Saturday Half Holiday - June 1883

The Idle Spectator: Takes a Holiday and Tells His Experience: Captain Jackman’s Exploit – A Race on the Bay – How the Girls Fish – A Day at Burlington Beach

Where is the man who introduced the Saturday half-holiday? Where is he that we labourers, who were wont to work twelve hours a day and get shaved on Sunday, may trot him out and crown him with a floral wreath or present him with something, even if it is a free tickets to the baths? Where is he that we may send his name to the minstrel of Middlesex, and have him worked up in verse? Whoever he is, he deserves well of us. He stops the engine, the loom, the trip-hammer and the printing press, and sends us off to play, and we all bless him for it. The Idle Spectator saw them all on Saturday as he made his way to the landing stage to go to the Beach. The labourer in his Sunday suit, his hands bearing indelible soils of honest toil; the artisan dressed in his best, with his girl by his side; the silent philosopher who sits all day on the wharf watching a cork, and calls it fishing; the red-faced lady with two small babies and four large baskets; the young lady in spotless muslin, upon which a fly would be afraid to light; the dude who poses for the admiration of the ladies on the upper deck; the small boy who runs and howls and helps with the boat lines, and his vagrant dog, who loves the small boy, and follows him like the idle wind. The Queen Victoria lay at her moorings waiting for the crowd. Her whistle shrieks; her gangplanks clatter as they fall. Swish! Swish! “Let go that stern line”, “Hand in”, “Let her go”, “All right”. Her paddles churn the water into foam and she is off. The dock-walloper blinks at her as she passes and turns lazily over and goes to sleep again. Who owns those two old hulks off the James Street wharf, and why are they allowed to lie there and disfigure the harbour; why doesn’t the harbour commissioner or some other official dynamite them and remove their boilers as dangerous impediments to navigation; why are they not broken up instead of being preserved as examples of decay? Capt. Jackman says he doesn’t know, Alex. Burns says he doesn’t know, Billy Swift says he doesn’t know, the dock-wollopers don’t know, nobody knows. As soon as somebody who does know can be found they will probably be removed. Capt. Jackman says it is a pretty bay; but the people are not old enough yet to appreciate it. The Idle Spectator agrees as to the beauty, but is reserved in his opinion of the other part. The captain is an extraordinary looking man; but his experience of sailing has been very great, and many a lusty yarn he can tell. He was the first man to sail from a Canadian lake across the Atlantic. It was a brave day for Capt. Jackman when he hoisted his sailing flag, fifteen years ago, on the Seagull in Toronto bay and cleared for Port Natal in South Africa. People went down to the wharf to see the vessel and captain who were going to brave the Atlantic. Everyone said he would not come back. He reached Port Natal with his cargo. The customs house officer didn’t know where Toronto or Canada was. Was it in Italy?  No, it wasn’t in Italy. Well, where was it? A map was produced and Capt. Jackman pointed out the place whence he came, a mere spec in the middle of a continent. The customs house officer immediately fainted. When he came to, he shook the captain by the hand, called him a brave fellow, treated to Santa Cruz rum, presented him with two monkeys and a parrot, and told him, for goodness sake, to start for Canada as soon as possible else he would be an old man before he got there, he had such a long way to go. Sixteen or eighteen months afterward, the Seagull passed the western light of Toronto harbour, Canada, under full sail. Capt. Jackman, somewhat weather-beaten, stood on the deck, the monkey swung by the tail from the rigging, the crew were glad. The parrot swore, and Dandy, that is the captain’s yellow dog, who had worried everything on four legs in Natal, howled with delight at getting back home. People came down to the wharf and cheered the captain who had seen the Boer in his native lair and the Hottentot in his jungle. That is the story of Jackman, the master of the Queen Victoria. He is modest, and doesn’t like to tell it, but it is true and he bears the reputation of being one of the most trustworthy seamen on the lakes. There is a cheer. The Southern Belle has come from her dock and is bearing away for the channel. It is a race. The deck hands, ship trimmers, cooks, waiters, stokers and engineers are all interested, and poke their heads over the gangways and cheer. The Belle has caught the Victoria with only seventeen pounds of steam. Up she comes, her diminutive paddles beating the water in a most impatient way. Now they are stem and stern. The captains salute each other. The small fry on the lower deck wave their hats. The Belle heaves ahead. She passes alongside, the distance of a pistol shot away. However, no one needs a pistol to try. It is exciting for a few minutes. The Belle shows her stern, smothered in flossy waves. It’s all over. The deck hand goes back to his seat on a barrel, the bar-keeper resumes the lever of the beer-engine, the hurdy-gurdy man strikes up the Last Rose of Summer, the Queen runs up alongside the wharf and we are at the Beach. The great dock fisheries were in animated operation, maids with sunburned noses, matrons of satisfactory proportions, men of all hues and sizes, and, boys of every variety, from fine cut to plug, were gazing over the pier-edge practising base deception on the graceful denizens of the water. Have you ever seen a girl fish? The Idle Spectator leaned against a spile on the wharf on Saturday and took in the whole show. She was a pretty, willowy girl, with large, lustrous, melting eyes. The man who was with her carried the worms. She took a line out of one pocket, a hook out of another, a float out of another, a piece of string out of another. Then she put a joint rod together. After she had it all put together, she discovered that she had not put the line through the eyes, so she unjointed it again. Then she fixed the float and made a cast. After about five minutes, she discovered that she had cast without bait. She called to the man and he came up submissively with a worm. As the worm writhed on the hook, she asked him if it hurt the little thing much. He answered that as he had never been a worm and had never been impaled in that way, he could not give an opinion on the subject. Then she made another cast, shook the reefs out of her dress, and began flirting with a man in a yacht hard by Just then she noticed that her float had disappeared. “Oh. Oh, Charlie, I’ve got one,” she cried. Then she gave her line a tug that would have snagged a stump. A fish flew straight in the air, to the utmost limit of the line. Then it fell with a flap upon the wharf, gasped a couple of times, and gave up the scaly ghost, no necessity for a club to kill her fish. Then she dropped the rod, clapped her hands, said it was a pretty, called all the other girls to look at it, and the Idle Spectator left them admiring the proportions of the monster. Meanwhile, Charlie put a new worm on, and went away with beer in his eye.

