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Lorsque le document est trop grand pour ttra reproduit en un seul cliche, il est filma a partir de Tangle supdrieur geuche, de geuche * droits, at de haut an b^i, an prenant le nombre d'Imegee necesaeire. Lea diagrammea suivanis illustrent le methode. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 MKiooon moivnoH mr autr (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 3) U M |2J IZ2 g la izo 11.8 1.6 1IU CM W«>.i StTMl W oehw t li. Nn rorti t.«OB USA (7tl) .•] - 03(O - PhMM (7ta) 2W - SMa - Fn THE ILLUMINATION OP JOSEPH KEELER:1,°'^ OR ON, TO THE LANDI »»™»H. B.IC11M.A, M. Boaroic. Stim. Rr^7S7 rr CorrwoHTED m the United States or Ahbbica AMD Canada, I91A, CONTENTS CRAFTMB FAOB I. Halcyon D»ya on Prciqu' hie Bay j II. High Ancestry of the Keeler Family .... 7 in. Hi.tory of Early SetUement at the Carrying !•••« . 11 IV. Joseph Keeler Visit, the Home of Hi«AncMtor. U V. Official Report to Family on Paternal Gen- e«logy ]g VI. Discussion on Causes of High Prices, with Results ai VII. Joseph Keeler, Student of Early Canadian History j^ Vm. When Upper Canada Became the Dominant Partner ,. IX. The Heir of the Keelers under a Social Cloud.. 35 X. The Professor as a Student of Canadian Economics * I XI. Joseph Keeler Recalls Commercial and Politic J Events of Forty Years 47 Xn. The Btit of John Keeler from Frenzied Finance «S Xni. Rural DepopuUtion and Urban Overpop- ulation -_ XIV. The Stress of Society Functions Has Unforti- nate Results jj XV. The Problem of High Prices Analysed .. . 67 XVI. Mr. Joseph Keeler Turns Farmer 73 Xm The Legal Evolution of an Agriculturist... 81 XVm. Halcyon Days Have Come Again Down on the Lake Shore a- XIX. The Philosopher's Stone Discovered gg FOREWOBD I h«v« TMd With km inU . Dr. Brvw'i .n.«.~ -^ ing cTUta ^oUl ™, genomic . .«*UW tft^t tt" loundQr cono«wd. In the pmence o( the mort awful Z^ m^P-fon today, drawing the children of the oriZu^ g~.t. away from the Und «.d into the citie.7wSchl^ "^ «em to po«» an almort im^plicable a tZfcL For «,me year. I>r. B^.* ha. been a careful rtudB^ nwl d^opuUtion „d. not content with merely ob«rving pLn^ ena.ha.MnghttoertimateandtocrjtroIthem. ^'^"""'^ mteerting data of popuUUon. overpopuUtion, deoooulati^ May thi. Uttle volume ' dte to a clo«r .tudy of the* orob. ta«. m«^ a thoughtful person both ;„ the S-^oTaH b ^ Umted Sut«. for the «me problem, .„ corfr^tin^ ^^ people, and are found on both dde. of the line. "°« "" W. T. Stay -:i, Bo«ON. Mm., May l.^m"*"^ ''^^ "^ ^ "^W PREFACE TU» ii • (torjr written with ■ Mnitc piupon. The pj»noinenon b«hic forced at thii moment upon the .tten- Uoo of . popuUtion of 10O.000.00O in the United SUfiS C«»d., pc«e«ln, dmoet iUimiUbl. ««„ of whnt one hZ *»dyem ,y wm mortly virgin nil. finding itKlf KtuJIy importing foodtuff. .t high pricey mu.t ineviubly c«^Z^ »«u.n.ly conc«ned in the he Jth. pro.perity. ,nd the«>fo«te the h.pp.neM of the people, to «ek -riourii. for .ucHX." During the pMtde«de. with. «rie. of «. of .ucce«iv.ly ^^ "W and the influx of »me 1. 0,000 immig,™^ l«gely of the working cU«e., there h« been witn«T„ •gpegation of people in the urban centrei of the United SUtee i^e the totjl mcrew in the number of perwn. culSva ■' toe Und haa been rektively amall. .J^ ""'.T^/ «ilway conatruction, of induatrial eipan«on «d of city buddmg have given tempo«,y employment ti^rk- men; whUe the owortunitie. for the centrali«Kl inveatment cl capital have suited m the development of ^wculaUve ente,. pnae. and m the diversion of both public attention and private ^.tal from the true baai. of aU w«lth, the cultivation of tto The inevitable outcome of th-^ Kveral combined cau«. i. efcci., whKh. though unpleaaant and diatreMing to many, wiU not have been without «dutary and beneficial reault. a they aerve to turn auch again toward thoae ewential virtue, and ^iJt^u^"' *"" "" ***" "»ooi«ted with .ucce«ful „f Tlltu "" '"• °"^° °' ^' "*" «"* ""t .ubatantW citiaen. of both countries lewlen in induatrij enterpriae. «id in the viB Pnfact •pplicatwn of acientifio knowledge, may be directed through tte penual of thia itoiy to the imperatixp mitional need for their active interest and practical intervention in the proUem of the reconstruction ptinsd this da;, "tamsph Keeler, aon of Joseph Keder and Maiy Peten Keeler." The article, proceeding, had gone on with a popular account of the other settlers on Presqu'Isle Bay in Northumberland County, among whom were Peters, Simpsons. Rogers, Wards, Bumhams, Gibsons and others, and told of how in 1803 a sur- vey of the now village of Brighton had been made, and of how lots had been taken up by a number of these people, the Gov- ernment intending to make it the town of Newcastle and county I « The Ittumituium qf Jowph KeeUr, Eiq. ««t"'« of the race two dau^ter, proudly lending their elegant support to the felt a seme of unreality in his environment anu. yet more m zx^r*^ r.T •" "'"•='' '^ g-'t-graiST;" the chromcler and of whom hi, father h«i told him, but who tte oM ^ ^r° ''"* "' ''"""^** "'*'"'"y- He ^ee^ed to J« the old lady „ttmg m her ,ilk dress and h«e cap. rehearsh^ Balcyon Dayt on Praqu' IiU Bay S the «toiy to his father's cousin, her favourite granddaughter, of the dangers from the Yanlcee rebels and from the Indians; of the fears of invasion and the loss of her father's small capital; of the journeying as a young girl up the rapids of the St. Law- rence, the tugging at the ropes by the line-men on the shore, the poUng of the boats, and the struggling against the rocks and the currents in the river. Then, too, she told of the night camps at the small bindings along the upper river reaches, the passing of the Thousand Islands, and at last their stay at Cat- araqui, where were the Land Office and the Depot for govern- ment supplies. Their final trip up the beautiful Bay of Quints, the crossing of the Carrying Place to Wellers' Bay and the final location on their allotment beyond the Bay and Presqu'- Isle Point, were all depicted in glowing, if homely, language. As she told of those early years, when the house was at times without flour and of the occasion when Captain Keeler had gone with several othe- to the mill at Napanee, with their small grist of wheat, and were delayed by stormy weather and a breakdown at the mill, and of how during the weary waiting, an Indian had one day paddled his canoe to the shore and ask«l for bread, the grandmother's eyes had filled at the recollection of how, when she had bu-st into tears, telling by signs as best she could of how she had no food, and her children were starv- ing, the Indian had turned and said, "You very good squaw," ' and going to his canoe, tossed a Urge sahnon onto the sandy shore and then paddled away. Then came tales of brightening days, when there were hrger clearings, and the virgin soil gave abundant crops; when, as her boys were growing up, the waters of the kdce and the rice marshes of the Bay gave to their spears and guns abundant fish and game. TTie salmon filled the creeks in spawning time, and the waters of the Bay swarmed with trout and whitefish, maskinonge and pickerel; the black duck, the mallard, and teal darkened the waters at early morning, and in springtmie the sun was shaded and the trees even broken down by the flocks of purple-breasted wild pigeons. The autumn brought in the hunting season; the deer, which sometimes had become a nui- sance coming into the wheat-fields, now supplied the winter larder with many a haunch of venison. The chronicles retold. ill ill * Tk, lUumituOion qf JoKph Keehr. E,q. M^t. Which .tnuided on P««,u'U, Pobt in the .utunm of !«« ««. approached the «=hoone, and «tit onfi" 'rd*^"^ 1^"^" '"■" ""• '••'"^'' »^"'- ""'--K .wayTlt: But the weirdest of all her ■tones wu ffc.t „» .1. i ft-,u-I,le Point of the -hooner ™;:^^:^th Ton*^ :an"':r:tt^„^i^'ri ^'^-^t.rf'.^^^r^at^ iSt«fte John T- """"" '^"''"'- ^^°«" McDon^fu^ . •avocate, John Stegman, surveyor, Mr Georw fj„»^ i-jr mU,p,eter,WRuggle,.EsJjohnkr:ott.br;irt^ pruoner. and Captain P„ton and five of . cieT Th^ Thl hjd started out f „„ To«.„to on Sund.; erninTSctCT with a brisk northwest wind- had call«) in tfc "=".■*' '• O^wa to take on witnes«» ^^t^ttvZ ht w^'Zn:: tarn Peters and others fearing for her hurried away to the Poio? Zt^ ^'^'7 ^-"'"'I'-SPeedy-topoXbu^rhrrs! ^pewed in the darkness during the height of the storm ^yTtirS' ""1 "*" i.' '"" " '"^ °' the schler^but ta The stoiy. tragic as it was. ,.a, . natural one and would Bakym Doyt on Pntqu' Irit Bay s have K ranwined, except for iti myiterioui lequel. A short tunebefore the tngedy, it h«l happened that Cptain SeUack of Pr»qu' ble had been up to Niagara with a load of goods from Kingston and on his return on a sweet summer day the wmd was luUed to a cahn, the sailors lounging about on deck, when one suddenly saw something dark and strange beneath the smooth glistening Uke surface. The captain was appri«d, and, takmg the ship's yawl of the "Lady Murray," went back with the men and located a large rock just beneath the water Next day he, with Captain Paxton of the Government schooner "Speedy," took boats and, by the points taken before, located the sunken rock, »»rce three feet beneath the surface, at some four miles out from shore. The rock was some forty feet square and strangely had on every side some fifty fathoms of water Captain Paxton caiefuUy charted iu location and promised to report it to the Department at Niagara to have it placed on the Lake Chart. After the "Speedy" had disappeared and the storm subsided Captain SeUack and the settlers of Presqu'Isle went out in boats to make search and grapple about the sunken rock, seek- ing for some evidence of the lost schooner. They searched the first day, but in vain, for evidence of either schooner or rock- with more men and boats, they went next day and a third' but still no rock could be found, nor has anything further ever been heard regarding the sunken reef. The stoiy of the phan- tom rock could not be dissociated from the loss of the " Speedy " and became the basis of an agitation for moving the District town and Court House to Amherst, now Cobourg. So the alert- ness of old Captain SeUack and his men in searching out the hidden danger became the unlucky occasion of the village los- mg, what in those days was of so great importance, the County Seat. But the story of brighter days grew, as Mrs. Keeler saw her sons young men, going forth as their father had before them, taking up new lands and becoming prominent in the community. Settlers arrived in plenty, and every settlement on the shore became a lake port. The young men went sailing on the lakes, their only highway, and the clearing of the forest, cutting ships' masts and square timber for export, and bmlding sawmills for I! • n» lUuminatum qf JoMph KfUr, Eiq. lumber for local uh. Jl beoune « put of thow biuy diflr, tUt flUed the Uter yean of Grandmother Keeler. Neither did the rV !^^ I«y»Ii»t miM telling the evenU of 1837, when old Coloiiel Willianu and Captain Keeler took boat with their militia company to defend Toronto againit the rabela A. Mr. Keeler read the cloung woidi of the touching chroni- cte, ThoK were halcyon days." he wa> diaturbed in hii vi.ion of that part by the aound of his sons' latchkey in the h»!l door and their sUent entrance, hoping perhaps the "governor" was asleep. Finding him awake, however, they said good-night, not, perh^H, without some uncomforUble feeling that it was hardly fair that they should not give the home their occasional presence on a Sunday evening. Air. Keeler was too accustomed to the family routine to have noticed at any ordinary time this occurrence; but the reading of these annals of the past, in which ius family had played so pronounced a part, had aroused new thoughts, which made the distance between himself and the common interests of the family seem to have grown to a wide guB, and almort with a cry of longing he repeated the words. Those were indeed halcyon days!" CHAPTER n High ANcmBT or tbk yiaa.»!B Faiolt The Keekr family itood hi^ in the genenl legsrd of their community, for the merchant wa« succearful in his bunnew and his wife in her social drele. The latter as the wife of a piomment wholesale merchant of old standing in Toronto, but more especially as the granddaughter of an early missionary and Anglican clergyman of the Hamilton District, demanded and with ito usual good 'lumour society in some measure yielded her that place, if not that consideration which she deemed due to heneU . Most properly she was a member of the "Daughters of the Empire Club" and, indeed, had been for two terms a vice-president of the local branch— for had she not had pointed out to her by some friend of historical research tendencies that the following was to be found in the old register of the parish church where once her grandfather had officiated? 'TuMd.y, P*. e. ISS8. Ilia wu • dsr of Public TliMikiglyiii. by pnehiutioa irom Sir Piud. Bond He«l, the Litolraut Govanor. (or victory obuiatd omt the rebeb m both Flovhioee ud lor their geneimi maptmon," (Signed T. M.) She had not, indeed, actually known her grandfather, but vray naturally believed he was honored in having so high- spirited a granddaughter, who was so well able to replenish with luscious fruit the already productive family tree. She might, indeed, have had ill-natured remarks borne to her, as that people said she was showy, superficial and even mercurial, whatever that might indicate; but such remarks were simply ignored, or endured with equanimity, she always knowing that they came from persons of no fandly importance, who really had no ancestors! It was not unnatural, therefore, that her family, nurtured in thdr comfortable home, surrounded with the generous luxury, which a merchant of their father's standing so easily made ' 1 • Tkt lUumituHoH of Jimpk Kihr, Ef. po^ •hoold be funjr codkIou. at thrt neU npoiocH^. which th«y Jad b««B Uugbt to believ. WM thein. IIm two young bdw. M the hoiue. after periupe lUihthr ineguW •chool coune. in . "Young L«liee' Semiauy," «hei« «, tock U Kholutic lucceM wu due nlely to the poor qunUty at thii OT that pvticulu tcMhei^-not to the kck of applintiaa or cpMitjr m the pupiHud gmdusted in turn with honoun ud ■ certifiato in deportment, the elder winning • priie in •rt and the younger in muiic. As the Mminuy w« txdutm and moet wiect. meamred by the high feei and the unind lt»at deKent of the lady principal. Madame Keeler waa fully •atufied with the raulta. at a whole. Thereafter two yean' travel abroad" in Europe with their mother, a few month*' rert m Laiuanne for French and language! uid ae many mom in Mimich for muiic and art had, with general travel, completed the education of the two young ladiee, who on their ntum home m the early autumn, were duly announced in the ndety columns ammgst the season's notabilities, the elder especially asa iilniUmte, having already in London been presented at a Drawing Boom. Several seasons had passed since then and the^er. Miss Maud, was stiU unattsched-though holding »hi*, even exchisive place in her circle, being best known P«ta}« for a someiriiat haughty rcaerve and a degree of cw- scious superiority--no eligible port.- having yet had the courage to take a plunge into so crystalline a stream, whose temperature was feared as being as chilling as its source. The younger dau^Ur, Fanny, bore a family name, and whether in speech or manner expressed oveiy shade of that vivacity and light. heartedness, which had. and even yet, marked her mother. A general favourite, it waa her friends who eqiedally brightened the social circle of the young folks who frequented the house, and who with their music and dandnj had not been slow to emulate the paces of their elden in the fashionable bridgn, iriiich made life in the Mosm a daily roun^. of excitement, even if rather enervating, to the vivacious Mm. Keeler, who felt however, that "duty must be donel" It seems necessary in attempting this family ■ ventory to add a word or two about the sons of the family, John and Tom. now young men. and the youngest. Ernest, a lad just leaving Bi§kAntulrtqfthKMbrramat f Vvpf CaBKU CoOcfe. Jolu, wo and heir, had nOj beta nt ^art by the pnud moUwr (or a diitinguuhed caiCCT, had graduated from Upper Canada CoUeie where he had ahowii Ua ability, paoed throufh the univerrity, leeidiiv in hii two final year* in hie Fnrt houie. gnduatine ' poUtieai econ- omy and hiHory with an averafe standi. {. Lo|ica% he went into law, and had been now (or lereral yean a junior in a large legal finn. At eveiy itep, lUe had been made eaey (or him. No queitione cl penonal ecooomici or ol monU had ever given him aerioiu thought or trouble, and now, immened in club Itfe and iu dutie*. he had dri(ted along at a young man around town, generally ipoken o( ai clever, it only he would ^iply hinueU and not devote to much time to the lomewhat v*iM iniide o( clubdom. His brother, Tom, o( the more even, phlegmatic type o( his (ather, had logically gone (rom Upper Canada CoUege into the warehouse to be initiated into the busi- nen at which his (ather was pit^riy proud. Tom had not, petfa^M, been too reguhr as to hours at the waiehouae; but as he had to uphold the honours o( the Argonauts in their ei^t- oaied crew, and to attend assiduously all yacht club races, such inegularities were pardonable — even necessaiy. Like his brother, Tom Keeler had moved naturally and easily into club Mo and was generally liked by everyone as a splendid young (eUow of fine physique; but none accused him o( being as yet seriously solicitous about the firm's wettare, or a shining star in the business firmament o( Front Street. This, however, every- one said would all come in good time when his (ather loosened his hold on the reins. "Tom was all ri^tl" Such then was the Keeler (amily as it appeared to the public. It CHAPTER ni HisTOBT OF Early Siitilement at the Cahhtinq Puci The week had passed rapidly as usual for Joseph Keeler, Esq Monday morning had brought its usual duties and the irregular appearance of the family at the breakfast table did not excite «By comment, as it had become habitual, and in no way affected Mr. Keeler's daily routine. It was not without some mis- pvmgs, however, as to the quality of his eldest son's habit., that Mr. Keeler had noticed his usuaUy late hours at night and hu non-appearance at the family breakfast table, with now and then later m the day displays of irritabiUty, which could not certamly be due to the exhausting nature of his legal duties. But, once in his office, the heavy English mail drove all other matters from Mr. Keeler's thoughts. The short midday lunch at his club, a meeting of his bank directors at «.S0 and a Uter one of the Trust Company at 4.S0 had fiUed Us day, and at 5.S0 he rolled home in his auto, the type of the successful city man. A heavy course dinner at which the family, with a fnend or two, were present, as on fuU dress parade, completed the day s duties after which he passed the evening in his study, glancmg through the evening papers over a comforUble cigar and the last Engiuh Remm, thereafter retiring only to repeat a similar daily round throughout the week. Sunday evening had come again, and Joseph Keeler found himseU as usual in his study, and taking up ahnost mechanically the historical volume laid down a week before, he recaUed suddenly the story of the old grandmother and the words. Those were indeed halcyon days." He found the passage agam and reading on found stiU more interesting recitals of the old days down in the Lake Shore Settlement. The whole territory at the head of the Bay of Quint« was redolent of the stirring scenes of Indian warfare from Cham- plain s time onward to the days of the Jesuit missions, where the very site ... the old mission of WeUers' Bay (the four- U fii^ u Tht lUuminaHon of Jouph KeeUr, E,q. i m m f^rll. .?