of military salute-for here the laws of society do not require you to take off your hat in winter-and puzzle for a moment or two who they can be, though their faces are familiar. Then I remember; but she looks so different in her furs, and the beard which he allows to grow every winter and shaves off every spring works such a transformation, that it requires a mental effort to rearrange one's friends here from season to season. For a long time after I came to Canada, I could not rid myself of the idea that in the winter it was peopled with millionaires. In England we are accustomed to associate the idea of furs with the wealthier classes exclusively, and here every shopgirl, in her fur coat and coquettish little cap, looks like an heiress, and every business man like a Russian diplomat or a Jew financier. After a year or so I became accustomed to it, and am now critical on the subject, being able to distinguish different kinds of fur at a glance.

There is a quick scurry along the pavement at my feet, and a small boy whirls by with a whoop, muffled up to his eyes, and seated on an old soap-box ingeniously fitted with runners, the whole equipage being drawn by a half-bred collie, who is barking vigorously, and evidently enjoying himself as much as his master. In a minute or two he meets a rival, and then his canine nature asserts itself, and the two disappear in a cloud of snow, fighting furiously, while the driver stands on his head with his little moc

casins kicking in the air. However, nobody is hurt, and the passers-by hardly turn their heads. Young Canada in winter is a fascinating study. Here come two squat little figures, as broad as they are long, apparently exactly the same size, about two feet nine by two feet nine. In their small buffalo coats and otter caps they look for all the world like twin bear-cubs. One of them joyously pushes the other over in the snow and rolls on the top of him.

Then they jump up

and dust themselves, for the snow is as fine and dry as the sand above high-water mark, and their mother has no cause for anxiety about damp clothes.

As soon as I enter the club I am greeted by a pleasant warmth from within. The long low dining-room has a bright fire burning in the grate, more for the sake of appearance and association than for any real use, because the thermometer (there is one hung in nearly every room) shows that the temperature is nearly 70° Fahr. In fact, it takes an Englishman longer to get acclimatised to the heat indoors than to the opposite extreme outside. But still, after a year or two he will not find 70° excessive, for one consumes carbon very quickly in the open air, between the latter end of December and the beginning of April. The hotels are probably heated several degrees higher than this. After breakfast I have to "go down town" to see a lawyer on business. Before I have been in his office five minutes I take off all my

furs, and glance surreptitiously at his thermometer, which marks 80°. He catches the look, and remarks apologetically that it is a little oppressive. Here I spend an hour, sweltering and uncomfortable, and am glad to take my leave. Three doors down the street is a drug-store with a long thermometer hung outside, which, as I note in passing, registers 40° below zero. A difference of 120° in the time it takes to walk down a short flight of stairs and pass through a couple of swingdoors! Small wonder that I marvel how human lungs can stand it; and yet they can, for the air is as brisk and exhilarating as champagne. Then I jump on to a passing car and am whirled off to the big hotel. The car is comfortable, as the conductor takes good care to keep the stove going, and the constant ingress and egress of passengers ensures a regular supply of fresh air. Overhead there is a perfect network of wires; for nearly all the offices, and most of the private houses, are connected with the telephone service, and electric lighting is in use everywhere. The wires hum and twang like banjo-strings in the intense frost. The hotel is terribly over-heated to my idea, but other people don't seem to mind it. In walking down the long carpeted corridors I accidentally touch a painted iron pillar with my bare hand-and then I jump and say things. Not that the pillar is hot, but that I have been storing electricity in this dry air till I am like a walking accumulator, and there

was a crack like the striking of a wax vesta, and a small blue spark. Sometimes the children will join hands, and run down these passages, shuffling their feet on the carpet as they go, and then light a gas-jet with the tips of their fingers. A traveller's tale, you say? well, I thought so myself-till I saw it done. Once, some years ago, I was in bed with an attack of 'grippe," and a temperature of about 105°. The doctor, who was in a hurry, had run up the carpeted stairs without taking off his fur coat, so that when he put his fingers on my wrist I felt as if I had been lashed with a whip, and even he started back with a gasp.