The piazza of the Ocean house and the seats on the front platform were filled with loungers and saunterers, getting fat and comfortable on the life-giving ozone which came to them on the lake breeze. Over the bowling alley the employees of the cotton mill, who had excurted thither early in the day, were enjoying a dance. The temperature of the room was high, but the boys and girls danced up and down with great activity. Above the sonorous notes of the Jumbo violin could be heard a little man with a big voice calling “for’ard an’ swing,” “for’ard again and dress,” “swing partners,” “Shassay right an’ left,” and other mysterious words, but which the assembly seemed to understand thoroughly. Out on the beach, young ladies with attractive hose were soaring skyward on the swings, while young men sat afar off ostensibly perusing newspapers, but in reality contemplating the landscape. Little children with their robes gathered high around them splashed along the sandy beach, while mammas and papas smiled approval. Oh for the abandon of youth!, sighed the Idle Spectator; oh for just one day'’ roll in the sand with the boys, to go home with gravel in the stockings and burrs in the hair, a fish in the pocket and a mud turtle on a string. As he turned homeward, a peewee perched on a lofty branch sang the requiem of the day, and that strange stillness which comes with the night was making itself apparent. Weary, and laden with the spoils of the day, the children trooped to the boat, baby carriages and baskets were safely stowed away, the lines were cast off and the precious cargo deposited on the James Street wharf. The moon came up over the city to blend its light with the flaring flambeaux of the market square peanut vendors, casting sparkling luster upon good and bad alike, upon the man who spoke of God’s goodness upon one corner, and upon the itinerant nostrum vendor upon the other.

Idle Spectator and Gardens in the City

Lovers of the Beautiful: Are Your Gardens and Windows as Beautiful as Your Neighbours.