*^ ^ullf^ *"•"'' '* »»'<' Bluff «:««s the ^ R^mth«. the S,dp.tian mi»ion»e, h«l pushed westwari^ tiie Seneca vilUge up the shore to Tenagou, now hi, hom. Toronto and north by the Trent. Rice LZLXitn^r to a.e huntmg ground, of the now vaniAed HuronT",^; MatohedadiBay. To the Car,ying PU«. too. ca^ £.1S^e on h« fim memoreble journey, seeking an oute w«tw«d to the oce«., and there strangely, too, elected i^^^ Ldce Ene. u«te«i of the Aort northerly route. certli^ty^'Z .^o^ ^tT;""' *^P *° MichiUnuJdnao. fearing. wT^ ™ppo». «.e Jesuit, might <•.»„« him along the Ltol^ route. There he camped at Kent«. the old Indian villaBe3 nuM.on, and lent lustre to it, tr«lition, by hi, tol^^p^ fKTw),,^ *i^!," "'"^"' *^*" 8™'''"^ 8»ti'««d « halo way eastward; of how a mirvey was made in 1794 for a canal U™.* Murray township; of how it was stated that frem ^ ^ •^T^.'™'^ '"*'"'*' "f Parliament for the NewcMtk Distnct had been elected on the promise of getZt t^^ bmlt. and when finally he re«l that it was a fo^KteS lather-, courin, the Hon. Joseph Keeler. the b^ oTttTib^ f«ndy mune. that of the captain, the first imnSZ^ ^d «tte M a.e ajy, and now hi, own name, the wholeV^ser,^mri to have .hsappeared into that glamoured time, Ld he S toh. hvmg over again the Uves of all tho« .;to« i^ t^^M d«maoftheCarrymgPl«=e. It presented the painted redn.«^ once on the warpath now a kindly neighbor; haK aZZJ half dependant of the early MtUen; then Uie pati^nt^^W «wa.^g the return of their heroic Uand, ^ow .:^,^t™ t^wmg of these lusty setUement, with their alarm,. irtiviti« ami struggles; pictured the war of defence, and btor o ^^^ ^^z^^:^'c "^ "^^ ■"."" i-i«ranl":?r;^ Dack Mttlements. the mcreasmg vesiwU and traffic on the lakes. Early Setthmeni at the Carrying Plant 18 the buading of the canal, the coming of the nulway, and aU the dmnge. that it brought with it. But throu^out all there remained one fixed idea of how clow to each other in their hardships, with their mutual self-help and common sympathies, tte people m those early days had been; how near to primeval Nature, with her pine woods and grassy marshes fiUed with ^e and fish, and how intimate, too, with the Almighty Creator of those scenes of pristine beauty, who, nevertheless, seemed to dommate aU with some infinite and unseen force, in which as in the loss of the "Speedy" tragic Destiny mocked the puny efforts of men. Mr-ig as in a dream, Mr. £eeler was aroused, as usual, by the euJy of his sons. i! 'I M CHAPTER IV Joseph Keeler Visits the Home of His Ancestobs Joseph Keeler was essentially city-bred and, naturally enough, though having heard of his father's people, had taken no par- ticular interest in relatives, the nearest of whom were cousins and countiy-bred. But now he had become charmed by the recitals of that kindly past of which he had been reading, and began to feel that in this life history of a part of his native Province he had some personal interest. This was still more increased by the discovery that it was his father's cousin, the Hon. Joseph Keeler, who had taken such an important part in the development of his home distrirt. Perhaps, too, it may unconsciously have come to his mind that it might not be unprofiuble even from a social standpomt to cultivate hia ancestral relationships, as Barnes Newcombe did the old Colonel. So it came about that on the next hoUday, which was the Queen's birthday, he took his boy, Ernest, and, telling the family he was going to Brighton for the day, went down on a Saturday evening train to spend the two holidays. Often as he had passed to Montreal on business, Joseph Keeler had never stopped off at the Bay; so when on the Sunday morning they strolled out along the lake beach, pushing their steps toward Presqu'Isle Point, an emotion of deUght not unmixed with shame came over the man (who till now had needed no an- cestors), as he drank in the beauty of the scene and recalled the memory of the old forgotten yef.«, when "They were indeed halcyon days." He could imagine the Bay cover mg much at it aU for though he had read of the glorious deed, c* sddiers in Enghsh history, and had been eompeUed to learn the datM of the battles of Queenston Heights and Lundy's Lane and Stony Creek, the English masters at Upper Canada CoUege were almost as ignorant of, as they were indifferent to the heroic efforU of either Brock or De SaUbury, who had held Canada for her sons and the Empire. In the afternoon they took a carriage and drove around the Bay shore road to near the Carrying Place and along the tow- path of the canal, which was one of the living witnesses to the tocal patriotism and endeavors for his native county of the Hon. Joseph Keeler, who haddived and died in it and who, aa he was to learn later, had been financiaUy ground between the upper and ^e nether miU-stone of new economic condition, brou^t in by the nulways, which have meant commercial tragedies m Upper Canada, as elsewhere, which have wiped out in truth thousands of family names in the older border counties of early settlement, once the syn■> 1819, and held till Um end o( the war, nferinf much tor Kinf and Countiy. DM 1898." and "Mary Peten, hie wife, boin in 1780. who coming to Canada with her father. Captain Petet^ bote with hemic rounge the hanlihipe of ploDccr dajw retalnini throiiahoiit her lon| Ufa a joyoui ipiilt: Who driighled her childnn and fiandchildien with talea cl early danfen and adventuiea layinf alwayi, Thoae wen udeed halcyon daya.' Died 18M." At the end of this recital of the inscription on the old head- stone, Mrs. Keeler with an injured air at once remarked: "Now, Joseph, it is really too bad you have never told us this before, when you really are of such a good famfly." 'Well, my dear," he replied, bUndly, "how could I, when I did not know myself? And besides, my dear, you have always had so much family yourself, there has not really been room for much more.'* To which reply, given perhaps with some intended emphuis, his elder daughter replied, "It is all very well, papa, to make fun of 'family'; but you are just as proud of us and our mother's ancestors as we are our- selves." Mr. Keeler closed the matter, when he said very quietly, look- ing meaningly toward his eldest son, "It is veiy desirable, my dear, to have come of good families; but there is with it a great responsibility laid upon us all of living up to our privileges, and of doing things worthy of our ancestry." Even tl mother was silent and the subject was turned to some passing trifle— a rather oppressive silence marking the rest of the dinner, except when broken by Ernest's rhapsodies on the apple orchards of Brighton. CHAPTER VI DuctnuoN OM Cau«u or Hioh Pbicer, with Ruults It hmd not poued Jowph Kecler's acute obwrvttion unno- ticed, thiit the old luwn o( Brighton leemed to breathe an an- cient air; that the age of the hoiues, the appearance of the stores, the old hostelry, the absence of proper attention to the streets, even the movements of tiie people, all seemed to tell of a life, which had once been vigorous, energetic and hopeful, but which now appeared to have been lived and was old. Similarly, the farmsteadings and the farms, with their wealth of spring verdure and the rare beauty of the scenery of the hills skirting the Bay, seemed often to give evidence of a lack of agricultural progress; while large fields of rough pasture land and wet, undrained areas, seemed to indicate a something lacking to the eyes of an ener- getic city man, always intent upon keeping buildings and ware- houses as up-to-date as possible. Just what the matter was, Mr. Keeler's inexperience of rural aSaurs prevented him from fully comprehending; but the casual notices in the daily papers re- garding a stationary or even lessening rural population came to hia mind; while the possible relationship between these sti.te- ments and certam unsatisfactory, and, indeed, unpleasant conditions during a number of years past, in the mcreasing ex- pense of doing business in selling goods throughout Ontario, with lessening sales in the smaller towns and less profits, came to assume an importance, which was to result m directing his thoughta and actions a long way aside from the pathway which, during a long and busy lifetime, he had followed with satisfac- tion. Just at the moment when these matters were fresh in his mmd Mr. Keeler happened to be dining with a small company an^ongst whom was the University Professor of Social EconomKs. The table-talk passed from the general high cost of living to the cause of the great increase in the cost of food products. The usually ascribed causes were discussed, amongst which were the hi^ » tt Tin IttuminoHaH qf JoMrk K—ttt, Btq. imtak, too mmny in the ra*l-«st«te biuineu too muy middk- mm handling lupplici, tiw high out of tnuuportation on nil- wigri, the ihiftleMneu of the farmer in not producing enough, with the boyi leaving the farm, the wtate tlirough highly paid and wretchedly trained coolu and limilar reaioni, all more or leH correct. Joeeph Keeler liitencd intently and with hif recent rural obiervationa in mind Hid but little. The profcMor in turn ipoke with academic conviction, while all liitened reverently, inspired with awe, u hr talked of chang- ing world ponditions, of how the early settlers in Canada had mostly been «^ Ihe peasant class, too often of the pauper and even criminal rhuaea, who were ignorant and content merely to labour or simply to exist. He recalled how, late in the last century, many of those had become well off; had grown ambitious for their families, sending sons to college, while others went into towns from the farm. Though a)l this did seem directly asso- ciated wita the high cost of living, yet in the great world processes of evolution, self-culture, social illumination, and the cultivation of the amenities and graces were all important ; while the many conveniences and even luxuries, which were within the reach of the whole people, whether in city or country, after all more than compensated for what at timet did seetn a diliicult^' on the part of people in making ends meet. In fact, the time had now arrived for society to begin to employ the inferior races; in the East, the Pole, the Finn and Galician; in the West, the Chinaman, Jap and Hindoo. Brain must ever rule over brawn, and if only John Stuart Mill's policy of laiuafain were allowed to operate freely and leave all these matters to be privately set- tled by "competition" such temporary di£ ilties would, in the end, right themselves. It had been remarked concerning this professor of practical affairs, bom, bred and educated in the Old World, that he busied himself with bis teaching duties very seriously during the college term, only to hie away in the spring- time to English or Alpine fields from which he might study at long range the agricultural, industrial and social conditions of the several Provinces of Canada, extending from ocean to ocean. But apart from his rather irritating ipae dixit, he was scholarly and companionable, and was capable of becoming interested in social problems when directly set before him. DumurioH m Catuu vf Hifk Pritf U Now JoMph Kceler had not been at all Htii8ed with the pro- (ewor'i ponderoiu platitudei, ud wu reioived to go much mora ckiwly into the itudy of whtt had now become (or him an ab- •orbing queetion. Inviting the profeuor to ipend the neit Saturday evening with him, Mr. Keeler bade a general "Good- nifktl" and walked home, revolving many thingi in hi> mind, like Ulyuci by the loud-reiounding lea. With the nnt Saturday evening came the profeuor and. Mt- tled in a comfortable armchair in Mr. Keeler '• itudy with a pipe and a glan of lome supporting Sedek, he liitened while Mr. Keeler let before him certain phaiei of the problem which they had been diacuwing as they bore upon commercial aSain, and told then of the terieii of incident! that had taken him to the old town on Pmqu'Isle Bay, and the new light iii which the whole problem was licginning to appear to himself, as he read from the past into the present history of the beginnings of settlement and of the development of Upper Canada. He said : " You know, professor, I was a lad of only five years when my father left the old town down on the Bay, where he had been for yean with his father, a general merchant, supplying the incom- ing settlers going to the back townships with all kinds of goodi on credit, and taking in return their potash, timber, grain and farm produce. Uis father ijcfore bini, a farmer, hftcl .i^cdually gone into business, as, having been the son of one of the earliest settlers, he had grown to a man of local importance and was con- sulted by the newcomers, who so often needed some temporaiy assistance, and could only pay for it with produce, there being but little money in those times. As I have now learned, my father was but one of a series of merchants in those old lake ports of the early days, which extended from Cornwall to To- ronto. As the settlement of their townships was only possible through these ports, so up from each at eveiy five to ten miles were government roads, and the local squabbles of rival ton-ns for the expenditure of public funds on their particular roads to the back country were even more strenuous than those for local railways today. "In most of these larger villages or towns was a government land agent; but especially important was this appointment in the district or county towns, where were the registry offices. 44 The lUumination 0/ Joseph Keeler, Eiq. Each of theie towns, as the immigration increased, became the centre of a business activity in selling to the immigrants and in shipping out lumber Rnd grain equalling, and exceeding even, that of the growing towns of our new Northwest today, since the products were much more varied. I have, indeed, taken some trouble to obtain figures, which I have found in old blue- books, which I suppose my father had sent him by his cousm, the Hon. Joseph Keeler, of Northumberhmd County. From these I learn that when Lord Durham's report was acted upon and Mr. Poulett Thomson, afterwards Lord Sydenham, got his District Councils Act passed in 1841 and a census taken, the population of Upper Canada was 450,000 and the actual revenues were but $700,000. "Now mark what followed. By 1881 after the union with Lower Canada as a legislative union had existed twenty years, the census showed in 1861 a population increase in Upper Canada to 1,396,000, and a revenue of $3,500,000. But what further is of intense interest is the then distribution of population. The townships of Murray and Cramahe in the Bay district were surveyed about 1794, and other lakeside townships westward a little later. The census of 1841 gives the following table, which I have compared with 1861 and 1911 :" Tammhipt lau t861 1911 Murray 8061 361* 8765 Cramahe SOIS 3841 2439 Hamilton 4857 6315 8414 Clarke fuu 8575 3S75 Haldunand 2690 6165 Hope sase 5888 SJ7S Town of Cobourg 4974 5074 Town of Port Hope 4162 5092 Rear Towmhipt Seymour. 847 8842 S3S1 Percy "... 