66

After leaving the hotel I continue my way on foot along the main street towards the river. There are no birds to be seen except a few sparrows, and even they are perched under the eaves, little hunched-up balls of staring feathers, trying to look as if they were in the fashion, and had on their winter coats too. They are a new importation, and it is only their indomitable pluck that enables them to thrive. A few years ago they were unknown, and even now, after a really cold "snap," you see their little dead bodies lying where they dropped, and frozen as hard as bullets. The great law of selection works quickly here, but still nature is kind to her children. I once had two fox - terrier pups, brother and sister, from the same litter. During the first winter of their existence nothing would tempt the bitch out of doors, while the dog fairly revelled in the snow.

At the end of a year the difference in the thickness of their coats was very marked. On the dog's back the hair grew so close that it was hardly possible, by rubbing it the wrong way, to distinguish the pink skin beneath. His sister's coat was normal. There is no insect life of any kind—not a fly to be seen, even in the kitchens. Crossing the street, I pass a butcher's shop, with the carcass of a slain pig sprawling hideously in the doorway, erect on his four frozen legs, which are extended at unnatural angles-a ghastly object, white, and cold, and naked. A little farther on is a fishmonger, the window full of white-fish from the great lakes to the north. They have been forcibly "yanked" out by Indians and half-breeds through holes in the ice, and frozen as stiff as walking - sticks before they have fairly quitted their native element.

When I first came out here my mental picture of a frozen river was a little vague. I think I had a notion that it was one long sheet of clear ice, through which you could dimly descry the fish swimming slowly, and staring up at you with pathetic eyes, something that reminded you of a vast aquarium underneath your feet, or the practical joke that King Solomon played on the Queen of Sheba, according to the pages of the Koran. I forgot the snow, you The real thing is a little disappointing, merely a long white ribbon between snowclad banks. There is probably a thickness of about five feet of solid ice below you, and

see.

when you bethink yourself that eighteen inches will bear a railway train, you venture on without feeling particularly nervous. It is different in the spring, though. About the middle of April the ice will begin to break up, and the great floes will come crashing and sweeping down the current, breaking into a sudden sparkle of silver where their edges grind together, or playing a mad leap-frog in their frantic efforts to reach the great lakes before their doom is on them, and they are gone. But to-day the river is still enough, though even now we hear occasionally sudden crack like the report of a gun, the result of intense cold, and in no way a sign of disintegration.

:

On the farther bank is a long, low, wooden building, which I enter without the formality of knocking. Inside all is life and bustle, and my ears are greeted with a "confusion of tongues that it would be hard to match elsewhere the eager chatter of the "habitant," the cultivated English of the university and public - school man, the broad "kailyard" of the Highland farmer-ay, even the guttural tones of the Red Indian. Through it all a strange vibrating roar, which never ceases and has a queer music of its own-the ring of the curling-stones. The floor is of beautiful clear ice, every speck of snow being constantly swept clean by those busy brooms. The men are quaint figures, clad in short thick coats of pilot-cloth, or buckskin, or shaggy buffalo, heavy tweed

trousers, and moccasins or overshoes. Nearly all of them wear Tam o' Shanters, as a tribute of respect to the nationality of the game; but figure to yourself a Blackfoot Indian in a Tam o' Shanter! And yet there is a rink here composed entirely of full-blooded Redskins that would make some of your very best men work hard to beat it. I have never seen any curling in the old country; but I fancy you would be sore put to it to pick out a team that could tackle our best men here. You see our season is longer, and we get more practice. Running down between the rinks are long planks, on which stand the spectators, almost as much excited as the players themselves. One end of the long barn is glazed across, and behind the glass are more spectators and more players, the latter busily engaged in changing their outdoor gear by the stove. But standing about is cold work, even when you have a plank between your feet and the ice, so that I do not linger long after delivering my message, and retrace my steps towards the town. There is one feature of the scenery that even now comes on me with a sort of surprise, the deep intense blue of the cloudless sky, a blue that is more suggestive of Italy and the Mediterranean than of a wide waste of snow. Some day when I have “made my pile," and am as rich as Fortunio, I will build me a lordly wintergarden, roofed in with glass, and I will stock it with tropical plants, and birds, and a beehive with real live bees. Then I

will bask therein, like Théophile Gautier's hero, and gaze at the sky, and dream that I am in a land of eternal summer. Meanwhile I am anxious to get back to lunch.