The good people of this Ambitious city – the city of manufacturers and the citizens of the Manchester of Canada might have been surprised had they been at the Grand Trunk depot the other morning and heard it spoke of, and by a prominent American manufacturer, as the city of flower gardens. Yet, such is the case, and if any person would care to take a trip around the city and look at the residences they would form the same opinion, as the American manufacturer. Fancy flower gardening seems to be a hobby with a great many citizens, and anyone who is not more or less struck by the beauty of a well-laid out and properly attended flower garden is certainly a curiosity. At this particular time of the year, when all the conservatories have been robbed of their wealth, and the citizens to a corresponding extent relieved of their surplus cash, the city may well be said to be a large flower garden. To fully appreciate the beauty of the city, one must not take in the business portion, with its bustle and strife, whose men are too much occupied to think of flowers or anything of beauty except the beauty they see in amassing riches, but should take a quiet walk around the less busy streets, where the bustle and noise gives way as if soothed into quiet repose by the soft breeze playing among the leaves on the many rows of maples which line the streets and avenues. Take, for instance, Jackson street west, Main street, any of the avenues in the east, and many other streets. The leaves look fresh and green, and the merry clatter of the lawn mower is heard in all directions, trimming the lawns smooth and even, and making them look as if covered with a coat of velvet, while the busy sprinkler deals its showers of rain, making fresh and green and preventing the merciless sun from scorching and withering the grass and flowers. Standing at the corner of Jackson and Caroline streets, one might fancy himself in a modern garden of Eden. To the west is the residence of Bishop Fuller, surrounded by its beautifully laid out grounds, and the residence of Thomas Robertson, with its surroundings still beautiful, although undergoing extensive repairs, while at the east is the premises of W.E. Sanford with its handsome flower beds, rockeries and fountain. The lawns of Alex. McLagan and John Winer, Main street east, are also beautifully laid out and well kept. Market street, too, although leading direct into the business part of the city, has its places of beauty, the residence of J. B. Bagwell, on the corner of Park street, being surrounded and, half-hid, amid flowers and trees. Further west on Market street is a row of houses the residents of which, while decorating their own houses, do it in such a way as to make the row beautiful to behold, by the number and beauty of the flowers in its windows. The residence of Mrs. Jane Horsburg, No. 121, perhaps stands out more prominently than the rest for floral beauty. The residence of Myles Hunting has long been an attraction on account of the beauty and abundance of the flowers displayed in its windows. Concession street also has a large number of lawns and flower gardens, the residents seeming to be at variance with each other as to whose will look the best, while in every part of the city wherever there is a spare foot of ground in front of a neat house, it is sure to be adorned with its plot of flowers, which in almost every case may be taken as a type of character of the inhabitants, showing the love for home comforts and adornment, and a desire to keep up the beauty of the city, in some way making up for its want of public parks.

-      Appeared in the Hamilton Spectator  -  June 11, 1883

1884 - Cigars

"Smokes and Smoking : Something About the Cigar Trade of the City : The Number Manufactured and the Number Smoked – People Who Think They Are Judges – Some Knowing Talk”

       About 10 o’clock last evening, a Spectator reporter stood in a King street cigar store chatting with the proprietor. A tall and lanky youth dressed dandishly and sporting an eye glass and cane, came in and asked for some good cigars. The proprietor showed him a couple of boxes. The labels were similar and the only perceptible difference in the tobacco spikes was that one lot of cigars had paper bands around them, and the other had not. The youth smelled them both and asked the proprietor what they were worth. That gentleman indicated that the amount of national currency required to purchase the ones with the bands was 15 cents each, and the other ten cents. The youth smelled them again, and remarked that the expensive ones smelled to be the nicest, bought half a dozen of them and went out. “Now there’s a man,” said the proprietor, “who

                             DON’T KNOW THE DIFFERENCE                            

Between a good cigar and a bad one – and there are hundreds of other constant cigar smokers who imagine themselves good judges of tobacco, and who don’t know anything more about it than he does. Now those cigars are exactly the same. They are part of the same lot, made from the same batch of leaf, only somehow the bands were not put on these. They are both ten cent cigars, at least that is the regular price. When I catch a man who don’t know what he’s buying though, I don’t see any objection to pulling his leg a little.”

          “Does it take long to become a good judge of tobacco?”