726 3515 2786 Asphodel 551 2911 1861 Cavan 2899 4901 2499 Cartwright 365 2727 1584 Ditcuttion on Causa of High Prices is Mr. Keeler continued: "1 confew I was astoni.; -a r-oe^ t had carefuUy examined ttese three »eU of figures. To think. wU:. i total population in Ontario in 1911 of «,««S,i :i, aad only 46f.000 in 1841, that the townships along the lake i Im e had at thi time, in almost eveiy instance, larger populations thiui iu IDII though aU had notably mcreased in 1861, was something I never dreamed of. But the way in which settlement advanced through these lake ports l»fore the raUway came is neatly Ulustrated by the figures for the rear townships in 1861 as compared with 1841. All had filled to overflowing, and yet the losses in these townships by 1911 are even greater than in those along the lake shore." To the professor, these figures applied in detail to a special district, were most startling. He, of course, knew of the depop- ulation of Ireland at the time of the famine of 1846, but he knew also that such was due to poverty, disease, and political unrest He was acquainted, too, with the periods of unusual emigration from England and Scotland; but then these were caused by either commercial depression or bad land laws. But how to explain a situation in a province like Ontario, which had no old- time problems to solve, where peace and plenty, so far as he knew, had existed for many years, and where agriculture always seemed prosperous was to him quite impossible. The question had been much too small an affair for him, whose studies in eco- nomics had been based almost whoUy upon European conditions- while, as regards the periodicaUy acute problems in the United States, such were looked upon as a part of European commercial questions and as abnormal, owing to an enormous mass of unas- similated people, and not governed by the operation of ordinary economic laws. When, however, Mr. Keeler pointed out that along with this steady lessemng of the rural population, there was an equal les- senmg of local business, measured by the wholesale dealings of h« firm and the wholesale trade generaUy, and that he learned from the Ontario Bureau of Industiy Reports of the decline al- most yearly during the past ten years of the areas in crop in many old counties and of the decrease in the number of cattle and sheep and of less acreage in wheat, barley and oats grown, the professor began to comprehend that perhaps here really was a 26 The Ittuminatum of Joteph Keeler, Etq. problem quite within the range of his work; while the more he dwelt upon it the len certain he was that he had up to this time been doing all his duty to the University of the Province, which supplied him with a secured position, and which institution existed and was supported for the very purpose of giving scholars like himself opportunities for tracing existing sociological and economic conditions to their first causes, and perhaps indicating wherein mistakes had been made and how remedies might be applied. The professor at length rose up to say. Goodnight! and thanked Mr. Keeler again for the quite new train of thought and study opened up and promised to meet him soon again. i|i : CHAPTER vn JoeEPB Kbeueb, Student of Eablt Canadian Hibtobt In the interval, Joseph Keeler had been busy on his now all- engrossing subject. He took it to the club with him and at odd moments, producing his volume of figures and statistics, would discuss the tope with his business friends at Board meetings and elsewhere. He devoured every available scrap of early history and especially of the District he had grown to love and look upon as his own. He learned from the old newspaper files in the central library and from various blue books of the manner in which a group of English, Irish or Scotch immigrants would settle a whole township in one year and of how in the next township a quite different class would come the year following. He became acquamted too from standard Canadian histories with the organization of the District Councils by the Bill of Lord Sydenham in 1841, under which the wardens were nomi- nated by the Governor, and with the rapid evolution of county self-goyemment completed by the Hon. Robert Baldwin's Municipal Act of 1840, providing for complete township auton- omy. He found too that the effects of the long struggle for representative institutions had developed a strength and sturdi- ness of thought and of mdependent action m the people of Upper Canada, increased by the inrush of emigrants from Britain who had witnessed the same fight there, resulting in the Reform Bill of 1838, and later m the Repeal of the Com Laws in 184S, all which had resulted in the merging into one of the people here to a degree and with a rapidity never before surpassed. Digging yet deeper, Mr. Keeler found a whole volume of correspondence containing minutes of the Legislatures of both Canadas and of several Boards of Trade, which existed even in those early days, urging that free entry he given to Canadian wheat into Britain and at the same tune asking that American wheat be admitted free to Canada for grindmg, but that it should be taxed in England, thereby supplying a preference f m 9S The lUuminatum of Joseph KeeUr, Esq. necessary^ it was stated, because of tlie cheaper freight via the Erie Canal which ran from Oswego to the Hudson. As bearing intimately on this matter, Mr. Keeler found a letter to Lord John Russell dated 21st January, 1841, from Lord Sydenham then Governor of the Canadas. It stated: "Upper Canada is, as you are aware, entirely dependent upon the sale of its agricultural produce and especially of wheat for the production of which it is eminently calculated. Great excitement prevaib in that Province at the present time with regard to this subject. The abundant harvest both here and in the Western States has greatiy increased the quantity for exportation; but the prices are so low that the farmers and laborers are unable to derive the advantage they expected. The consequence is that there is an outcry raised for what is termed agricultural protection in the shape of duties upon the produce of the United States imported into Canada — a scheme, it is hardly necessary to observe, whicti would, even if it were nat objectionable in principle, be utterly useless to an importing country for the end sought, namely, to raise the price; whilst it would diminish if it did not destroy a great brancli of trade, the grinding of United States com admitted into the Ports of the Jlother Country."* But there were many side-lights which illumined for Mr. Keeler the actual situation as it existed in those days, while one dealing with matters in his own lakeshore district was of intense interest to him. Before a committee of the Legislature in 1842 the pros and eoru of the conflicting claims for the expenditure of a grant of £1,500 on a settlement road leading from the lake to the head of Rice lake in the rear townships were discussed, the competing towns being Cobourg and Port Hope. The evidence went on, John Gilchrist, member of the House, being called: * Answers in ooDunittee brought out the fact that the price of wheat on the ahorea of Lake Erie was tt 9d, od Lake Ontario, 3« Ijd, that freight from Chicago to St. Catharines was M per bushel; tnm Cleveland to St. Catha- rines Od; thence to Kingston id; from Kingston to Montreal 7^; and from Montrcftl to Eugland ii; while tnm Cleveland to New York the freight was It 8d, and that wheat on Lake Erie to remunerate the owner ought not to be less than 4t (tl.O(^ per bushel. ili'ii Student of Early Canadian HUtory 29 "Q. Are you aware that Cobourg is in the hands of the Government? A. I have understood so. "Q. Is not the trade of Cobourg larger than from Port Hope? A. I think so and its being the District town compels many more persons to resort to it. "Q. What are your views on the subject of Rice Lake navi- gation bemg generally used? A. At present it costs sixpence per bushel to bring p.-oduce to Port Hope. If th-; Plank Road is completed it wil! reduce this to three pence, by bringing the produce to Peterborc and thence by water to the Plank Road. "Q. Do you think the penodical fires will endanger the - d by the new route? A. I have often seen the Plains on fire; it is not as formidable as represented. There are some farms on the Plams, and the farmers generally run four furrows round their fences, and these protect them effectually. The same precaution would in my opinion protect the Road. Answering the question. Is the wheat brought to Peterboro and thence by direct route to Cobourg? Gilchrist answered: That there are several flouring mills on the route where it may be ground en rovit* " Illustrating what were other difficulties of the times, Mr. Keeler further found in an enquiry about postal facilities by a Royal Commission the following amongst many other choice bits. It is a letter by Rev. John Roaf, dated Toronto, 1840, in answer to an official enquiry. It states: "A large portion of the people of this District are so far from Post Offices as to be virtually destitute of accommodation from them. . . . Many persons attribute this not only to political favoritism but to the contemptible purpose of driving as many as possible to the shops of the postmasters. . . . Sometimes the English mail is made up here before half the city population is aware of it ; and if a person i« a day or two late his letter may be eight or nine weeks in rei.uimg England." Such and much more was the material which Joseph Keeler had ready to discharge at the professor at iheir next meeting. ■ii Hi' I liii CHAPTER Vm When Uffeb Canada Becaii£ the Doionaiit Fabtneb It WM several weeks before Mr. Keeler was able to arrange another evening with his friend, the professor: but, when they next met, he was fully prepared with data wherewith to make a very good exposition of the commercial conditions of these early years from 1840 onward, and found that his friend, the professor, who had been saturated with the contents of standard works on the growth of the Free Trade cult in England, pricked up his ears and showed an intense interest in figures, which gave so completely the prices of wheat and the cost of carriage in Canada at the very moment when Gladstone as under secretary jf the Board of Trade was laboring at the tariff schedules of 1,«00 articles, trying to make them fit when they would not, and who was forced finally in his desperate task to advise Sir Robert Peel in December, 1845, in the midst of the most acute commercial depression and serious political unrest, associated with the poverty and sufferings of the unemployed in England, and the disease and death from famine in Ireland, to bum his protectionist ships and in a single bill abolish entirely the taxes on com and wheat. The professor was just beginning his education in a new field and, trained to study, learned rapidly. The first question which naturally occurred to him to ask was: "How did the almost wholly new political and economic situation, developed in the United Canadas after Lord Sydenham's efforts toward a pref- erential treatment of food imports to England, affect immigra- tion?" The professor was amazed at the information he obtained. "From the census returns he found that while Upper Canada had increased in population from 1811 thus, 1811 77,000 1841 46S,SS7 18«4 155,000 1851 952,004 18S4 820,000 91 ■fi' 32 The Illumination of Joseph KeeUr, Esq. yet the rate for the decade, 1841-1851, wai 104 per cent. He further learned with surpriw that thU rate of increase exceeded that in the most rapidly developing western state, Ohio, which had in 1850 some 1,080,427 of population; but whose increase in ten years had b^n only 33 per cent, while what was even more . marvellous was that the wheat acreage of Upper Canada, though but seven-twelfths that of Ohio, had raised 12,675,630, or 16.25 bushels per acre, as compared with a total of 14,487,351 in Ohio." The professor was, however, too keenly analytical to imagine that this remarkable development of Upper Canada was due solely to the repeal of the Com Laws, which favored the United States equally with Canada, although the Imperial Parliament did in 1843 put a protective duty on wheat coming into Canada from the United States. Very properly he found this marvel* lous increase in population due to the choosing by the unemployed population of the Mother country of emigration as perhaps the leaser of two evils, — a forlorn hope, indeed, since it meant an ocean voyage often as long as t\so months under conditions on shipboard, which today dare hardly be recorded. John Morley, writing of the situation in England, says, "Commerce was languishing. Distress was terrible. Poor Law rates were mounting and grants-in-aid were extending slowly from the factory districts to the rural. 'Judge,' then said Peel, 'whether we can with safety retrograde in manufactures.* " "Then came the failure of the potato crop in Ireland and the famine and distress attendant upon it, forcing emigrants to the United States, Canada and Australia, to the number of 1,404,786 from 1840 to 1850 and m 1847 alone there were 109,680 who came to Canada. But along with the poverty and misery of the poor emigrant on leaving Britain came disease and death in this terrible year; the quarantine at Grosse Isle in the St. Lawrence saw 5,424 victims of ship fever buried, with physicians and clergy laid beside them, while hundreds more died at the marine hospitals at Quebec, and Montreal and en route to towns farther inland. In 1849 cholera served to fill in the details of this picture of misery, this being the year succeeding the 'Year of Revolutions,' when all Europe was an armed camp in ceaseless agitation due to sudden alarms from every side. The decade Wkn Upptr Canada Became Dominant Partner SS found Ihe population of Iicluid decreawd from S.ns.lU to 6,414.794. or «U per cent; whUe the efflux from Germany to the United SUtei, already just a million by 1840, brought a sturdy freedom-loving people during the next decade, who gave mtelligent energy and labour to the virgin soils of the prairie and soldiers to the cominp fiirht. and who perhaps saved the Union. With all this inrush of people to Upper Canada, making a total of 1,S0«.081 by 1681, a population of only 103,894 was found in 1881 in her five cities, or 7 per cent of the total, then thought adequate for all her centralised commercial needs, while the products of the farm alone amounted to (89,129,314. " These astounding figures so far exceeded anything conceived by the professor that, bad they not been blue-book statistics, for which he bad a professional, even reverential respect, he could not have given them credence. The influx had exceeded the almost fixed average of immigration for five previous decades of 83 per cent to the United SUtes by over 66 per cent. Surely nothing ever did more clearly demonstrate the possibilities of the natural wealth of the peninsula, girt with iU fresh water seas, bearing its wealth of primeval forest, fanned in autumn by the winnowing winds and fed from virgin soils sleeping during untold ages under the deep calm of the still winter whiteness, only to yield up to the vernal sunshine that rich Earth, which but required the touch of the ploughman's share to make it bourgeon forth with the w ilth of grass and grain demanded by the needs of the toiling masses of English towns. He thus began to realise the full meaning of that immanent Providence which, teaching men the brotherhood of man and making them learn the arts of Peace, had brought the resources of Science to bear on the problem and in the invention of the steam engine, pro- pelling vessels across the hitherto measureless oceans, and bearing the fruits of the earth to the sea-board over thousands of miles by railways, was supplying a means by which the congested millions of old-world cities could escape their thraldom, and, finding use for their energies, were now to cause to disappear those ever-feared demons of famme, whose gaunt forms from time to time had, during all the past centuries, stalked across the darkened landscapes of the countries of the world. m ( I M Tlu lUuminalim qf Jottpk Kfttr, Etq. The two men grew lilent under the influence which these old figures, speaking from out past years, made upon them and they parted (or the evening, each promising to follow up the history of events as they marked the succeeding half century. CHAPTER IX. Thi; Heir or the Kecleiu Under a Socul Clocb The current of evenU hu glided along more or leu event- fully in the Keeler homehold since the evening, some month* ago, when young Ernest disturbed its even flow by telling them all of the greatness of their paternal ancestors. Madam Keeler has since then had at least one lift added to the heels other already unusually high shoes and has, perhaps, on veiy impor- tant occasions shaken the flounces of her skirts just a little more pronouncedly than formerly and worn an aigrette on her ex- pensive hat somewhat higher even than its hitherto ample proportions possessed. Neither has she neglected to direct the conversation on eveiy convenient occasion to the absurd way in which her boy had come home, ranng about what he and hii father had discovered regarding the family at Brighton, the par- ticulars always being given with a pleasing naiceti when, after aroiismg curiosity, she complied with the request for details. Even Miss Keeler, who always maintained with Such dignity the family honour, now felt only the more justified in her pretensions and at club meetings had been even more solic- itous in advancing the claims of those descended from the early first families of Upper Canada to a due and proper consid- eration, and impressed the young gentlemen, emigrit in their own eyes from England, who so frequently honoured with their presence the drawing-rooms where she found herself, that it was these early emigrants of good families who had really main- tained pure and undefiled the traditions which had made Canada, for such new-comers as they, so pleasing a place to come and reside in, since they could find here at least a few of the graces which had marked select society at home. Undoubtedly, however, the events had run most swiftly for the son and heir, John Keeler, during these past months. It had been aknost inevitable that, in the rushing torrent of busi- ness development and speculation in Toronto, he should have as 30 Tkt lUumination qf Jom]^ Kuttr^ E»q. become involved more or leu in the real etUte trauactionit which bad atimuUled u well u fdlowed the phenomenal in- creue of * city which had grown 81 per cent in the ten yeari of the censui, or from 408.000 to 870.000. Indeed, be had become one of a lyndicate formed a year or two previous to exploit a luburban farm, lending especially his family name as a guarantee of stability, but. nevertheless, taking many shares, which were to be paid for out of profits from the sale of lots in the rapid turnover expected. Unfortunately the purchase had been made at too high figures, the extension of the radial railway, which from inaide information was to boom the price, bad not mate- rialised and just now the young lawyer was finding it extremely difl^cult to obtain money to meet the "calls," since his income as a junior member of the law firm was not large, while his club expenses, always nearly even with his income, did not allow him much ready cash wherewith t6 meet such extra demands. But what was more unfortunate was that John Keeler had con- tracted a habit. His former occasional stances at a cent-a-point had now become a nightly occupation and the betting at. brid^t became heavy in a certain clique of which he was one, while his needs were making him plunge more deeply, the nervous ten- sion preventing him from maintaining the sang-froid and de- veloping the Umche erudite of the experienced gambler. It was not to be supposed that the increasing irregularities of the young man, his restlessness and irritability, could very long escape the acute observation of his father, who, while making every allowance for him as a young man, understood too well that all such effects had their legitimate cause. Casual hints that better hours and more regular attentwn to business would seem desirable had been met with scant respect, and, while seeming to result in some temporary improvement, matters soon drifted back into the old routine, and Mr. Joseph Keeler was soon to have the unfortunate fact brought home to him that ancestral advantages of birth and good breeding, never, since the days when the Judges ruled Israel and the Scriptures were written, have been a guarantee against moral laches and impioprieties of conduct, since we find it written, regarding tiie sons of Sam- uel the