The club is crowded to-day, for the "bonspiel" is on, and the curlers and their friends have been pouring into town for the week, so that the lavatory walls are decorated with brooms, and the hat-pegs with "Tammies." The talk is of "in-turns" and "out-turns,' of "wicks" and "tee-weights," of "skips" and "leads"-you would think the whole city was curling. Their appetites are enormous, and the fare is good, for game of all sorts can be frozen early in the winter, and will keep till the following spring. Canvasback duck can be bought here in the fall for 1s. 2d. apiece,-in New York you would pay 16s. or 17s. If you are a sportsman, you can go out and shoot them for yourself within a few miles. The prairie chicken, a species of grouse, is as plentiful as iniquitous system of legislation will permit, and a bag of snipe running into three figures is not uncommon. Moose, too, and wapiti, can be killed in a journey of a few hours from where we are sitting.

an

My stay in town is short, so I have to do a good deal of running about from one office to another, and, as it is impossible to sit in a room for any length of time in furs and overshoes, and equally impossible to walk a hundred yards without them, each separate visit entails a good deal of dressing and un

dressing. Later on I have a call or two to pay; but afternoon teas run in pretty much the same routine here as at home. It is noticeable, however, that the fair sex manage to walk about the streets on the coldest days with ordinary hats, and, by some mysterious dispensation of Providence, their ears never seem to freeze. It may be owing to their long hair; but certainly in weather when every man you meet wears fur cap,-from the astrakhan or sea-otter of the bank - manager down to the sheepskin headgear of the last Galician immigrant,-you will meet a daintily dressed damsel tripping along with a mere bunch of silk and feathers perched on her glossy curls.

After dinner, instead of going to the theatre, we make up a party to the big skating-rink. This is an enormous building, with a sheet of ice some 200 feet by 80 feet, and sitting accommodation for 2000 or 3000 people. There is an important hockey-match on to-night, and, consequently, every seat is taken, and you are lucky to find standing room. Hockey here is as superior to the ordinary game as is polo at Hurlingham to that of Little Pedlington. The great hall is brilliantly lit up with electric light, and the applause that greets every good stroke is fairly deafening, all the more so because one's feet get cold, and violent stamping promotes circulation. The two opposing teams contain among them some of the finest skaters in the world,

youths who have been trained to the sport from early boyhood, and who know every trick and turn of the game. After an hour or so of this you return to the club for a quiet smoke, "and so to bed."

The sky at night is a deep dark blue, and the stars are like dropping balls of fire, so close that they seem to be almost within reach. The Northern Lights look as if a titanic paintbrush had been dipped in phosphorescent flame and drawn in great bold strokes across the heavens. As you pass the electric lamps you see very fine particles of snow caught up by the wind, and glittering high in the air like diamonds. But it is a cold night, and you are not sorry to get into your room. First of all, you take a blanket or so from the bed, for there are people in Canada who sleep all the year round with only a sheet over them, to such a pitch of perfection have they brought the heating of their rooms. After you have tucked yourself in, the stillness of the night is broken occasionally by a report like a cannon. Have you ever been inside a bathing-machine when a mischievous boy threw a stone at it? And, if so, do you remember how you jumped? When the walls of a wooden house crack in the bitter cold, the effect is similar, only magnified. But you know what it means here, so you only draw the clothes closer round you, thankful that you are snug and warm. And so good night.