          “Yes, it does. A man who has never smoked anything but fine goods has generally the most correct judgment; but take a man who has become accustomed to smoking inferior lines and he can’t tell the difference between a ten cent cigar and a 25-er, or between a very fine one and a fair one. I have cigars in stock that I sell for 10 cents that are equal to lots that cost double the money. There are plenty of men about town, though, who will buy the expensive cigars in preference to the others every time, thinking, naturally enough, that the expensive ones are the best. I’m speaking, understand, of imported cigars. People buy imported cigars                                                                BECAUSE THEY ARE       

Imported cigars, and not because they know the difference between them and non-imported goods. There are plenty of domestic cigars sold in the city for 5 cents that are equal, if not superior, to a big percentage of imported goods.”

          “Have you any idea of the extent of the sale and manufacture in the city?”

          “I have not. You will have to ask some manufacturer.”

          The reporter hunted up a leading manufacturer and asked him as to the extent of the trade.

          “Well, I can’t exactly say,” he said in answer. “I guess there are about twelve factories in the city, and they will give employment to say 100 – probably more – hands. By hands, I mean cigar makers, and don’t include office men, strippers, apprentices and others. These 100 men each make an average of 1,500 cigars a week, or 150,000 altogether. Multiply this by the number of weeks in the year and you have a grand total of

                         7,800, 000 CIGARS

manufactured in the city annually. How many of these are sold here? I guess about half of them, the balance going to Toronto, Montreal, London and lesser Canadian places. Lots of Hamilton cigars are shipped to Manitoba. I guess about two-thirds of the number made here are 5 cent cigars; the others are ten and a few fifteens. You know we Hamilton Manufacturers enjoy the reputation of making, as a rule, the best 5 cent cigars in the Dominion. There are very few cigars brought into the city from other Canadian places. Why? Well, you see the demand is all for local goods, and outsiders have no show. We buy the best tobacco we can get, purchasing from the wholesale leaf dealers through the States for the cheaper goods and getting finer qualities direct from Havana.”

          “Are there many imported cigars sold in the city?”

          “Yes, quite a number, but not so many as in other years. Home factories are now turning out better goods than formerly, and now they can make a far better domestic cigar for ten cents than can be imported for that money. The majority of those imported now are inferior goods, though there are still                                    

                           A CONSIDERABLE IMPORTATION

of the very fine and expensive goods to meet the demands of people who will have nothing else.”

          Another manufacturer estimated the total consumption of cigars during a year at upwards of the enormous number of 10,000,000, but others think that figure is too high. Speaking of cigars, he said : “It’s curious how the public taste runs. A while ago people would have nothing but cigars with light wrappers; now, the darker you get the wrappers the better you suit them. I must confess I like to see the dark wrappers myself. The color of it makes no difference in the quality of flavor of the cigar. The filling remains the same. The wrapper is made is made black by sweating. There are very few men who will smoke one brand constantly. They get tired of them, no matter how good they are and seek a change. The majority of the cigars are flavored, each dealer using his own particular flavor. Very few cigars are sold pure : that is, what I mean by that is, the original flavor of the tobacco  is changed by the flavoring extract used. On account of the fickleness of the public taste, very few dealers keep their brands up to the original high standard. They let them drop and get out the cigar under another name. This has a run for a while and then is superseded by another brand of probably the same make and same quality. I can name you four different brands of cigars sold in the city today, all of which are exactly the same, yet I have heard men declare that they would not smoke the one and speak warmly in praise of the other.”
  - Spectator    August 7, 1884

1883 - Albion Falls and Red Hill Valley

My Country Excursion: A Jaunt to Albion Falls: The Beauties of Scenery Around Hamilton – A Look at a Natural Gas Reservoir – The Lover’s Fearful Leap

I guess my friend Timmy and I broke the sanctity of the Sabbath all up yesterday if we are judged by the good Calvinistic standard; but I don’t believe the recording angel had made a black mark across his book opposite our names, because we were wise enough – or foolish enough – to take a trip on foot into the country yesterday morning to see nature in all her primeval loveliness and drink in heavenly inspiration with every breath of the glorious fresh air.

Tommy felt real good and religious when he stood under the shadow of a big oak tree and listened to the songs of the birds that flitted around us from twig to twig, and heard the plaintive chip of the “Bob White,” gazing the while with a sort of awe at the broad sheet of water as it dashed over the edge of the rock 200 feet above us and fell with a noise like ceaseless thunder upon the table rock at our feet, throwing up a million films of spray, glistening like strings of diamonds in the sun.