prophet, "And his sons walked not in his ways but tturned aside after lucre and took bribes and preverted Judg- ments." Tki Brir qf Ikt KnUri undtt a Socitd Cloud S7 It WM thra with vniUble •lam thmt Mr. Knier mw in tin P*tM of Saturday M,hl. which h») b«n making for month. wuUughU on the fren.i»d fl„,n« ,nd rr«l r.t.le plunging of Toronto .nd other Ciin.diin ritiei. reference, to a club K^andal. Which, while giving no name., made it perfectly pl«in that the cotene to whKh hi. wn belonged had gotten into trouble with the HouK Committee, not perhap. primarily on account of high phiy, but becauK a member had been accuKd of cheating Of coune the vandal w«. invctigated behind clowd door.! but to Mr. Kccler the yet more jaded appearance of hi. K>n and the hinu about certain young men made it quite obviou. to him Uiat hi. mn had been in »rae manner involved. So maitera contmued for a .hort time, the «.n, while Kerning to be home earlier at time., did not in any way a«ume hi. oldtime jaunty manner, but rather hi. irritabUity and lack of attention to the ordinaiy amemtie. of home life increawd. The climax wa, reached, however, when Mr. Keeler. coming home late from an entertainment m hi. auto, suddenly came around the comer upon hi. »n in a maudlin .Ute. hi. brother. Tom. and a friend having been with difficulty conveying him home. tni:-,ting that the houK had a. usual become quiet and that the intoxicated young man could be .lipped into bed unnoticed. Mr Keeler now undemtood and reali«d what month, of vague hint, and dubiou. appearance, meant, and. feeling that the famUy honour wa. at .take, became a. anxiou. a. Tom that the matter wh ch he hoped wa. the firat Mriou. aberrancy .hould be kept from the mother of the family. Hi. rtem but quiet tone Krved in some degree to wber the young man and. with Tom'. awuiUnce matters were areanged » that the hou«hold remained ignorant of what had happened. Mr. Jo«!ph Keeler wa. much too prompt in businew matters to allow an affair of this kind to be overlooked or to drift so that, when John wa. known to be sleeping heavUy. he requerted lom to come to the library. The generous, open-hearted b-.dier came feehng as if he were the culprit, and, while lov-Jty to his brother demanded that he should make the matte"r appear as little seriou. a. possible, hi. own frank nature a. weU as hi. knowledge of his father prevented him from attempting in any 'Ml S8 The lUuminatim of Jotepk Ketler, Etq. 1 !, •: . m way to deceive, even thou^ he tried to palliate hii brother'a faults. The father aaid: "Tom, I am greatly distressed. I have observed that John has for months been keeping later and more irregular homra; that bis appearance in the morning has indicated dissipation of the night before ; but I never dreamed that one of my sons could ever so forget himself as to be brought home intoxicated. I want to know how long this has been going on and whether or not there is any special cause for such a change in John?" "Father," said Tom, "I hope you won't be too hard on John; but things have been gomg from bad to worse ever smce John got in with that syndicate bunch in the FoUie Park real-estate deal. You know most of them and, while some are very nice fellows, the manager who has little or no stock in the concern, and Sam Brown, who is president, have been playing pretty sharp lately and by encouraging play and its accompaniments have kept the crowd as much as possible from realising just how matters have been going. They paid a long price for the farm, and while some have been able to meet payments, others, and John amongst them, have been getting farther behind every day, and some have been foolish enough to try and make it up by 'play' and others have just kept playing because they did not know how to get out." "And to which lot does John belong?" Tom looked at his father, whose firm, stem face made decep- tion impossible, and said: " You see, father, John just played for sport at first, and drank a little; but as these payments became pressing he had been so unaccustomed to such calls upon him that it made him anxious and irritable and I think that he often played and drank more just to make him forget, especially as the manager kept telling him that when the season opened and the tramway ran past the park, the price of lots would double." Again the father asked, looking more anxiously if not more sternly: "Was John mixed up in that scandal, which Saturday Night talked about?" Tom's face paled with shame and fear at his father's question Tht Heir cf Oe Ktelm under a Social Cloud SB uttered in • tone almost of anguuh, yet knew that nothing but the truth could suffice. "Yes, father, he was and, I am ashamed to say, John was the one accused of cheating." Joseph Keeler was as one who had been struck a deadly blow, for he turned pale with shame rather than anger at the very suggestion that a son of his could be capable of a dishonourable act. His voice faltered as he slowly pioceeded : "And was it proved?" "Well father, I am so sorry for John, the committee found that he had acted in a miumer unbecoming a gentleman; but, inasmuch as he was said to have been intoxicated at the time, the club ruling condoned the offence as not requiring his res- ignation, but he will not be permitted to play again in the club for a year. It is the disgrace, added to this financial trouble, that has driven him into the condition you have seen him, sir." There was a filence for some minutes in the library— for Tom as if it were of the tomb— when it was broken by Joseph Kee'er: "Tom, my boy, I need not say that this is a lesson for you." \ i"l I CHAPTER X Thk Pbofessob A8 a Stddent or Canadian Econoiocb Owing to the pressure of business and the urgency of distress- ing family matters, it was some time before Mr. Joseph Keeler could return with any enthusiasm to the studies, which had for him so Iieen an interest. But the professor had been put on a keen scent and, like the trained hound, ran his quarry to earth, so that when he again found himself in the cosy study of the Keeler home, he was not long in taking up the story which Mr. Keeler had brought up to 1850. He said: "Comparing English with Canadian historical events, he found, while world-wide British trade, now freed from the shack- les of discriminating tariffs, was rapidly recovering from the serious depression of the ' Forties,' that in Canada the enormous immigration had created an era of land speculation, which kept up so long as new towns could be exploit«»i along the lines of the Great Western Railway now building from Niagara Falls to Detroit and of the Grand Trunk from Portland to Samia, and as new townships remained to be opened in Perth, Huron and Grey. Labour, with the employment of the large number of immigrants in railway building, remained high, and all prices were made still more exorbitant during the two years, 1854- 1846, of the Russian war, in which the wheat supplies of Russia were suddenly cut off from the millions of needy mouths of Britain's work-people, making wheat in Canada and the neigh- borii:g States rise to »«.60 per bushel. Nevertheless the crisis was ra.nidly approaching which was to so lessen Canadian credit that a period of extreme depression was created, lighted only by occasional sunshine, which was to last for forty years. He found that towns had been laid out in the Queen's Bush even and Sites held in the nearest town of Guelph on the marketplace when; marquees were erected and liquors, even champagne, flo«»< like water, while the mad orgy of trading in ephemeral values went on. The American railways, having once reached 41 f,1 J! 42 The lUmninoHon of Joiepk Ke^, Etq. Xi:i Great Lakes, continued akirting the southern shores and even pushing into every state east of the Mississippi. Large land grants were given to railway promoters, and in Britain, Germany and Sweden their agents were scouring every district to secure immigrants to their lands, thereby to repair the damages of the financial collapse which had followed the Peace of Paris, 18M. He found too that immigration had become the commer- cial barometer in America, instead of the price of wheat as used to be in England, as seen in the figures for these succeeding years. Thus the immigrants for different years were: United Sialet Upper Canada IMl «67,8»7 «,6(W laM 244,S6i aa,a',i IMS «80,88« S4,«M 1M4 19S,08« 48,761 18M 103,414 17,966 18i J 111,887 16,878 18S'' 1«6,90« «1,0C1 ISii «»,716 9,704 1849 70,808 6,688 1860 119,9«8 9,786 " But he found that another and wholly different set of forces were now to affect the normal progress of commercial develop- ment in the United States and to react disastrously upon Canada, which for a moment was the seeming temporary gainer by the Civil War, which broke out in 1861. North had met South in fratricidal confiict and the energies of a nation of 3!i,000,000 were engaged in the most sanguinary war of the nineteenth century. For the moment immigration to the States fell in 1862 to 64,191; but this did not read, favourably upon Canada which had only 12,717 in that year. The depression in business already following over-speculation in railways in the United States had encouraged that government to enter into a reciproc- ity agreement in 18S4 for ten years with Canada, which was henceforth to become a doorway to the Northern States, and horses sold at high prices and food supplies of every kind found free access and at favourable returns during the four exhaust- ing years which followed. In spite of the war, however, the inmiigration to the States rose to 191,114 m 1864; remained at Studmt of Canadian Econamict 48 that untU alter the North was victorious when it tt once in- creased to SS2,{rr in 1887. While, however, the local trade of Canada seemed for the moment prosperoiu* ip. these years, polit- ical ferment between the opposing proidnces, accentuatnl by racial and religious mistrust between the two dominant races in the United Canadas, made any progressive movement towqrda national development impossible. The year 1864 saw the Reciprocity Treaty abrogated; while the one brigut gleitm of national hope, which shone with the crowning Act of Confed- eration in 1867, came too late in any way to counter-baUuce the glorious sense of power and national resourcefulness felt by the victorious Northern States. Canada was forgotten, when a triumphant people, now nearly 40,000,000, turned the energies of millionii of disbanded soldiers back into the walks of peace. The railways, already wide-spread, were pushed westward from the stanopoint both of national security and unity and of commercial development, and 1869 saw a railway uniting with iron bands the people and destinies of a whole continent be- tween two oceans and gave a nation, who had fought to be free, an intrinsic sense of ability to dare to do and accomplish, aided by the telegraph and steam engine, — ^the necromancers of the modem world — deeds in peace never imagined, much less equalled elsewhere. A nation had found its soul and its spiritual essence blossomed forth in works of material accompli^ment, which, however crude, illustrated the spirit of their Viking ancestors of a thousand years before." All this the professor now read into the cold facts u' history and turning his eyes upon puny Canada beheld a series of dis- connected provinces with no sense of unity, no common interests, no trustful spirit, no conscious hope. The most promised for the darksome future was that the Confederation Act contained a clause providing for the building of the Intercolonial Railroad from Canada to the sea at Halifax and to this end a loan of £3,000,000 was guaranteed by the British Government. The professor had abeady seen that immigration had almost ceased; he learned from the Committee of Agriculture of the Legisla- ture in 18«9 that the Grand Tnmk Railway, built with the money of English bondholders, had had its agents in Germany anu Sweden, booking passengers for the longest haul to Chicago ifl 44 The lUumination qf Jotepk KeeUr, Etq. '^lU and the West, and found it stated that of the few who entered as immigranta at Quebec, almost none stayed in Canada. He now understood upon what basis continental expansion de- pended: viz., that of virgin land for cultivation of wheat, and as yet Canada had no western territories. Committees of the Leg- islature had had Simon Dawson, the explorer, and others tell them of the Lone Land beyond the Great Lakes, behind the rock-ribbed interminaUe areas of spruce forests and deep- basined water stretches of the western Laurentians. These travellers told of a land of black, deep soil, where the common crops of the East might grow; but which now was the home of Indian tribes and a few scattered half-breed settlements, some En^h but mostly French, but all tied to the chariot wheels — or canoe stems — of the Great Hudson's Bay Company. Such was the story which, as it increased in volume, grew in intensity of interest with the telling of the professor, who, proud of his researches, yet with a new-found sympathy, told it with growing emphasis as he paced the floor before his friend whom he held spellbound with his eloquent periods. Becoming con- scious of being entrapped into an unwonted enthusiasm, he said: **But, Mr. Keeler, I have been doing all the talking and have been telling what to you are conmionplaces and matters of your own experience." "No, indeed," said Mr. Keeler, "I am sincerely grateful to you, for you have condensed, what it is quite true I have known but never apprehended in its full meaning, the hiFtory of a period which is the length almost of my whole life, into a living picture, which, as you recall its details, enables me to see the very actors in it come upon the stage and play their parts as in a kinemat- ograph, and I shall ever thank you for having worked into the very texture of the series of pictures scenes which make a veri- table drama of the history of Canada as I have known it. There are, of course, dozens of personal experiences which I can give you of the events of those t^ro decades which you have illumi- nated so well; but. in essence you have given the history." The professor said, **How dearly I would like to hear some of them from you! " "Well, you will remember,** said Ikfr. Keeler. "I was but a child when the American war b^an and the first thing I recall Studtta rf Canadian Eeonomia 45 i* the excitement in CanuU over the Trent affcir, when eveiy- wheie they began to form volunteer companies and itart drilling. Ot courae I knew nothing o{ what it meant; but I remember well the great Review as early as 1862 when some 5,000 troops were assembled on the Garrison Common, and when the Thirteenth Huaaais and the Rifle Brigade and batteries o{ artillery marched and countermarched and skirmished all day, having associated with them our own Queen's Own and Grenadiers. I was so anxious to get near the horsemen as they marched oS the fiehl that I found myself nmning along holding on to the stirrup of a Hussar who talked to and petted me; but 1 6nally got lost in the crowd and was found crying by one who knew my father and took me home. After that, every boy at school was a soldier, and we boys formed a company and got our mothen to make us red jackets trimmed vith white braid, black forage caps with a white band, and black trousers with a broad white stripe down them. We cut and planed blocks of wood, paintn' them black and put them on black polished belts for cartridge boxes and even cut heavy blocks of wood and strapped them on as knap- sacks. On a Saturday, more than once our squad of boys assembled early at one end of the street, got the smaller boys hitched to our plsy wagons, loaded with sheets, blankets and clothes-horses borrowed from our mothers and marched in fine form to a vacant lot, where we bivouaced for the day; took our tin pails and boiled potatoes and fried eggs and meat in our borrowed spiders; had the parade and sham fight after dinner and marched home, tired and cross perhaps, but saturated with the military enthusiasm of the time. We went further even and became attached to a company whose drill quarters were nearby, and they bought fifes and drums for us and, except on official parades, we were the band to march out with them. You could not know what it meant, for, toward the latter part of the war, there were a lot of disreputable Irish soldiers across the Line who stimulated the old antagonism to Great Britain amongst the Americans, made the more acute by the Trent affair, and the more or less openly expressed sympathy of certain British papers tor the South. Their emissaries came to Canada, and stirred up a disaffection, which, perhaps never very serious, caused reports of secret drillings and the hiding of thousands of Tkt lUuminalim qfjotepk JCwbr, Etq. M •tandi-of-unu, ind preparatioiu mt a ngnal for • riling united by Feniu invaders hom the South to wreit Canada fram per- 6dioiu Albion. The time* were (uU of terron for the young and exciUment for thoM older. I remember well looking over my father'! ihoulder aa he read aloud from hii daily paper the account of the auaaaination of President Lincoln, and recall the •till more aerioua affair of the Fenian Raid at Fort Erie. "All of us boyi went to lee the Queen's Own embark for Port Dalhousie on June 1, 1866, and we waited in breathless excite- ment for news of the fight which all the next day was taking place at Ridgeway. i hen too we followed with the crowd on the Monday after, when the bodies of the d«ad, Unded at Yonge Street Wharf, were given a military funeral, and especially do I lemember the names of the men of Company K, your old Var- sity Company, McKeude, Mewbum and Tempest, who were killed out of a total of forty in a few minutes in the Limeridge part of the fi^t, and recall dear old Professor Vander who, though badly wounded, is I still sac on deck in the University. "Of course I joined the Cadet Company at Upper Canada College, when old enough, and later recall how the martial spirit stayed with us when one summer three of my Form stole away and enlisted in the Queen's Own to go to Niagara Camp and of old Principal Cockbum's translation of the Horatian couplet as he satirically spoke of the runaways: ***Ihdet et decorum est, pro patria nwrit*" "'How sweet and fine a thing it is to eat a mutton pie.'" "We did not know then — none in Canada knew — ^that out of this temporary ebullition of traditional Hibernian dislike for the Anglo-Saxon, or, perhaps, more really owing to the ab- sence of any occupation lOr the moment for disbanded