TORONTO OF OLD. 351 



Sheriff to be a practical joke played off on him. We think we detect personal spleen in the 

 terms of the advertisement : in the minuteness of the description of Mr. MacNah's physique, 

 which never claimed to be that of an Adonis ; in the biographical particulars, which, however 

 interesting they chance to prove to later generations, were somewhat out of place on such an 

 occasion: as also in a postscript calling. on the printers within his Majesty's Governments in 

 America, and those of the United States to give circulation m their respective papers to the 

 above advertisement," &c. 



It was a limited exchequer that created embarrassment in the early history— and, for that 

 matter, in much of the later history as well— of Mr. MacNab s distinguished son, afterwards 

 the baronet Sir Allan ; and no one could relate with more graphic and humorous effect his 

 troubles from this source, than he was occasionally in the habit of doing. "When observing his 

 weU-known handsome form and ever-benignant countenance, about in the streets of York, we 

 lads at school were wont, we remember, generally to conjecture that his ramblings were 

 limited to certain bounds. He himself used to dwell with an amount of complacency on the 

 skin acquired in carpentry during these intervals of involuntary leisure, and on the practical 

 results to himself from that skill, not only in the way of pastime, but in the form of hard cash 

 for personal necessities. Many were the panelled doors aud Venetian shutters in York which, 

 by his account, were the work of nis hands. — Once he was on the point of becoming a profes- 

 sional actor. Giving assistance now and then as an anonymous performer to Mr. Archbold, a 

 respectable Manager here, he evinced such marked talent on the boards, that he was seriously 

 advised to adopt the stage as his avocation and employment. The theatre of Canadian 

 public affairs, however, was to be the real scene of his achievements. Particulars are here 

 unnecessary. Successively sailor and soldier (and in both capacities engaged in perilous ser- 

 vice); a lawyer, a legislator in both Houses; Speaker twice in the Popular Assembly; once 

 Prime Minister ; knighted for gallantry, and appointed an Aide-de-camp to the Queen ; dignified 

 with a baronetcy ; by the marriage of a daughter with the son of a nobleman, made the possible 

 progenitor of English peers — the career of Allan MacNab cannot fail to arrest the attention of 

 the future investigator of Canadian history. — With our local traditions in relation to the grandi- 

 ose chieftain above described, one or two stories are in circulation, in which his young kinsman 

 Allan amusingly figures. Alive to pleasantry — as so many of our early worthies in these parts 

 were— he undertook, it is said, for a small wager, to prove the absolute nudity of the knees, 

 &c., of his feudal lord when at a ball in fuU costume : (the allegation, mischievously made, had 

 been that the Chief was protected from the weather by invisible drawers). The mode of demon- 

 stration adopted was a sudden cry from the ingenuous youth addressed to the Chief, to the 

 effect that he observed a spider, or some such object, running up his leg !— a cry instantly 

 followed by a smart slap with the hand, with the presumed intention of checking the onward 

 course of the noxious thing. The loud crack occasioned by the blow left no room for doubt 

 as to the fact of nudity ; but the dignified Laird was some-\^'nat disconcerted by the over zeal 

 of his young retainer. Again,' at Kingston, the ever-conscious Chief having written himself 

 down in the visitors' book at the hotel as The MacNae, his juvenile relative, coming in imme- 

 diately after and seeing the curt inscription, instantly entered his protest against the monopoly 

 apparently implied, by writing M-msdf down, just underneath, in conspicuous characters, as 

 The Other MacNab— the genius of his coming fortunes doubtless inspiring the merry deed.— 

 We have understood that the house occupied by Mr. Fothergill (where we paused a short time 

 since) was originally put up by Allan MacNab, junior, but never tenanted by him. 



XXI.— THE BRIDGE AND ACROSS IT. 

 We now arrived at the Don bridge. The valley of the Don, at the place where the Kingston 

 Road crosses it, was spanned in 1824 by a long wooden viaduct raised about twenty-five feet 

 above the marsh below. This structure consisted of a series of ten trestles, or frames of hewn 

 timber supporting a roadway of plank. A similar structure spanned the Humber and its 

 marshes on the west side of York. Both of these bridges about the year named had become 

 very much decayed ; and occasionally both were rendered impassable at the same time, by the 

 falling in of worn-out and broken planks. The York papers would then make themselves 

 merry on the weHdefended condition of the town in a military point of view, approach to it 