“Good,” said I gazing at him in ecstasy. “I feel as though I’d just been asked to say the Lord’s prayer backwards, and accomplished the feat without skipping a word.” It seemed to Tommy and I that the preacher we met driving along the road, his buggy wheels throwing up a dust which almost coated our shoes, was doing a great deal more than we to break the sanctity of the Sabbath.

Talk about beautiful scenery! Why, Tommy and I, when we started from the city hall at ten o’clock in the morning for Albion Mills, had no idea how gloriously beautiful the fields and woods and great rugged mountain would look on that bright June morning. We trudged along Main street east at a good swinging pace, the ozone filling me with such exhilaration that I could restrain my steps. But Tommy was an older tramp – I beg his pardon – tourist than I, and only the Sunday before he had walked out to Lake Medad, and he warned me that I had some miles to walk yet and was setting the pace too fast.

We turned off to the right after reaching the Bartonville tollgate, striking right toward the mountain, which at this point juts out in bold promontory. Tommy had an idea that the stream we were looking for wound through a ravine just the other side of this projecting rock, and so we trudged along the hard road, up hill, gaining new strength and better spirits all along the way. Tommy’s olfactory nerves were in good working order, and he is somewhat enthusiastic on the subject of the sweet briar, and every rod or two, he would stop and sniff in the air as though he were hungry for oxygen, and asked me if I didn’t smell sweetbriar, and if I didn’t think every farmer should be compelled by law to plant sweetbriar at intervals of fifteen feet along his fences. So, to oblige Tommy, and not to dampen his spirits any way, I would reply in a sort of evasive way, that there did not seem to be a pleasant perfume in the air, but that really I wasn’t well enough acquainted with farming to pass an opinion on the desirability of planting sweet briar as a food crop. Presently we came to what appeared to be the end of our journey in that direction, for a five-barred gate stood across the road, but Tommy scaled it, shouting to me to come on, and to my great joy, we stood before a farm house, the door of which was invitingly open. For by this time I was very warm and thirsty, and was inclined to welcome any reasonable excuse to rest. I wouldn’t have Tommy think for the world that I had tired already. So we halted a few minutes and asked for a drink of water. I at the same time devoutly hoping that the good farmer would think that the water with city chaps meant milk. But he didn’t, which led me to conclude in my own mind that the poor farmer had never had any opportunities, and that his education had been sadly neglected. Tommy said, placing his hand affectionately on his stomach, that there was an agreeable odour of fried ham about the place; but I got him away before he had time to commit himself. As we stalked across the field, taking advantage of the kind farmer’s permission to take the nearest cut to the stream, we tried to avoid, as much as possible, treading down the fall wheat, which was growing vigorously. Our path led down hill into the ravine now, and we skirted the fence for a while. The breeze played around our ears with a delicious coolness, and overhead the great branches of maple and oak stretched out, their luxuriant foliage giving a grateful shade, for it was now high noon. But we would have reached the stream much sooner had we not skirted that fence, for Tommy has another hobby - geology – and every yard or two, he would whip out a pocket microscope he always carries, pick up a rock from one of the heaps that lined the fence, and discourse to me learnedly as to the Niagara, Clinton and limestone formations. It was really wonderful to see how excited he would get over a bit of rock no larger than a man’s hand, but which he declared was full of fossils. After he had lent me his glass and I had looked through it at what appeared to be a lump of stone full of queer shaped indentations I ceased to wonder at his exclamations of delight, for I saw before me as plainly as though made in soft earth but yesterday, the beds of minute shells, with every line and hollow as sharply defined in that hard rock as though cut in wood with the finest engraving tool.