soldiers, was transmuted much more rapidly than in any other way possible into a sturdy Canadian spirit, the various opposing elements of the West and the East.'" m ill CHAPTER XI Jaaa>H Keeleh Recalib Commebcul and Poutical Events or Forty Yeabs The evenU of the yeara folh.wing 1870 wen deeply atamped upon the memoiy of Jowph Keeler, for it wu in 187S that he wai brought, aa a young man in his father'a warehouse, face to face with one of the longest periods of buaineaa depreaaion, which Canada had known. So it waa easy for him to give, aa he did at their next meeting, details to the professor covering the crisis, which was a sequence to the financial collapse follow- ing the Black Friday, 18th of September, 187S, in New York, when the Jay Cook Company waa forced to cloae the doora of its broking and banking house, while having 14,000,000 on depoait and holding «U,000,000 of the bonds of the Northern Pacific Railway. Many thousand miles of railway had been built during the previous ten years, enormous subsidies by the Federal Government from (16,000 to even «48,000 per mile on the moun- tam aections had been advanced to the Credit Mobilier, which financed the Union Pacific Railway to San Franciaco; while the total expenditurea on railwaya for these years was $1,700,- 000,000. He said: "The people of the United States had been alarmed, if not ahocked, at the revelations of too close relations between sena- tors and members of the House and the Credit Mobilier, so that the orgy of speculation and of railway building, without aa yet receipts from the traffic, as their lands were not widely settled, came to a logical end, as all debauches must, and the breaking of the banks of financiera, the breaking of the hearts of widows and the breaking of the brains of thouaanda of overwrought buameaa men all came together. And the pity of it all was that the panic did not remain south of the line. Canada waa poor but, nevertheless, the fever of railway promoting was in the aur. Then were planned and partly constructed the Canada South- em and Airline railways across the Lake Erie peninsula, aa well « ^^^ TIi* tUuminalum oj Jattrk KhUt, Etq. M the WeUington, Gray and Bruce and Credit Valley roadi; while a Government went out of power due to nupicioni o/ an improper intimacy between iti memben and a company pro- moting the great national enterpriie, the Pacific railway, which waa to connect coait with coast, and ultimately to prove even a greater bond, becaUK it wa« lo much more necewaiy, to bridge over the great gap of wildemeu between Ontario and the Weat. "But this wai not yet to be. The method later propoaed of building it in aectiona, part waterways and part railways, how- ever in keeping with the financial resources of the country at that time, was wholly inadequate to fulfil the requirements of the situation, and from 1872 to 1882 commercial stagnation marked Canada to a degree before unparalleled, and the migra- tion of Canadians across the border ruse to such figures ^M had never before been equalled, as seen in the following list of yearly emigrants from Canada into the United States: Emigrants from Canada to United States 1870 40,411 1877 ««,lia. 1871 47,082 1878 2S,M8 1872 40,178 1870 31,288 187S 37,871 1880 99,706 1874 32,900 1881 12«,S91 I87t 24,SS1 1882 92,205 1878 22,471 "So remarkable, however, did the trade revival in the United States become after the five years' depression from 187S to 1878, that, while the total immigration to that country in 1878 was only 138,000, it rose in 1880 to 347,000 while that from Canada to the United States multiplied three times within three years. This stream, whose fiow had lessened during the five years fol- lowing the 1873 panic, had risen to its height is 1881, to decluie again only for a time after this, when the outlet to Manitoba through Minnesota had been found. "I fancy," said Mr. Keeler, "that the real extent and mean- ing of this depopulatii ' as it actually existed then, was not known even to the public and business men of that time, and it has needed a decade of expansion such as that of the past ten years for them in any degree accurately to estimate or compre- hend the strength of the centripetal forces, which the chum- Commercial Bud Polilieal Btmit of Forlf Ytari M ing o( the immigration ocean by tlie great American octopiu created during thoie many yean, caiuing the people from every countiy and beyond all from ita neighbor Canada to be drawn within the reach of ita tentaclea and to be alowly awallowed up to tlw number of over 2,000,000 by 1900 from Canada alone." It would have lieen hard, indeed, for the profeaaor to appre- ciate the full meaning of thia tragic recital, had be not lived in Canada duHng the decade of 1890-1000, and been an inter- ested witneia of the enormous development during the succeed- ing decade. He recalled to Mr. Kecler how he had come to Canada in time to witness the third strange political agitation, which like those of 1837 and 1840, had for ita object closer, even political, relationa with the United Statea. Ita cry "Commer- cial Union" had originated in New York with two ci-dmmt Canadiana, Wyman and Glenn, and in Canada waa foatered by that literary giant, but political enigma. Professor Goldwin Smith. Supported by a newspaper, financed and edited by men, previously conaervativea, a great impetus was given to a move- ment, which appealed especially to the opponents of high tbriffa in both countries, owing to the melancholy results com- mercially of the decade, which had opened with a bUre of trum- pets, regarding what the new Canadian Paci8c Railway begun in 1881 waa to do in opening up the Great West. Its first through train to the Coast, leaving Montreal, June t^, 1888, was indeed an impetus to western settlement; but there had been aheady dissatisfaction over the land laws in the West. Indeed the Half-Breed rebellion of 188« grew out of thia; while time, under the beat of conditiona, waa needed to overcome the prejudice against the countt^ and its climate, where plagues of locusts had occurred aa recently as 187S and frosts had not infrequently injured the wheat and droughts had occurred as late as 1886. . . . Mr. Keeler here broke in : "As I look back on those seemingly so hopeless days for Canada and find from the blue book returns that not only did the population not increase through immigration to any notable extent, but further that we actually were short in our total popu- lation in 1891 by 120,000 of what we should have had, had we retamed our natural increase for the ten years, I wonder why M Tlu IttuminatiM rf Jotph K-Ur, Eiq. «• *U did not low faith entirely in our futura. Only tliinli of it, the agiregate foreign trade of tU Canada in 1888 ai eompued with 1881 had increaaed by only «400,000 while that for the dreary yean fiam 1870-1880 had even increaaed by 14,000,000. "The nadir waa reached when a financial criiii, beginning in the United SUtet in 1800, reached it< height in 188S. Thia hopeleianeia ii perhape not greatly to be wondered at when, although trade ilowly improved after 1803, the export price of wheat from 18S1 to 1880 roee only once to 80 cent* per buahel, and fell in 1880 actually to 18 centi, while that of potatoea for the lame period row but once to fO centj and averaged a* low aa 98 centa per buahel. There aeemed but one adequate explana- tion for thia whole lituation, lo directly aSecting not alone the growth of the Canadian West, but even more that of the old Lake ihoie countiea of my native diatrict, and thia waa the eztraordinaiy development of the Weatem American Statea. "I find for instance that to the twelve North Central SUtea during 1880-1880 there was an immigration of 1,143,281, which, ~ however, was less than the percentage increase for the same sUtea from 1870 to 1880. But it made a toUl population for thia area of n,410,417 in 1880, which had increased by ItOO to M,330,000 of whom 48 per cent were foreign bom, over (,000,000 being Canadians. "Bemember too that while thia caused an enormous growth in Chicago, and some of the western urban centres, it meant also an increase in the farms of thia central western area from ~ 1,000,000 in 1870 to 2,000,000 in round numbers in 1890. Put that there waa a limit to the available land there is shown in. the fact that the increase in farms from 1870 to 1880 was SO per cent, while between 1880 and 1900 it was only 14 per cent. "You see then, professor," continued Mr. Keeler, "when these several elements of our problem are brought together that they present a group of conditions in some degree helping to its solution, and we thus find in Ontario and the older provincea only an accentuation of the process, which went on in the old Eastern States for several decadea; with thia distinc- tion, however, that while the whole of old Canada was for forty years being drained of her population, the westward movement at any rate kept the old New England population within their > Comnunial md FoHtieol Efnlt tf forty Yton «l own country. DoubthH it ii • novcment rimiUr to thii which nuy lie (t the bottom of the fenerml depicHJon and Heminf •iricultunl ratragreuion in the old dietrict down on Praaqu'- U* Bay; but the nibject, now that we have nally begun to inveetigate it hiitorically, ii becoming ol abeorbing interest and I hope we togetlier may determine in what direction thia moat •eriou> condition, affecting the welfare of our old Province •hould beet turn the energiea of her people." The buiineu-like grouping of commercial and hiitorical fact# made by the man of aflain wai a lource of intense admiration to the profeuor, who remarked in riling to go: "Well, Mr. Keeler, it i> once more the proof of the old icien- tific adage trperientia dee*l, which we now translate into 'It is necessary to experiment in order to lesm,' and certainly you old Canadians must have had either great faith for forty years in your future or an intense patriotism like that of the IVnlese or Swiss for their mountain glens to resist the loadstone of com- meicial advantages and huge business attractions, which you have so well illustrated in this picture o( the growth of the Amer- ican West. But it does seem, as you say, as if the Old East in Canada is today having the same depleting process repeated, and I wonder if there is to be a forty years* further drain on these old provinces, which have supplied the very essentials not only of men, the primary condition to development, but also of the intellectual, social and political elements in the evolu- tion of the West. We must study this further. Goodnight!" CHAPTER Xn The Exit op John Keblbr pbom Frenzied Finance It was Mveral months since the first shadow came over the Keeler house, and unfortunately H had remained there. Mr. Keeler had hoped that the lesson which had come to his eldest son would have proved salutuy; but the young man's personal pride was hurt — the lesson bad not reached his conscience. He placed the blame of his fall upon others rather than openly and frankly going to his father and saying "I have sinned." As usual in such cases, the spiritual in the man being in abeyance, the phy- sical dominated the actions of John Keeler, and instead of turning over a new leaf, he went about in a sullen mood, avoided the family circle and, instead of improving his nervous tone, was quite evidently indul>r g secretly in what had now become in his unhealthy opinion, a physical necessity. He did not abandon his club entirely, for that would have b en to confess his fault; but he went elsewhere and made associates of otheis, who, like him- self, had fallen into irregular habits. This, of course, Mr. Keeler came to know through Tom and, instead of John Keeler appre- ciating the delicacy of his father's treatment of him hitherto, he chose to wear an air of injured independence, which made it impossible for any frank approach from either side. He perhaps seemed to give more hours to his legal duties; but even this proved to be but a cloak to cover his absence from the home at normal hours. The mother and sisters, though still ignorant of what had taken place, were of course made aware erf his irritable moods; but the fond mother set it all down to Jack's overworking at the office, and extenuated a peevishness, which mwe properly was only a rude selfishness. But it was not to be supposed that when matters of this kind had gcme wrong th^ would correct themselves, unless the prime agent's attitude from the moral standpoint changed, and John Keeler had not changed. There still ever remained impending fear of certain actions in the matters of the Real Estate Company The Ittumination tf Jcaeph Ketltr, Etq. jj ilib. coming to li^t, coupled yaih hia failure to meet payments on "cails" for stock held by him. As solicitor and secretuy of the company he had frequently received small payments from pur- chasers of lots to be sent to the treasurer; but when losses at cards had occurred, he had for the moment used these bums, intending of course to turn them in next d^y. Such, however, had now grown into a considerable sum, and it became inevitable that the time for accounting must soon come. His associates even, some of equivocal commercial morality themselves, knowing of his club scandal and his more irregular habits could no longer for their own safety delay action. So it came about that at the semi-annual directors* meeting the amounts of the outstanding accounts of John Keeler in the matter of stock payments and moneys received came up for consideration along with others. With characteristic tnwnirtance, he made his defence, urging that others were behind in stock payments as well, and that the extra legal work placed upon him more than made up for the seeming irregularities. The booming of land sales had, however, latterly fallen flat, and the directors were in no mood to accept excuses for these easy-going methods, since they were sadly in need of funds for payments due on the farm purchased. Young Keeler's irritating attitude of superiority only made matters worse, until at length after high words, a resolution was passed "Requiring that an accounting be nuute within one month of all moneys received by him as solicitor and that if these were not paid as well as all payments on stock overdue, legal action would be taken against him by the company. Meanwhile the solici- tor's work was to be done elsewhere." The resolution was passed not without a sense of indecency on the part of some of the Board, since they had especially counted on the social stand- ing of the son of Joseph Keeler, Esq., and on the prominence of the father in large business afiFairs to give their company a finan- cial standing. But the human selfishness in business, as else- where, and the toutw qui peut of the speculator have no delicacy of soitiment and the inexperienced young solicitor, who had ynan so superior an air. was now to suffer ui injury to his pride, whkh for him was infinitely more intense than any sense of un- ffntunate peraonu hiUuts had as yet produced in him. Its im- Tht Exit of John Ktdtr from Frmuiti Finance U mediate and almoit inevitable leault waa a period of debauch lo aerioiu and prolonged that it could no longer be hidden from his brother and father. The ihock to Joaeph Keeler, when Tom •tated what he had gradually learned as street gossip about the directors* meeting, as we recall his pride in the business prob- ity of the Keeler name, which in Toronto had become a tradi- tion, may well be imagined. His son and heir had not only fallen into irregular personal habits, but he had also marred the family escutcheon. Imme- diate and prompt action was demanded; but it is unnecessary to relate the painful scene between the father, who felt bis personal honor cruelly injured, and his son, who with nerves unstrung was now forced by personal fear of prosecution for financial irregularities to tell to the father the shameful nature of his gambling debts, his misuse of funds and the amounts of the pay- ments demanded by the company. Even at this moment the superior John Keeler, the mother's favourite, only saw one mean- ing in St. Paul's words, "The strength of sm is the law." Not yet had come to him that other truth, "that it is the renunciation of self and the giving himself for others," which was the only measure of his personal reconciliation with the law of the highest Master of Morals. Joseph Keeler did not hesitate for a moment to demand a statement from the company of his son's liabilities and, when received, to pay them all to the full, and to sever his son's rela- tions completely with the company, feeling assured that the whole question of his son's future must be considered from a wholly new standpoint. Meanwhile the young fellow was quite unstrung and the panacea of a change of scene must be at once tried. As it was necessary in the interests of business, Tom took his brother on a trip to the West Indies, and for the moment we may leave the young fellows not displeased at their absence from a very unpleasant situation. Joseph Keeler, Esq., during these past few months, has distinctly aged; the mother, who of ne- cessity learned of her son's misbehaviour, has if quieter in man- ner not ceased to carry herself with an air of even greater personal superiority, as if assured that the expansiveness of her socially protecting wings would adequately suffice to more than se Thi lUuminaiion <4 Joieph Ktder, Etq. balance the peccadiUoea at a whole family. Besides did she not know "that it was those vulgar men her son was forced to associate with as solicitor to that land company, who had been the cause of the whole trouUe. She knew her Jack was all right!" I ^! CHAPTER Xni BniAL Dsporoi^TioN and Ubsan Ovirpopulation It wa» inevitable that some relationship either real or acci- dental between those distressing family affavs of which he had so recent experience and the political, economic and social movements, which had become for him so absorbing a study, should impress itself upon the mind of Mr. Joseph Keeler, the hitherto even flow of whose life had never given him occasion for serious thought on such matters. He unconsciously com- pared the fuU, bounding and successful rural life of Upper Can- ada before the "Sixties, " when not more then 17 per cent of the people were in towns with the high pressure of present-day com- mereial life and the restless, artificial and expensive habits of society, and could not fail to realize that many occurrences, social and moral, such as the irreguhu habits of his son, were the logical and inevjUble resulte