Havergal College - Magazine Yearbook (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)

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Havergal College Magazine The Reason Given. ■ i 7T J , 0 Li 1 r The Real Reason. 27

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Havergal ' College Magazine daughters was not an artist, his doom was sealed. Perfectly ele- gant, rather than perfectly beautiful, were her face and form; while her conversation was, according to her admirer, com- pounded of liveliness, sensibility, and delicacy. The liveliness is less apparent to those of us who are not enamoured, and one wishes that Elizabeth Bennet could, for his soul ' s good, have taken Charles in hand in the intervals of shaping Darcy. Lucilla would, later on in life, have risen up and called her blessed. Truth to tell, with the entrance of the heroine, the foregone conclusion becomes extraordinarily slow. The linked sweetness is so long- drawn-out, and not so very sweet, after all. As the little girl re- marked at nursery dinner, when her baby brother deposited some fragments of gristle on a neighbouring plate, Jimmy is putting all his tit-bits on nurse ' s plate ; and they ' re not so very tit, either. Only some strongly-drawn minor characters or incidents could have saved from tedium the last twenty-nine chapters, and these are devoted to the religious experiences of Miss Stanley ' s neighbours and friends, guided for the most part by the Rector, the excel- lent Dr. Barlow, much admired by the Stanley family, not only for his positive virtues, but on the curious ground that he is zealous without enthusiasm. This dread of enthusiasm, recurrent throughout our author ' s pages, is evidently a feature of her tem- perament and her circle, and explains, possibly, why Coelebs at his most lover-like fails to convince us that he is anything more than the mouthpiece of a learned spinster expounding her views on young ladies ' education. Yet, let us remember the six editions of the first year, the thirty thousand copies bought in America alone, the French and German translations. Even in . Iceland, says the gratified author, Coelebs a was read with great apparent profit, and from Geneva came a picture of Lucilla kneeling by the bedside of a poor pensioner. Tempora Mutantur; we are at once more exacting and less patient than the reading public which hailed Hannah More as a prophetess. Her books, we fear, will remain high and dry on the top shelf, and as a literary memory she has almost ceased to be. But her genuine benevolence and warm support of humane and Christianising efforts that claimed her help and money almost amount to that enthusiasm which she dreaded. The anti-slavery movement, orphanages, hospitals, Sunday schools, the Bible Society, and foreign mission outposts as far apart as South Africa, Ceylon, and Newfoundland, all rejoiced in her liberality, both in her life and at her death, and it is as a philanthropist that she still deserves recognition. 26

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Havergal College Magazine THE GREAT FIRE OF OTTAWA Anyone who saw the great Ottawa fire of 1900 with its spectacular beauty and terrifying fierceness will never forget it. It happened on a typical warm spring day in April, when the high winds sent the clouds of dust scurrying down the street, and carried bits of paper high in the air ; in fact, the very kind of day when a fire can be most treacherous. The clang of the fire-bell brought us children running from our play in excitement, and it was not long before we saw great clouds of smoke in the sky. In the street people gathered in frightened little groups to discuss the grave danger and men were hurrying to offer aid in the burning district. The fire had begun across the Ottawa River in the little French city of Hull, where a woman who was preparing a dinner had poured coal oil in her stove to quicken the blaze. There had been an immediate explosion and in an incredibly short time, not only her own house, but every house on the street, was in flames. Darting tongues of fire leaped from building to building until finally the fire reached the river. At any other time this certainly would have been a barrier, but the exceedingly high wind hurled burning brands through the air and, finally, one vast sheet of flame swept across the water and began its dreadful work in the sister city. From house to house it leaped, often destroying six in a row and then, by some strange freak, leaving the seventh untouched, the one remaining building encircled by a mass of blackened ruins. It was no time for cool deliberation or wise choice in saving the most valuable possessions; the flames advanced with such relentless speed that every human being fled before them, fortunate in saving his life, for the very air seemed an engulfing hissing monster. Mingled with the tragedies of such a disaster were also many comical little episodes. One French woman had just been brought out of her house with difficulty when she frantically struggled to break away from her rescuers and re-enter it. She showed the greatest anxiety and grief over some cherished pos- session which had been left behind and finally, at the risk of her life, she succeeded in entering the burning building. In a few minutes she emerged breathless and ragged; but clutched by both hands she triumphantly carried a bowl containing three eggs ! In another district a benevolent old gentleman had persuaded a substantial-looking washerwoman to come out of her house as far as the sidewalk, but farther away from her burning house she refused to go. In vain her would-be rescuer persuaded, and com- manded ; she was as firm as he and they resorted to physical 28