I don't know whether you know Mariposa. If not, it is of no
consequence, for if you know Canada at all, you are probably well
acquainted with a dozen towns just like it.
There it lies in the sunlight, sloping up from the little lake that
spreads out at the foot of the hillside on which the town is built.
There is a wharf beside the lake, and lying alongside of it a steamer
that is tied to the wharf with two ropes of about the same size as
they use on the Lusitania. The steamer goes nowhere in particular,
for the lake is landlocked and there is no navigation for the
Mariposa Belle except to "run trips" on the first of July and the
Queen's Birthday, and to take excursions of the Knights of Pythias
and the Sons of Temperance to and from the Local Option Townships.
In point of geography the lake is called Lake Wissanotti and the
river running out of it the Ossawippi, just as the main street of
Mariposa is called Missinaba Street and the county Missinaba County.
But these names do not really matter. Nobody uses them. People simply
speak of the "lake" and the "river" and the "main street," much in
the same way as they always call the Continental Hotel, "Pete
Robinson's" and the Pharmaceutical Hall, "Eliot's Drug Store." But I
suppose this is just the same in every one else's town as in mine, so
I need lay no stress on it.
The town, I say, has one broad street that runs up from the lake,
commonly called the Main Street. There is no doubt about its width.
When Mariposa was laid out there was none of that shortsightedness
which is seen in the cramped dimensions of Wall Street and
Piccadilly. Missinaba Street is so wide that if you were to roll Jeff
Thorpe's barber shop over on its face it wouldn't reach half way
across. Up and down the Main Street are telegraph poles of cedar of
colossal thickness, standing at a variety of angles and carrying
rather more wires than are commonly seen at a transatlantic cable
station.
On the Main Street itself are a number of buildings of
extraordinary importance,--Smith's Hotel and the Continental and the
Mariposa House, and the two banks (the Commercial and the Exchange),
to say nothing of McCarthy's Block (erected in 1878), and Glover's
Hardware Store with the Oddfellows' Hall above it. Then on the "cross"
street that intersects Missinaba Street at the main corner there is
the Post Office and the Fire Hall and the Young Men's Christian
Association and the office of the Mariposa Newspacket,--in fact, to
the eye of discernment a perfect jostle of public institutions
comparable only to Threadneedle Street or Lower Broadway. On all the
side streets there are maple trees and broad sidewalks, trim gardens
with upright calla lilies, houses with verandahs, which are here and
there being replaced by residences with piazzas.
To the careless eye the scene on the Main Street of a summer
afternoon is one of deep and unbroken peace. The empty street sleeps
in the sunshine. There is a horse and buggy tied to the hitching post
in front of Glover's hardware store. There is, usually and commonly,
the burly figure of Mr. Smith, proprietor of Smith's Hotel, standing
in his chequered waistcoat on the steps of his hostelry, and perhaps,
further up the street, Lawyer Macartney going for his afternoon mail,
or the Rev. Mr. Drone, the Rural Dean of the Church of England
Church, going home to get his fishing rod after a mothers' auxiliary
meeting.
But this quiet is mere appearance. In reality, and to those who
know it, the place is a perfect hive of activity. Why, at Netley's
butcher shop (established in 1882) there are no less than four men
working on the sausage machines in the basement; at the Newspacket
office there are as many more job-printing; there is a long distance
telephone with four distracting girls on high stools wearing steel
caps and talking incessantly; in the offices in McCarthy's block are
dentists and lawyers with their coats off, ready to work at any
moment; and from the big planing factory down beside the lake where
the railroad siding is, you may hear all through the hours of the
summer afternoon the long-drawn music of the running saw.
Busy--well, I should think so! Ask any of its inhabitants if
Mariposa isn't a busy, hustling, thriving town. Ask Mullins, the
manager of the Exchange Bank, who comes hustling over to his office
from the Mariposa House every day at 10.30 and has scarcely time all
morning to go out and take a drink with the manager of the Commercial;
or ask--well, for the matter of that, ask any of them if they ever
knew a more rushing go-a-head town than Mariposa.
Of course if you come to the place fresh from New York, you are
deceived. Your standard of vision is all astray, You do think the
place is quiet. You do imagine that Mr. Smith is asleep merely
because he closes his eyes as he stands. But live in Mariposa for six
months or a year and then you will begin to understand it better; the
buildings get higher and higher; the Mariposa House grows more and
more luxurious; McCarthy's block towers to the sky; the 'buses roar
and hum to the station; the trains shriek; the traffic multiplies;
the people move faster and faster; a dense crowd swirls to and fro in
the post-office and the five and ten cent store--and amusements!
well, now! lacrosse, baseball, excursions, dances, the Fireman's Ball
every winter and the Catholic picnic every summer; and music--the
town band in the park every Wednesday evening, and the Oddfellows'
brass band on the street every other Friday; the Mariposa Quartette,
the Salvation Army--why, after a few months' residence you begin to
realize that the place is a mere mad round of gaiety.
In point of population, if one must come down to figures, the
Canadian census puts the numbers every time at something round five
thousand. But it is very generally understood in Mariposa that the
census is largely the outcome of malicious jealousy. It is usual that
after the census the editor of the Mariposa Newspacket makes a
careful reestimate (based on the data of relative non-payment of
subscriptions), and brings the population up to 6,000. After that the
Mariposa Times-Herald makes an estimate that runs the figures up to
6,500. Then Mr. Gingham, the undertaker, who collects the vital
statistics for the provincial government, makes an estimate from the
number of what he calls the "demised" as compared with the less
interesting persons who are still alive, and brings the population to
7,000. After that somebody else works it out that it's 7,500; then
the man behind the bar of the Mariposa House offers to bet the whole
room that there are 9,000 people in Mariposa. That settles it, and
the population is well on the way to 10,000, when down swoops the
federal census taker on his next round and the town has to begin all
over again.
Still, it is a thriving town and there is no doubt of it. Even the
transcontinental railways, as any townsman will tell you, run through
Mariposa. It is true that the trains mostly go through at night and
don't stop. But in the wakeful silence of the summer night you may
hear the long whistle of the through train for the west as it tears
through Mariposa, rattling over the switches and past the semaphores
and ending in a long, sullen roar as it takes the trestle bridge over
the Ossawippi. Or, better still, on a winter evening about eight
o'clock you will see the long row of the Pullmans and diners of the
night express going north to the mining country, the windows flashing
with brilliant light, and within them a vista of cut glass and
snow-white table linen, smiling negroes and millionaires with napkins
at their chins whirling past in the driving snowstorm.
I can tell you the people of Mariposa are proud of the trains, even
if they don't stop! The joy of being on the main line lifts the
Mariposa people above the level of their neighbours in such places as
Tecumseh and Nichols Corners into the cosmopolitan atmosphere of
through traffic and the larger life. Of course, they have their own
train, too--the Mariposa Local, made up right there in the station
yard, and running south to the city a hundred miles away. That, of
course, is a real train, with a box stove on end in the passenger
car, fed with cordwood upside down, and with seventeen flat cars of
pine lumber set between the passenger car and the locomotive so as to
give the train its full impact when shunting.
Outside of Mariposa there are farms that begin well but get thinner
and meaner as you go on, and end sooner or later in bush and swamp
and the rock of the north country. And beyond that again, as the
background of it all, though it's far away, you are somehow aware of
the great pine woods of the lumber country reaching endlessly into
the north.
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