of the false standards which society had set up, and to which the young men and women of today in especially the hi^er circles were expected to conform. Not only so, but he also saw that such were largely destructive of the teaching and example of personal effort through self-denial, which in his boyhood had been constantly inculcated as primary requisites to success in life. It became further apparent to him that the phenomenal material development of recent years in CanMla, making in many cases successful speculation possible for young men, whom he knew to be wholly untrained in busi- ness methods, merely through taking the gambler's chances and showing in their plunging foolish irresponsibility for results, was exercisiDg wide-spread baneful and most disastrous effects, not only ujwn the stability of business, but, iriiat was much more important, also upon the moral fibre of the whole people. Young men whom he had known a few years before of no account or standug in business circles were now the moat prom- tr tS The Illumination qf Jonph KuUr, Esq. inent in many club-circles and had indeed invaded and been received in social circles, hitherto the exclusive preserves for the traditional well-bom, their sole title to admission being the fact they had or seemed to have, made *coup9* through stock gambling or the advances in real estate, such being due on the one hand to normal commercial expansion and the rapid influx of population to the cities and on the other to a kind of adver- tising economically as indefensible as a Louisiana lottery or a Gowganda Silver prospe^-tus. The general tone of society to it all seemed indicated by its laughing indiffemkce to any criticism of the situation, when everyone seemed to say: "Why, if peo[^e like to be fooled, wl^ not fool them?" while the lawyer who had grown wealthy through his conveyancing and commissions and the newspaper managers who had flourished through hi|^y paid gambling advertisements, both nonchalantly answered with the conical legal quibble "Caveat emptor" — "Let the buyer beware," as if they had successfully solved for themselves the most intricate moral problem and done all their duty as respectable members of the community and citizens of a country which had a right to be* come "chesty" as being the latest and last great "Bonanza" struck since California or the Rand. But Joseph Keeler was much too practical a man of the world to become embittered against a situation, which had been in- strumental perhaps in producing unfortunate results in his own house, and turned philosophically to the problem of what means were the most Ukely to improve, if not remove, conditions so dangerous to commercial and natural prosperity and so pro- ductive of social and moral declension. What was perfectly apparent to him was that the removal of the population of Canada from rural to urban centres, as was shown by the recent census, and the enormous and dispropor- tionate increase of the cities through immigration as compared with that in rural districts could only have one result so far as the production of the food of the people was concerned. Thus he found the following: Rural DejnpiUation and Urban Oterpopulatim M 41 1901 1911 Increate Ptrenri Total population of Canada ... .4.371,814 7.«04,8S8 1,888.4«S S4.1S Total rural population 3,349,416 S,9«4,SM 418,878 17.18 Total urban population «,0«1,799 S,«80,4« 1,248,644 62.24 These figures were only emphasized by others giving yet more details. Thus in Canada in 1901 there were sixty-two cities and towns having a population each over 4,000, and only two with a population over 100,000; while in 1911 there were in all 200 urban municipalities with populations over 2,400. The cen- tralizing, however, of this population was marked by Mr. Keder since he found that of this enormous urban mcrease, over half had been in eight cities alone, which had grown from 444,406 in 1901 to 1,194,274. Such figures were an ample explanation to him of the continued boom in Toronto, as in these other towns, and were eloquent in the information they gave, which explained so many of his problems. His own city, indeed, had grown from 208,040 to 376,438 or 81 per cent in ten years. But this was but half the story, for coming back to his own problem Mr. Keeler found that rural Ontario had lost absolutely 42,184 of her population in ten years, or such had decreased from 1,246,969 to 1,194,784. What, indeed, he had previously discovered re- garding his old home of Northumberiand was now seen to be simply a local symptom of a general disease. What, when analyzed, made this all the more remarkable was that out of a total of 1,639,644 immigrants who had entered Canada during these ten years, of whom 619,844 had given their vocation as fanners or farm laborers and of whom 120,000 gave their des- tination as Ontario, all seemed to have gone to cities or if to rural districts, to have displaced a native popuhition, whose natural increase since 1901 had wholly disappeared. With the enormous yearly urban increase during the decade confronting him, these figures seemed absurd and impossible, while the industrial expansion of his own city alone confi.med the seeming universal proqierity. Assuming, however, the truth of thew M r*« /Uumtiurftaii qf Jotfli KitUr, Etq. figures, Mr. Keeler uitiindly concluded that they would ihow •ome logic*! coniequencM on •gricuHurml production >nd k turned to itatiitic* egnin, where he wu nirpriwd to find that the average of (arm viluea (or Ontario had increaaed but 11.11 per acre (or all occuped land*, (rom 1906 to 1910, while the inaeaae of land auetaed waa only 481,969 acra over M.iM.OOO in 1906; but that the percentage o( land cleared waa (lightly len. In keeping with these figures he further found that there were (ewer cattle, sheep and pigs in 1909 than in 190«. Thus: 1905 1909 Itlilchcows 1,106,000 1,07«,000 Othercattle 1,762,000 1,<9S,000 Total slaughtered 714,000 800,000 Sheep 1,344,000 1,S«0,000 Sheep skughtered or sold «,S84,000 2,767,000 Swine 1,906,000 1,M1,000 Similarly there were decreases in acreage <■ *^ brotd ptomenwiM, which gave the young lady « ledinx of being quite well again, tlie mother yieldMl readily to Fanny'i ineiiMitioni and both were Mon involved in the locial whirl at the (aihiooable watering-place. In a few weeki they had returned home with Fanny looking bfowned by the iun and lea bireiea, and w matter* flowed along much ai uaual in the home. But it waa uon noted by the father that hia daughter waa often pale and liitteii in the morning with a poor and taitidioui appetite, while (bowing in the after- noon a fluahed cheek, often aaiociated with an unnatural bril- liance and unuaual excitability, both of which railed hia graveat apprahenaioni. Hu wife, however, quieted hit fears with the promiae "that a lummer ipent at their Muakoka home would bring Fanny home bright and itiong again." The lummer came and went, the daughter coming home aeem- ingly better, while the eldeit aon, who had spent moat of these months at the cottage, returned with them, greatly improved in his general tone. So every thing pointed to the home return- ing to its old-time happy routine. Mr. Joseph Keeler, as home affairs became leas engrossing, reverted naturally to those eco- nomic studies, which seemed now all the more important as he saw their relationship to moral and social questions, affecting even himself and family. U waa just at this moment that the question of his youngest son's future became a factor in the problem. Ernest had shown no inclination for the work in his father's warehouse, and, indeed, for a whole year had been doing little more than making a desultory acquaintance with office methods, which from the 6rst he had found irksome. His love of outdoor life often found him riding in the countryside far beyond the city limits, thereby recalling the two happy days spent with his father on the Lake shore at Brighton at the sea- son when the hillsides were white with apple-blossoms set in their verdured background, all reflected in the glistening sun- shine of those fair May days down on Presqu* Isle Bay. His sometimes laughing suggestion that he ou^t to he a farmer had been made more than once, and had again and again recurred to his father. So when, on the boy's return from a few days spent with an old school chum in the Niagara Fruit Dis- Tht Sinu of fiinttt Fundmu U trict. he benme enUiuaUwtic »t the dinner taUe in dc«!ribin« the glorioiH tiicei they had hid in the country. Mr. Keeler uid ; "Emeet, how «-ould you like to be • fruit {inner doim nt Briffatonr" To which the lul replied: "Juit try me, air, and tee! It would be iplendid!" Of coune the mother did not take the boy wrknuly, ai tha could not compreliend how anyone, city bred, could endure the inanity of an exiitence leparated from tlie daily exritement of urban life and of the couitant round of gaieties li v'.irh much of her later years had been spent. So all she en ulu * v was: "You silly boy, you don't know what you »r- tulkii,i< aboui. You would make a pretty fanner!" To this Mr. Keeler only thought it necei • v to icn..i.k: "Well, Ernest, we must see about the i .'ler,' ai ' i»i .^'ht at a fair price, it might be possible to put into effect some of those theories, which he and tlie professor had been di«^M»fing to recently. Not only, he thought, should capital properly invested and applied be made productive as in any wholesale, manufactur- ing or other industry, but there further seemed no reasons why the methods of concentrating business and of cooperation be- tween tlie new business farmer and the old individualistic settler, who for so many generations had toiled patiently alone, should not be brought into effect. It was not long before he had, through the local enquiries of an agent, obtained the prices of a number of farms for sale near Brighton, and, though prepared for it somewhat, was much surprised, indeed, at the low prices asked. It seemed to him absurd that a few lots in a field more than five miles from the centre of Toronto should have a selling price greater than a hundred-acre farm, with buildings, orchard and all near Brigh- ton. In some cases he learned of farms, where no sons were 66 The lUuminaHon qf Joaepk Keder^ Eag. left to till them, and of others ^ere fathers and husbands had died and only women were left to manage them. So many in* staucea of this nature were related that Mr. I^eler enquired still further as to the conditions. He found that while farms would vary in the percentage of readily tillable soil, yet it was plain that most farms were but partially cultivated. Not only was this the case, but the character of the cultivation was fur- ther quite limited. Relatively few cattle were found in the dis- trict, uptat from a certain number pf cows on each farm to supply milk to the local cheese factory, the number decreasing rather than increasing in recent years; while these farmers seemed never to have learned the art of feeding fat cattle or else had ceased doing so as being unprofitable. So the growing of h^ and oats mostly for the cows and working horses, and the cultivating of tomatoes and peas for the canneries, seemed to be the chief methods pursued. The chief feature of interest, however, was the apple or- chards; but there were even in this fruit-growing business de- ments which did not seem satisfactory. He noted that the census showed fewer fruit trees in some counties of Ontario in 1010 than in 1900, while he found that the local practice of many years still prevailed of the apple-buyer of the neighbor- ing town coming during the late summer and bai^ning for the apple crop, at the same price per barrel as bru^ been paid twenty years before. **No wonder then," sud Mr. Keeler to himself, *'if the wages paid and the cost of living are higher to the farmer, and prices not much increased, that he should have grown weary and either retired to the neighboring village, renting his farm which he could not sell, or continued on the farm a mere vegetative exis- tence, not doing much and not getting much, not laying mudi out and not incurring any serious expenditure or responsibility." Before going further into the matter. Mr. Keeler invited the professor to spend another evening with him. The results of their discoveries were pregnant wilii many altered views stem Continent. For instance, if the population of Ontario is half rural and half urban, there ou^t to be at the fanners' superior colleges and schools as many students as at the universities, which lead to professions. Now I recall the fact that the Guelph Agricultural College has stu- dents of the regular class, numbering only some 600, while Toronto University has alone some 4,000 non-agricid'^ural students. The other universities in Ontario really have no agricultural course at all. As regards the primary schools, I remember a short address recently made by the head of one of our Normal Schools on this very point. He said, 'The pres- ent courses of study for rural schools are made by city men, text-books are written by city men, and the teachers of the normal schools live and teach with city ideals.' He pomted out, that, when science is really applied to agriculture, it will mean that each farm will grow ten times its present amount and sup- port ten times as many people. He further indicated that proper teadung must begin through rural teachers who know how to teach the most valuable parts first, so that the country child should learn and do those things at school, which are a part of his preparation for his future life work. This would mean a normal school with its experimental farm, where many lessons of the course are taught in the gardens and orchards, and it also means a country school with its adjoining farm supervised by TO The Ittuntinatim of Joteph Ketkr, Etq. the school principal, where education will be by illustration and experiment in farming, horticulture and home making. "When so prominent an educationist sees this, brou^t up as he was on an Ontario farm, I fancy he really has put his finger on the primary cause of our present evils. I know we have not yet begun to approach the practical methods of Denmark in this matter.'* " All this is, no doubt, very good," said Mr. Keeler, " but from my enquiries there seem other phases of the situation demand- ing the most serious attention, for it must be years for the re- sulU of such education of the children to have practical results. Have you in your studies ev>:r come across the details of any method by which the farmers can unite to obtain the full results of their labours?" "Oh, yes," sud the professor, "1 have noticed in a very re- cent pamphlet from England how, in a single district, three southern counties have what is called an Agricultural Organi- zation Society. Its aims are to advocate the principles of coSperation. Belonging to the General Association are local societies, whose objects are (a) to purchase seeds, implements, manures and so on, (b) to secure the best market for the sale of produce, and (c) to establish credit societies. These methods are the same as those existing in Denmark and other continental countries; but in several of those countries legislation exists enabling governments to loan money at low rates of interest to such societies." "Well," said Mr. Keeler, "this is just such a scheme as I believe is necessary if we are to encourage the farmers of On- tario to underUke production on a large scale with improved methods. Of course private capital from the cities may equally well be utilised to assist in such work; but there is every reason why both means should be adopted. It is a remarkable illus- tration of how slow Canadians have been to realise that the company methods, which are everywhere in operation in manu- factures, in mining, in lumbering, and so on should almost no- where, at least in the East, exist with regard to agriculture. It must be remembered that the fanner through his isolation and his individualism is not, in the ordinary sense, a business man. His interests have not really been considered as one with the ill The Problem of High Priee§ Analyud 71 business interests of his neighbouring town, and, indeed, the people of the tx)wn, always small traders^ have too often looked upon the farmer as the man out of whom to make all they can, taking advantage of their position at every point. " I can see every reason why municipal councils should be a medium through which county associations could be assisted in financing a number of such local societies through supplying printed forms supplied by the Provincial Secretary's Deport- ment for insuring proper organization, reporting as to the good standing of members and guaranteeing that loans would be properly secured, as are our drainage debentures under the Ontario Drainage Act in some of the western counties of the province. ^^Tiat the ordinary farmer needs, above everything else, is encouragement to make improvements, which by making his labour more effective will ensure better returns." " Yes," said the prof^sor, "this is exactly the point, or as one of our acute economists expresses it, ' Increased economy really means the more effective use of loanable capital'; personal efficiency rather than a growth of population may be the great force in increasing wealth, and with the uplift of the personality of those using capital, as in this case of the farmer, comes a better social spirit, and the replacing of competition by coopera- tion. Thus it becomes easier to get groups of producers to combine to prevent waste and. when they combine, the main- tenance of fixed prices just as bank interest becomes readily assured." "That is perfectly splendid, professor," said Mr. Keeler. "and sums up the whole matter exnctly. As I see it the solu- tion of the problem resolves itself into three factors as does any other of my business problems : primarily, it means economy in the production of farm products, as in my factory it means enou^ machines and enough intelligent labor to operate them and the best of materials to work with, which means seed, soil and climate. It must mean, next, that what is produced must be of the highest quality pc»sible, lie harvested and preserved in the best manner possible until put in the hands of the con- sumer; and, lastly, it means that no undue costs be levied upon any product by either local buyers, transportation companies or commission men. I might give you a whole sermon on these 7« The lUuminaiian of Joseph KeeUr, Eaq. Utter points; but you know them all, since as