I wanted to see that Albion Mills creek principally because Tommy had aroused my curiosity by telling me that that water was of such a peculiar nature that he could light it with a match and it would burn. I could hardly believe this, but he had borrowed a few matches from the keeper of the hotel at the Delta, and as we went hopping along from stone to stone, sometimes clinging to an overhanging branch to make our chances of getting over the slippery stones more sure, often getting one foot in the water, he would stop for a moment at a place where the stream rushed by over a shallow and little side currents wandered off through the interstices of the rock, and form little pools eddying around some larger rock, which, he obligingly informed me, had been placed there during the glacial period (whatever that was), and gaze intently into the water. He was engaged thus when, just as I sprang on the bank behind him, Tommy exclaimed, “Now I’ll show you,” and stooping down, he lit a match and seemed to apply it to the surface of a little pool of water on which there were a few bubbles. “There’s your water on fire!” he shouted, and sure enough a little jet of flame did leap up from that stream two or three times and then die away in a second. The explanation of the phenomenon was simple enough. Tommy told me that all around the bed of that stream there were little gas wells, and then when we got to the falls, I should see more gas coming out of the solid rock than I ever saw burning in a Hamilton gas lamp on a dark, rainy night. Oh! But that was a beautiful place, that ravine. We had a hard time of it, jumping across logs, and from rock to rock, but we enjoyed it. Peeping out between two rocks embedded in the bank, their base washed by the stream, was a modest blue flower, the sight of which made my heart beat faster. “Why there’s a violet,” cried I, and Tommy answered, “Of course, there’s lots of them along here.” That flower brought to me memories of a dear old home in England, a massive stone house with the tender clinging ivy creeping up its walls and gables, the orchard in which the children loved to play, and, best of all, Annie’s little garden by the south wall – all her very own – which, from a little girl, she had tended so carefully, and where she grew the loveliest violets to be found in all the country side. We boys never went away to school in springtime but Annie pinned a little bunch of violets to our jackets, and which I am bound to say we carefully preserved till the flowers faded in the heat and dust of the road, and we flung them away looking for others on the morrow.

          Tommy still kept up his search for fossils, so that we were a long time getting to the falls, but when I saw the glorious beauty of the spot I felt amply repaid for my long walk. Imagine if you can, an immense amphitheatre, the slopes of which are covered with verdure and trees just leafing out in all the glory of springtime. One segment of the circle shall be solid rock towering up 200 feet, and broken once or twice into tables of stone on which the water, rushing over the top, falls, dashes into spray, and gathering new force again pours down into the bottom of the creek bed, amid immense boulders that are worn as smooth as ivory by the action of the water. Then the stream goes flashing along through the one opening in the amphitheatre’s slopes, through sylvan glades to refresh weary cattle in the fields below.

          And here again the hand of man has interfered to mar the perfect beauty of the scene, for a most prosaic flour mill has been built right on the edge of the ravine, and at of the water which should go over the falls is diverted from its course into a mill race, and made to do plebeian duty in turning a turbine wheel to grind flour. “Now,” said Tommy, climbing up the steep rock beside the fall, “come up here and I’ll show you the place where a jet of gas has been burning for twenty years.” So I climbed away after him, and there in a great fissure in the rock, I beheld a very matter of fact gas pipe, one end of which was inserted in the rock and the other was to be found somewhere in the mill. “Oh,” said Tommy somewhat disappointed, “things have changed since I was here last, But, come I’ll show you the gas yet,” and inside the mill we found four very large gas jets burning away at mid-day, the gas coming through the pipe from the rock below. While we were gazing at this curiosity, a roughly dressed man passed us, and without even passing the time of day went on down the cliff. He looked like a plowboy, and after he had gone, and I had wondered whether he could have anything to do with the mill, I thought no more about him. Soon after, Tommy and I had gone a short distance around the fall and on the road, we ere looking down into the gorge at the spot made famous by the Lover’s Leap, when an exclamation from my companion rather startled me. “Why there’s that man we saw at the mill at the foot of the fall – he’s sketching.” So my plowboy turned out to be an artist, and that he was an artist was proven by the position he took to make a sketch of the falls. He placed his sketching material on a big rock at the side of the stream, which served him as an easel, and faced the fall, a large tree shading him from the sun. We left him there, looking like a veritable pygmy at that depth, working away, and Tommy began to show me just where the unfortunate girl had taken her fatal leap. It happened 60 years ago. The young lady had fallen desperately in love with a young farmer in the neighbourhood, who did not requite her affection, but actually married another girl. The poor Jane couldn’t endure, and walking out with a young lady companion one morning, without saying a word, she jumped over the precipice and disappeared from view. Some men who were working in the ravine saw her fall, and said that as the unfortunate girl went down, her clothes formed a parachute and were letting her down slowly, when she clasped her dress about her and went down on the rocks like a shot. She lived but an hour afterwards and never spoke again. It was said that the son of the man she loved was once a detective in this city. Tommy and I called on Mr. Cook, who lives near the falls, and after partaking of his hospitality so generously tendered, we wended our homeward way, paying a flying visit to Stoney Creek, and arrived home about five o’clock p.m., mind the better every way for our jaunt, though I don’t mind saying now, though I hope Tommy won’t hear of it, that I was so tired that I just sat down and wrote this little sketch to rest myself. Reader, I hope you didn’t feel as tired as I did.

