; to unite with the railroad from Lake Superior to Winnipeg, at the south-west main 

 trading-post of the North-West Company." The document is signed "Sir John Smythe, Baro- 

 net and Royal Engineer, Canadian Poet, LL.D., and Moral Philosopher." 



The concourse of traffickers and icUers in the open space before the old Market Place were 

 free of tongue ; they sometimes talked, in no subdued tone, of their fellow-to-wnsfolk of all 

 ranks. In a small community everj' one was more or less acquainted with every one, with his 

 dealings and appurtenances, with his man-servant and maid-servant, his horse, his dog, his 

 waggon, cart or barrow. Those of the primitive residentiaries, to whom the commonalty had 

 taken kindly, were honoured in ordinary speech with their militia-titles of Colonel, Major- 

 Captain, or the civilian prefix of Mister, Honorable Mister, Squire or Judge, as the case might 

 be ; whilst others, not held to have achieved any special clainfe to deference, were named, even 