one of your pro- fessors in the University has recently stated in a report regard- ing hi^ prices, "The tax on imports of food is a primary cause in prices being higher here in Canada than in Sweden. Intended to protect the Canadian farmer, the development of canning and packing factones has made it posuble for a group (rf men to oitirely control the prices at which our fanners must sell their products — nearly all possible buyers being in the group — and also to nuuntain the price at which the consumer must bi^ the same products up to the level of the foreign price plus freight and plus duty. ' " I have not said anythiug to you, professor, about my Ernest ; but I believe I shall be doing a wise thing in at any rate the lad's interest in buying a farm and in attempting to cultivate a spirit of mutual help and understanding between myself and neigh- bours in the country with a view to cotfpnation, and tiie boy will gradually get fitted into his place vad work, if he takes the matter seriously, while spending his winters at the Godfih College, getting the scientific knowledge along with the peftetical. In- deed, professor, I think some of the blood of my raral ancestry must be warming up. for I am strangely attnKted to this problem, and you may expect shortly to see me a k>rd of a few cheap acres. It does seem very ridiculous that all which we in Canada hear about the landed gentry of England and Germany should fill us with visions of ancient country seats set in splendid parks, surrotraded with a happy rural tenantry, while we in Canada see on every side our city merchants imagining that they are the only aristocracy, while the fiumers are really classed with our wage-earning warehouse men. It looks as if it is all a difference (rf opportunity and I would dearly like to see the farmer given one chance, for I cannot believe that the ^irit has wholly gone out of that old life down by the Bay, when my grandmother reverting to the early doings always used to say, "Those were halcyon days.'" mW CHAPTER XVI Mr. Joseph Keeler Tcbnr Faruer Mr. Keeler was now still more enthiuiastic than ever in his determination to develop the (arming scheme in his home coun- ty, so it was not long before he was again visiting Brighton with his son, Ernest, to examine closely some of the farms on which his agent had obtained options. He wa.s not long in selecting an old place situated on the Lake Shore with the rail- way crossing it. There was an old-time semi-colonial house, built ninety years ago by the first grantee from the Crown, an old ex-captain of Commander Yeo's fleet on Lake Ontario in the War of 1812. Like all of his profession the old captain had believed in good cheer and from cellar to attic, cupboards and storerooms all told of the days when the "home-brewed" was of the best and abundant. Situated west of the town, the old farmhouse looked out over the waters toward Bald Bluff with Presqu'Isle to the east and Colbome Pier to the west, and ever gave to the ^^ew the wide »» eep of the lake, whose roar was heard from beyond the cedar grove on the shingly beach. The farm had beea well cared for, though never greatly developed, there being .•Kil remaining a large wood-lot of a hundred acres, whose first pine had been cut in the fifties, but now bore a fine growing forest of second-growth pine with beech and maple, birch and cedar. This, with a splendid spring creek coming from the ravine in the escarpment to the north aud wandering over its gravel bed through the cedar bottom and pasture fields to the lake, made the farm very attractive, so Mr. Keeler promptly closed the offer, at what he looked upon as a very hiw price, from the dear old lady whose whole married and widowed life of nearly sixty yean had been spent there, and she and her re- maining daughter left it only because of their inability to manage it advantageously. The pasturage in the creek bottom was excellent and the soil gave promise, with its .several old and young orchards, of supplying the very essentials which Joseph M Tlu lUuminatim of Jotpk K—Ur, Etq. Keeler imagmed would ntiify hii boy'i deain* and give him- tett the niipoitunity tt puttmg into pnwtkc the |duu which he wu nutu ing lor «u honourable occupation lor hit ion. See- ing * favounble opportunity at handling the place by wcuring the lervices of a young farmer, he purchaied the adjoining farm, and the ion of its former owner agreed to take charge on the baaia of "share and ibare" alilce in the products, Mr. Keeler reaer\-ing the forest land and orchards with other land for sepa- rate development. With his business fore i>: t, Mr. Keeler had no idea of rush- ing into any hvge en " iitures until experience had taught Um the best method' ■;' oiocedure. As it became known to the neighbors that a , ircomer from the city had purchased land, they became immediately interested and awaited with much curiosity what their new neighbour might be going to do. Mr. Keeler casualty met with one and another of these; he fouBd them intelUgent within the limits of their old-time ex- perience, and when he told them he hoped they might work togtther to develop the district, he was met with frifHMlly assur- ances of goodwill and assistance. He further soon found that, for the verj' reasons which the professor and himself had \rorked out, these farmers had been following for years along these narrow lines of cultivation which brought them an easy sub- sistence, such as keeping cows for supplying the cheese factor> . caring fairly for their old orchards and growing tomatoes and other vegetables for the canneries, receiving much the same returns as they had twenty years befoee. He leaned that the prices were not such as to enable them to employ sufficient labour for devela^HKat, while largely for just such reasons the sons of the fsem had year after year gone into town, where they could receive ready money or to the West to take up ne^- prairie farms. When asked why they had not combined to sell their produce in Wholesale lots, they could only reply by saying "they hardly knew," but all felt that some such scheme would pay if it could be worked out. Mr. Keeler recognized now at first hand how the lack of business methods and the absence of anyone to take the initiative accounted for what seemed to be a lack of energy and even a seeming hopelessness of any possible improvement in their conditions; and he determined that, his Mr, Jotfk KmUt Ttmu Farmer n ..II time and opportunitin peraiitting, be would tiy and develop in the county lome of the simple methodi under which his daily bunneu operations in the city were carried on. He fitted up the old house comfortably tor Ernest and soon had installed an experienced Scotchman, with bis wife and young family to take charge of the young orchards, grow special stuff for the canneries and gradually evolve some new features cf cultiva- tion, which it seemed to him should be successful. Mr. Keeler, so interested had he become, determined to have the house "open" for the summer months and to spend at least his week-ends in seeing matters develop. During his repeated visits, he found that the neighbours were discussing more seri- ously some of the methods of cooperation, one ol which had been emjUo^-ed successful, at the cheese factory for years, and, through the young acquaintances which Ernest's jolly ways had so ea^ made, Mr. Keeler was not long in getting them organised into an association for mutual assistance in buying artiik'ial manures, spraying materials for the curchards, and for picking, packing and marketing apples and other products. At his invitation a meeting was held in the old house and he was not a little surprised to find displayed an amount of accurate {tactical knowledge which ser\'ed to assure him that with busi- ness methods in buying and sellings very satisfactor>- results were not only possible but even certain. So the season advanced from the early spring into the long summer days and these found Mr. Keeler escorting Fanny and his eldest son do\sii to the "Farm," himself delighted with the prtispect of a iio\'el experience and the growing hope that hia daughter might there regain her (4d-time health and q>irits and that his eldest son might obtain a wholesomer view of life. It had been only the failure of her son to t^iow off his wing through it* depthi the purttng cieelc, deep hidden b the tangled cedan, and came home laden with watercreu, ferns, manb marigoldi and other woodland treaaum. Responsive to Nature's allurements, Fanny revelled "\ every new-found flower and moss and, soon, forgetting she had been an invalid, rejoiced her father on his week-end \-isit5 with the abundant evidences of a returning strength and of a rapid improvement in her appearance of health and with an outburst of her old-time joyous spirit. But soon, all too soon, the nights lengthened and the summer sped away and Mr. Keeler awaited with anxiety and some alarm for what the coming autumn and winter nights might have in store for his son and daughter. Nevertheless, the autumn came and with it the generous, even bountiful gifts of Mother Earth. The evenings were calm and serene, wrapped in that odorous haie which marks the 'fall' of the leaves, with the warm vapours wafted in from the now warm lake waters which, pass- ng over the cooling land, made that wonderful, long autumn season near the Great L4ike shorcii, delaying often into late November the killing frosts and creating an ideal climate for the ripening, tinting and maturing of the apples of those veri- table Hesperidean gardens of Canada. But now and then came the li^t frosts to aid in perfecting Nature's treasures, and with them the tinting of the birches, beeches and maples. Ernest and his men were now busily engaged in picking the lus- cious fruits, having already gathered for the cannery the green com and the ripe tomatoes hanging in their crimson profusion from the drooping vines. The Cooperative Association formed in the spring had done well. Through Mr. Keeler's efforts the railway had put in a "siding," and flag-station while the association had erected a large storehouse to which the fanuers brought their fruits, which there were carefully sorted, graded and packed in the finest type of modem box, to be sent in car-lots wherever called for; but especially to Winnipeg to be handled by one of Mr. Keeler's travellers who had arranged for their sale direct to retailers there and in other western cities. An expert picker MKIOCOPV IBOIUTION TBT OMIT (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 3) 1.0 I.I tarn lit ta ■ ?? ^Li ■^ £ ■£ 1 ■ 2.0 1.8 l^l^l^ A APPLIED IM/OE Inc 1653 Eait Main SIfnI R«h«ll«f, Nti. York U609 USA (716) *B2 - 0300 - f^mw (71«) 168 'MS9 -Fo> 78 The lUumiruttion qf Jote-ph Keeler, Esq. and packer had been empk^ed by the associatk)n, a man psr- sonally interested in the success of the work, who had marked on each package the brand of the association, the grade and the grower's name, thus banning a system which was soon to bring credit to a district long criticised as unprogressive. Joseph Keeler had too long known and helped to evolve the refine- ments of city trade not to realise that what the association had already done was but the beginning of what an up-to-date and critical trade demanded. Satisfied as he was with the first sea- son's business, he saw that with more varied and more refined products, of course more labour would be demanded, if the highest success was to be secured. The crisp evening breezes of late October had now succeeded the September stillness and the whole country-aide was alive with the nlhing is turning out all right as I knew it must," and rejoiced with the rest, while even the haughty Maud condescended to join in the common happiness. The painful and serious soon gave way to the joyous and merry, when Ernest demanded in his boisterous, jolly way of Jack, M Tlu iUuffltnotum of Jotph Keder, Etq. "How an your cowa?" mnd iuuted on partkulmn reguding the health ol "FrMky," "Jenny," "Hoey" and "BUcky"— all being hit calvei. Fanny in return had to deicribe in detail the progreu of the cottage and when she invited them all to the houK-wanning in February, Eme»t'« spirita became ebullient. The happy holiday week went by, only too »oon, with the many friendi of Fanny calling and all expmaing delight at her reitored health. Naturally John Keeler was reserved and, with a proper perception, felt that he had yet to prove himself and make worthy amends for an unfortunate past by real deeds before he could look "the whole world in the face," and tread with firmness iU broad highway. As Ernest longed to see the Farm, the improvements and the progress of all its operations, the happy party was broken up after several mornings happily qient by Fanny and her two brothers in selecting proper fur- nishings for the new home, and the) three returned together, Fanny and John sufficiently gratified in enjoying Ernest's exclamations of delight as he examined every detail of the build- ing of which he was to be the proprietor and Fanny "The Lady of the House. " From the cows and horses at the bams to the lumbering operations in the woods the boy passed, spending every hour finding some matter of interest, so that it was with much regret that he tore himself away at the end of a week to return to his college work. John Keeler, while spending his holiday in the city quietly, had not refused the friendship of those who chose to call upon him, and amongst such w^ the dose friend of Maud, Miss Mary Morrison, between wLom and himself there had for year* existed an understanding, based on the mutual regard of children, which might long since have ripened into a positive engagement had not John's habits, time and again, made such on her part most imprudent. Her delight and pleasure now at finding him on her first call "clothed and in his right mind" and re- stored to health, yet hesitating to express mori^ than ordinary pleasure at seeing her again, were too evident to John Keeler, whose face lighted with an expressive smile of gratitude, as the kind girl's heightene colour expressed her sympathetic regard. Her call lengthened to a visit and she forgot time, watching his pleased face, as she encouraged him by inquiries to tell of all Tht Ugal EtaUim (tf m ArrieulhinH U tb«ir doiiigi, vhich ihc had beaid ioiiietliiiig of through Maud, tuul which kept Fanny and hinueU » biuily engaged at the Farm, that they were forgetting th<>ir oM friendi. John, for- getting hi> reserve, became almoat eloquent in telling of the many things he had been doing, and which so interested him that he never found an idle moment or time to grow weary of rural life, though sometimes, perhaps, looking up expressively, "he mi^' leel k>nely." The young woman's beaming face toM him she understood: but she only said: "How lovely it must be to have so .luch to employ and interest one and to enjoy real life in the corntiy, instnd of the vapid artificialities they had to endure in the whirl of city society. " More than once they met during the holidays, and before John returned Miss Morrison had promised to pay Fanny a visit when they should be settled in their new home and had the house-warming. CHAPTER XVm Hautoh Da™ Hath Comt Aoaik Down ok ihb Laks SnoBE life at the F»nn had raumed iU biuy routine uul by the end o| Jinuuy. Fanny and John were inrtalled in the now com- pleted and coiUy fumiahed hoiue. Inviution. \vm iuued to a few of their moat intimate frienda, and in due time the pleaaant houM-party had arrived and for wveral day> a mildly hilarioua tune wa. spent. John eacorted the parly through the woods to view the lumberinr operations, and many were the exdamationa of wonder and delight of the city folk. a< they mw the axemen dexterously feU the pine trees, trim and cut the logs and brush and with strong teams haul the timber, placing it in pUea ready for sawing. Here and there on the crisp snow were the foot- pnnts of foxes, rabbiU, squirrels and other wUd things, whUe now and then the whirring partridge waa starUed by the new- comers. Every morning these birds of the evergreens came, to Uie joy of the visitors, to the euge of tho clearing, where aa Fanny 8 pets they were accustomed to be fed. As the snow had fallen m November, she had noticed the few remaining biida daily coming nearer the bams and house seeking for food, no longer easUy obtained in the fieMa and woods. As the snow ^w deeper the partridge too wo jld be found approaching shyly the hjildings, and, susp^tisg the cause, Fanny threw crumba and as they cinie again, she got grain and soon waa pleased to find them becoming morning \-iaitanta. Then, too, came the snow buntings, and at tunes the cedar wax-wings and grosbeaks, which soon got to know their friend and foUowed her from the farmhouse to the new cottage. A flock of crows had chaUenged their mtruMon mto the cottage in the pines and had looked su»- pirmusly upon its now permanent occupants; but they, always wise, soon might be heard it the breaking dawn warning off by their caw! caw! the smal'er birds, and only gave pUce to the latter when Fanny went to the verandah to feed them. The T 87 I 88 Tin lUuminaliom qf Ji arranged in the chun-h at which the city performen gave ielectioui and mingled in pleai- ant convenation with their (armer acqiiai nt a w ei. After a final "party," to which aome ol the more immediate neighbon were invited to meet the viiitort, the latter regretfully bade their adieut and John and Fanny returned their quiet life, Min Morri- •on only remaining with them. She had, during theee pawing dayi, obaerved with pleasure the active interert John took in every part of the Farm, and waa lurpriwd, indeed aitonithed, at the strong grasp shown of all it> practical details. Instead of the nervous and irritable lawyer she had known, she now bdteld a strong, calm ma;., seriously engaged in the business of life with an evident purpose of doing his utmost to cany out his respon- sible task successfully. She found that instead of performing a perfunctory duty, John Keeler was eager to learn everything of farming operations, and she noticed that his reading was espe- cially of works on the practice and economics of agriculture. His conversation turned upon some of the problems, which his father and the professor had been so long engaged upon, and John pointed out to Miss Morrison how backward agriculture had become, compared with that in some European countries, where throu^ his reading he had found scientific methodsof pro- duction, distribution and selling fully developed. He spoke