Jake.

1883 - Idle Spectator Begins Writing Career

Spectator June 11 1883

My Girl Gets Back on Him

“Say, my girl’s got back on me,” said the new reporter with the sad moustache and the Oscar Wilde hair, coming into the editorial rooms and interrupting the managing editor in an editorial on the grand display of dudology – which, by the way, is currently supposed to be the missing link so long sought after by Charles Darwin – at the band concert the other evening, “ gone clean back on me and gone off with another fellow. “My heart is broke.”

“That’s all right,” responded the managing editor, “but that does not explain your absence from this office for the last few weeks. Where have you been ? I want you to understand that this thing must cease, cease right now, or we shall be compelled to substitute some other mighty intellect for yours. You’re kind of smart, you know; you have a pretty wit, you’re brilliant in epigram, your humour is immense, your satire keen, and your sarcasm as withering as an autumn leaf; but you don’t attend to your work right, and unless you brace up we shall be compelled in the classic language of the Evening Times to give you the grand bounce.

“This will not occur again,” said the aspirant for journalistic honours, “ but I’ve been feeling so bad over my girl’s cruel desertion of me that it’s made me quite sick. Have you ever known what it is to love, and to love unrequitably; to waste all the tender attractions of a young and yearning heart upon an object that cared naught for its joy or its sorrow?”

    “Yes, I’ve been there,” said the managing editor feelingly, as thoughts of a recent breach of promise case in which he had played one of the principal parts, flashed across his mind, “ I have been there and I can sympathise with you. Excuse this tear. But how did it happen? Give me a pointer on the row.”

    “Don’t you give me away and I’ll tell you all about it. You see I’ve been going with that girl for a long while and I’m pretty badly mashed upon her – stuck for all I’m worth, as you might say. Soon after we first commenced, keeping steady company, I taught her how to smoke cigarettes. And I you it was fine. We’d stroll up and down some of the fine avenues smoking and she’d call me ‘old man’ and ‘old fellow’ and say I was a ‘fine old card’, just like one fellow ‘ud say to another.

    “Well, just before we had this row, she sent me a note saying: “ My dear Jim – she always calls me Jim because it ain’t my name – “when night begins to throw her sable mantle over the earth and pin it with a star, meet me sure. Something very, very important. Mind ten o’clock. Till then farewell.” I went to see her of course, and as I had no cigarettes I gave her a cigar that some fellow had brought me down town through the day. Well, sir, the darn thing had powder in it and it went off with a bang, an’ you’d a gone right off and died if you’d a gone right off and died if you’d seen the circus that girl went through. She turned a summersault and fell over the sidewalk an’ I helped her up and she blamed me for it, and said I’d put up the job on her an’ now she wont speak to me. She’s going with a blooming red-headed dude now with little sprouts of red hair on his face that look like the electric light – a horseshoe over the mouth and half a one on each cheek. Say, I’m agoin’ to get square on that fellow if it takes me a year. Have you got room for a conundrum?”

    “Yes, spit it out. Conundrums are awfully discouraging, and I noticed since you commenced giving them to me that the number of deaths in Hamilton has increased wonderfully. But I guess we can stand another.”

    “What is the remarkable dead-head pass on record.

        “ I give up. Better ask Spackman, he’s a –“

    “ Oh never mind him. Thermopylae.”

    “That’s not so bad. Keep ‘em up to that standard and you’ll have a brilliant future before you yet,” and the managing editor settled down to his editorial while the new reporter with the sad moustache and the Oscar Wilde hair went gaily out to hunt for news.”