of the low land values, which were the measure of the small average crops in this splendid climate, and said that to reconstruct agri- culture in the district was a work worthy of the highest kind of intellect and training. He, too, pointed out the loss to the dis- trict through so many young men leaving the farms for the city, and felt sure that the absence of the old-time spirit and energy, which had marked the district sixty years ago, was primarily due to a failure of the rural population to keep pace with the application of modem scientific methods as in other fields of human energy, and that this must be (airly attributable to the lack of means and opportunity tor obtaining exact knowledge Vaieimi Dof Butt Comi Afi* m llu Lakt Short W o( neh dcvelopmenU Mid of rapital to apply them to pro- duetion. The evident determiiuition o( John Keeirr to itiit t ■erioiu put in reconitructing rountry life by introducing up-to^t« methodf, both of production ud diitribution of farm producti by encounginft the cooperation already begun, arouied Maiy Morrison*! enthuMum, until the uncooacioualy waa led to ny: "How iplrndid luch an ideal ii and how one muit wiah to labour hard to lee it fulfilled." John waa encouraged thua to hope that ahe too might become M willing helper in luch a desirable work; but was yet too unsure of how fhe looked upon him, for him to dare oak her to aiaiat him inhiataak. Aa the daya grew longer, preparations were being begun for eitended outdoor operations during the coming seaaon; and fre- quent were the converaaticna with the most progressive neigh- bours as to. the possibility of establishinga larger storehouse, fitted up with all the modem appliances {or cold storing, at the seat of product Q, the bulk of their perishable products such as eggs and butt ^nd cheese, and latev their apples, instead of selling them at half price only to be stored later under less wholesome conditions in the city He knew very well the Urge city ware- houses, where great piles of food supplies were heaped up, often after their first freshness < gone, and urged that the local storage would benefit most :< th producer and consumer. The problem of obtaining loca. capital proved, when attempted, somewhat discouraging; but gradually as he obtained accurate estimates of the amount of available produce within an easy distance of the warehouse at the railway siding and the coat at erecting a proper building and installing machinery he succeeded in getting a fair number of shares taken in a nOperative com- pany by several dosen fanners and, with this accomplished, laid the project before his father. As the idea was wholly in keeping with Mr. Joseph Keeler's views and es he saw in the scheme the fulfilment of his hope, that John would not only develop a per- manent interest in rural affairs and show an inclination to engage actively in them, but also promote rural reconstruction, he readily promised to see that any balance of capital needed would be forthcoming to establish the business on a modest scale, trust- M The lUumination o/ JowpA Keehr, Etq. ing that John's energies mi{^t prove equal to making it a profit- able venture, assisted by the practical knowledge of his fanner associates. Agreements were then entered into by which each coOperator was to supply definite amounts of fann products weekly throu^- out the year, each in its special season of abundance; while the directors of the local cheese factory saw the advantage of storing their cheese in a cold warehouse locally for curing, instead of sell- ing it at a cent or two of loss per pound in the hot weather for storage elsewhere. Contracts for a cold-storage warehouse were also let, and John had but little time apart from his evenings to devote to the entertainment of his fair visitor, who, without knowing it, was soon entering with spirit into John*s schemes. The inherited instincts of two families uf business people, with John's legal knowledge, made progress rapid, and Miss Morrison began to link, with the projects for the betterment of the district, her future with the man whom she was, learning to admire, as she had long learned to love. But the visit had long outrun its intended length, and modesty seemed to say to Mary Morrison, that, if she were not going to be a permanent resident, it was high time for her return home. Fanny had not only played the part of hostess, but had also re- joiced in the many symptoms of a growing admiration and fond- ness on the part of Mary Morrison for her brother, so that she often found occasion to retire early that the two might have better opportunity to get to understand each other. At last the day of departure was fixed by Miss Morrison, and for the last time she and John had taken an extended tramp along the wind- ing logroads among the pines through which the strong winds of the coming spring "soughed" softly, giving a soothing sense of harmony and companionship between the two lovers and all their surroundings. All Nature seemed ready to spring into life, and that nameless, but universal, influence of returning and energising power, as truly a part of the nature of man as of the plants and animals, was crystallising sentiments and longings, hitherto not fully analysed, of these two into a strong pure stream of love. Here and there a wood-pigeon cooed its soft words to its mate and the chickadees chattered their encouraging note. The waters of the creek in flood in the cedar fiats, rushing :iij|. Haleyon Dayt Have Come Again on the Lake Shore 01 to the Iake» told them of the awakened enei^ of life, flowing free and untrammeled, and the subconKious contact of both with all stimulated in them the common thought of a future lived to- gether, filled with worthy effort and noble deeds. Mary Morri- son glowed with the vibrant force of all this ferment of life and nascent energy and, suddenly tiuning to John, said: " Isn't the mere sense of living and being a part of all this new world of action splendid and enough to arouse one's highest efforts to their utmost exercise? It seems so strange, John, to see you the central point and the impersonation of so much ac- tivity and work going on everywhere aroimd, and I cannot, when with you, separate myself from it. All seems so fresh, pure and independent in such a life, that one cannot but envy you in your determination to make it your own." Filled with a sudden emotion at this imexpected declaration, John stopped, and with difficulty found words to say: "Mary, it is too much to ask you, perhaps too greatly influ- enced by the rushing waters and whispering pine trees, if you won't help me to cany out what is daily becoming a pleasure as well as an imperative duty. But won't you be like Tennyson's princess, " 'My wifc^ my life, O we will walk thii worid Yoked in lU exerciie of noble end.* "You know my whole past too well, Mary, for me to refer to it; but I think you can now be siu% of me, since I feel so sure of myself, and am realising the full meaning of what old Professor Bladde called his creed : " Xet prideful prieits do bsttle about creeds: That chuich ia mine whicli doei moat Chiiit-Uke deeds.' "And that is what my work here is to be. "We have gone together too long, to be ardent young lovers; btit, Mary, if you will only say you will become a part of my life and help me, I can promise that, if a life of honest endeavour can pdliate the past, you will never, with God's help, have cause to regret that you joined me to make my chosen task easier." With eyes full of joyous tears, Mary looked full into John's face, and, giving him her hand, said: " Yea, John, I will be your wife, if it is going to make your task !" M The Ittwnination qf Joteph Kteltr, Etq. Side by side in the deep shadows cast by the tall pine trees from the getting sun, flooding the inter-spaces with a roseate glow, the two silent loven walked through tiie winding pathways — a man and woman grown to maturity of thought and action, proud and satisfied in each other with no illusions as to. the fu- ture, yet, both trusting in Rabbi Ben Eira's words: "Grow old alone wi^ °>et The bMt H jct to be TV lait o( Hie; for which the flnt wae niMle; Our tiaee am in Hie hand Who aaith. *A whole 1 planned; Youth ihowe but half; tiuet God; eee all, ner be afraid.' " The setting sun was bathing the flower-room and, thrpugh it, the verandah in a golden hue as Fanny, now becoming, perhaps anxiously curious, waiting for the late-comers, met them at the door as John was handing Miss Morrison, their clasped hands strangely lingering, up the stone stepsl From the faces of both were reflected such placid, confident smiles, that Fanny felt that all she had been longing and praying for, for John's sake, had at length come true; and with open arms the sweet girl went tor- ward, embraced and kissed her friend, asking archly, "Am I right?" to which Mary Morrison, with swimming eyes could only say, "Yea, darling, John and I are always going to walk together, now." She could only say, "How lovely!" as she threw her arms around her brother's neck and cried for very joy. CHAPTER XIX The Philosophbb's Stone Dibcotereo The winter had ended and the May days had come, when Mr. Joseph Keeler next met the professor under the old familiar conditions in the library after a stroll through the groimds now odorous from flowering shrubs. Mr. Keeler was looking out upon the world again with a pardonable contentment. The last two or more years' events had brought out in him qualities, which, before dormant, were now making him view life from a broader and more generous standpoint, and causing the fine type of business man to move amongst his fellows with a benig- nant countenance, which gave to his naturally dignified bearing a grace which influenced pleasantly all with whom he came in contact. From time to time he had chatted shortly with the professor about his rural ventures, and tonight he was rehearsing the latest from the Farm. He told of the splendid energy which John had developed, and of the comprehensive views be was obtaining of the pressing needs of rural districts in Ontario and of the ways through which a new prosperity might be brought to them. He told of John's investigations into Ihe methods de- veloped in Europe, whereby governments had created agri- cultural credits, through which associations could obtain funds at low rates of interest, necessary for new undertakings or extending old ones. "What do you think, professor, of the soundness of such a policy for Canada?" said Mr. Keeler, "Is there any reason why the capital of governments, properly secured, should not be loaned to such agricultural associations?" The professor replied: "Certainly not, but on the contrary there is every reason based on practice, why such loans should be made in the same way as railway grants, bonuses to steel works, and shipping com- panies, since, even more than these, they will become at once M The lUuminaHon of Joaeph KeeUr^ Esq. productive, through increased crops and increased cattle, thiou^ better drainage* more labour, and better implementi; and, if loaned for cooperative undertakings as packing houses for fruit and other storage, will insure more abundant and better food to the consumer. Remember the example of Den- mark we have spoken of before, and compare the resources ci reconstructed Bulgaria to maintain the struggle against effete Turkey." "Well,** said Mr. Keeler. "John has determined that the con- ditions down on the lake can and must be improvsd, and I am seconding in every way lus efforts to secure codperaticm amongst the fanners; he is succeeding admirably in the cold- storage company and in seeing the old apathy disappearing and the farmers busy in extending their acreage under culti- vation and intensifying the methods of production." "Well." said the professor, "it is, indeed, amazing that our business men have not till now seemed to realize the intimate re- lation between rural production and urban prosperity, and that it is to their personal interests to see that just such undertakings as yon have been engaged in should be made general through- out Ontario? And I am ashamed to say that, until you brought all the iacts before me and have indicated the way to the solu- tion of the problem, I too have failed to realise either the real situation or the necessity for its improvement. Indeed, I have sadly failed in my patriotic duty, as an adopted Canadian." "I cannot imagine anything more worthy of the best energies of a trained scholar, lawyer and business-man like your son is, fbun tAlfing up this work just in the manner he is doing and car- rying it on with enthusiasm. His personal influence must con- ."tantly increase, and the good which will result will extend far beyond the immediate field of his operations. If other capable men would only take the work up seriously in differ nt districts and bring their united influence and knowledge to bear on our Legislatures, we would soon be seeing agriculture developed into' one of the most lact sciences. Let us hope that the boys and their sister may continue to beautify their lives by further devotion to the splendid work, and that both Mrs. Keeler and yourself may derive nothing but the purest pleasure and satis- The Phiiotopker'a Stone Ditcovered 95 faction from the financial and personal sacrifice you both are making." "Ah» professor," said Mr. Keeler, "you can scarcely under* stand how it is not for us a sacrifice but the solution of several very vexing famil>' difficulties. Miss Fanny, strong and vig- ourous with renewed health, finds no day too long for her work amongst her flowers, birds and poultry, and in the many matters in which she can assist her brothers. She is interested in the daily, in the greenhouses and the orchards and discusses them all quite scientifically. She delights in having occasional city girl-friends with her and gets much fun out of their ignorance of affairs rural in which she is now an expert, and she is never more pleased than in pointing out matters of special interest to them. As for my boy, Ernest, he is happy and busy from morn- ing till night, and is in many ways showing the benefits of his year at the college; while John has experienced a complete revolution, both in his habits and modes of thought and action. He has found himself and his opportunity, and instead of his being an anxiet> to me, I am confidently looking forward to his being a power for good in his community scarcely to be meas- lued. Just imagine a joyous, prosperous farming district like in the olden times, whence the depression from imrequited in- dustry will have disappeared, where the common school educa- tion will be a science devoted to illustrating the bcttuties and dignity of agriculture as a profession, and my children all leaders in the good work. Who knows how great the good, how wide the benefits both to themselves and the community at large. Surely all our ideals ought not to be, and are not, purely commercial! Good society in the past was not founded solely or even largely upon money and the influence it brings; and never tn the past, nor now, has it proved any stimulus to either inH- pendence, goodness or happiness. The intense competitio-^ modern business dwarfs noble natures, suppresses generou mpathies and stifles lofty ideals. Society must subsist by wealth, but ought not and must not be dominated by it. The *I6y\a of the King' ought to be the catechism of every boy in mercantile life and the application of its codes of honour should replace the ethics which too often govern in business circles." And so we must leave the two good friends for the time to M Tlu lUuminaiim qf Jotepk Ktrier, £i}. their rconomic atudies and philoaopluc*! diicuuioiu. The thrae other memben of the Keeler family itill under tlie family root have alio begun to lee the moic wrioui aide of life's dutie*. Tom, during the laat two years or to liai been developing iplen- didly, taking on himself many of the duties which his father's new undertakings have forced upon him, and, as the raponsible business assistant of hi* father, is ahoit ig a broad grasp of the larger phases of a successful business house. Even the haughty Haud, associating with her generous-hearted, piBctical brother, is evincing some qualities of heart and mind which have hitherto lain dormant and undiscovered. Madam Keeler, with a deepened sense that in life there are contained many elements of Tragedy as of Comedy, is now feeling something of its seriousness, which lends a real dignity to her social demeanour, and as she becomes more quiet and sedate her real goodness of heart has an opportunity for its active exercise. ' Fanny and Ernest keep things lively in all departments at the Farm; the boy's unrestrained enjoyment in his daily activ- ities, based upon a sturdy young manhood, supported by his sister's never-failing happy disposition, making them favourites with every employee and with their kindly neighboun. There is nothing which they do not encourage to make life amongst their young neighbours more sociable, enjoyable and elevating; while, supported by the serious energies of John Keeler, the evoluti'iU of farming along scientific and business lines is stead- ily making headway in the district and stamping its impress upon every cooperating farmer. The mutual understanding between Mary Morrison and John Keeler, which had ripened into an "engagement," is being cul- tivated assiduously by these now serious, if not ardent lovers, and it has become generally known in their circle that the wed- ding of these two, once prominent in the giddy circle of Toronto society, is to take place in the coming winter, whenever John's now very serious occupation in developing the new business of the cold-storage warehouse at the Farm shall have become less strenuous. Polite Toronto society, which had at first been very critical as to the wisdom of Mary Morrison's action in becoming '* engaged," has now begun to congratulate her Tlu fUtonpkm'i SUmt Ditamred 9T upon her •ppnMchiag happincai; while her Iwiy frienda are veiy curioiu to know what her future movementt are to be and where they propoie to make their future home. To auch, Mary Horriaon ahraya replica with unruffled aweetneaa, yet with an impreaaiveneaa, which preventa further remark: "That ahe propoaea to live where her huaband reaidea, and wlierever hia buaineaa requirea him/' and aaaurea thrm with a captivating amile, "that lilce John 'a great-great-grandmother, they will find hakyon daya ever ahining upon them down in tlw old diatrict of Prcaqu'Iale Bay." The End.