University of Vermont - Ariel Yearbook (Burlington, VT)

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THE ARIEL, 1908 19 of the bishop and then with miraculous agility emulated the free range of the queen. lyiy skilful maneuvering we checkmated him after several minutes' play, and led him captive to a seat in the smoker. So much for the Williaiii of the settlements. Behold now a transformation as sudden and complete as that in the old fables! Handle-'grip of axe or of paddle wrought as lightning a change as any wand of fairy godinother. Once in the woods or on the water, the uncertain shadow became a man-not only that, but a man with a past. It was of this past, a youthful time of cakes and ale and ginger hot i' the mouth that he discourscd in slow hesitating monologue, as his blade skilfully kept stroke with mine during our first two leagues on the Montreal River. He had gained and fought and fled from the law. He had led two wives to the church-door. He had visited many lands and found out many inventions. But the crowning glory of his life was his stay in Africa, where, in two years with rich English sportsmen, he had drunk deep of wonders undreamed of by Baker and Living- ston. This thrilling recital somehow recalled to me Othellois moving accidents by flood and fieldng and I began to wonder if, like that dusky gentleman, Wil- liam owed his vaunted success with the ladies to the dangers he had passed. Unsusceptible male creatures, even in the credulous hours of twilight and camp- fire-blaze, were, however, forced to boggle many times at the lions, hydras and chimaeras dire that growled, hissed or shrieked throughout the story of his wander-years. VVhich is coming it strong, yet I state but the facts was not always entirely convincing. That first night, prodigal in the after glow of the rosy that had cheered his day, VVilliam nearly bankrupted himself by too generous drafts on his funds of anecdote. As a story-teller he was far from contemptible. There were no quips and cranks in his style. His words were simple, his manner quiet, and the stuff itself, tremendous, magnificent: it was genuine nature or flagrant art. He spoke with full circumstance of a near-by island, where no one could find sleep, of an Ontario lake in whose seemingly still waters whirlpools were boiling, of a Quinze chute at whose base bleached the bones of many voyageurs, of a camp- ing ground on the Saguenay haunted -by the ghostly voice of a long-drowned luniberinan, chanting appealingly from that weird black river, Viens pour moi, viens pour moi. He dabbled in folk-tales, swimming through an hour-long story of a devil's mill, whose incessant grindings caused the sea to become salt: which veracious narrative Anson had heard from the lips of Portuguese sailors at New Bedford and I have since enjoyed in more lively form in the Old Norse

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18 THE ARIEL, 1908 Tlllbi Training of william BY Fiuznnrucic TUPPER, JR. OT long enough ago to be called once on a time, Anson, Harris and I directed with academic dignity and decorum a Summer School for Guides in the Temagami Forest of Qntario, boasting only one pupil on our rolls. The Hudson Bay Store at Haileybury was the enrolling office. To us talking volubly with our outiitter of boots, beans and birchbark, entered Vlfilliam, our future companion in boat and bush. VVith holiday optimism we had awaited some keen-eyed Deerslayer, some Uncas or Chingacheook, tall and straight as a pine-our extensive knowledge of the woods was derived chiefly through Fenimore Cooper. Alas for great expecta- tions! lfVilliam,s slight form recalled not the pine of our hopes, but the light quivering aspenfy No leather stocking graced his nether limbsg but the con- cavo-convexity of their curve was offset by slack and -beltless knickerbockers and drooping garterless hose. His smile was as pathetically futile as his hat- band and cravat, whose gaiety was now only a faded memory. In him con- quering and conquered races had met without malice, and washed out in the strong liquor beloved of both all substance of hate or wrong, leaving only this harmless hybrid as an aftermath. I had read in a German story of a man without a shadow: here was a shadow without a man. The best snap-shot of Wfilliam kodaked on my memory now was granted to me an hour later, while awaiting at the station the belated train that was to bear us and our fortunes to Lachford, the starting point of our water-journey. As usual at such times, all things were in storm and stress. A gay wedding-party was unintentionally thwarting by its merry and noisy ubiquity our efforts to End and forward packs and canoes. In the middle of a confusion increased by the trainis arrival, the same question sprang from us all: lVhere is Vifilliam ? No sooner asked than answered. Across a broad field dotted with blackened tree-stumps he came-rapidly and with infinite variety of step. The acre was his chess-board, and it was his right, nay his bounden duty, to execute in turn the moves of every piece Between the charred obstacles he described with jerky impatience the rectangle of the knight, the lateral of the castle, the diagonal

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20 THE ARIEL, 1908 Eddas. Having exhausted his evenings repertoire, VVilliam then departed in the canoe for a visit to his mother-in-law's home, a mile across the water. Vtfe noticed, as he left the camp-Hre, that his hip-pocket was bulging suspiciously. Early dawn saw the return of the canoe and of a sadder and more sober William. His back-pocket was empty now, but he had known disappointingly little of the joys in solution there, for the old lady,', he confessed, had knocked the pint silly. Under the pretext of seeking a can-opener, we tendered our respects to the dowager in a morning-call of such ceremony as was due the home of one of the first families-the household being of mingled Indian and Eskimo strain. The matriarch denied her presence to us in a manner that suggested sundry shrewd counter-blows from the spirited pint: but the maidens of the house, whose dumpy little bodies and thick ankles did little to suggest the romantic figures lithe as panther forest-roaming that dance across the pages of the elegant Monsieur Chateaubriand, discharged the sacred duties of hospitality by posing in penguin wise before our cameras. A more distinguished, if less Winsome, member of the connection, was visited at high noon :-XVil- liam's brother-in-law, Eskimo Peter or Hboozy foozled Petef as his friends not so potent in potting dubbed him with respectful envy. Peter's vocation was that of gentleman-farmer on the Montreal River near the Matawabika Falls, in which favored region he promoted the culture of the potato with an ardor worthy the attention of Mr. Luther Burbank. Like another country-dweller, Horace, love of the town and of ambrosial nights CHO noctes coenaeque Deum! j sometimes summoned him from his Sabine Farm. Yet, even after genial urban hours of Udesipere in loco,', he was so loyal to the open road that on such occasions he invariably selected this as a midnight couch. This love of the king's high- way had resulted three weeks since in an unfortunate encounter between Peters broad cheek and the wheel of a water-wagon. The wagon was said to have been put hopelessly out of commission-an outcome that awakened little grief in Haileybury, that town of thirsty souls-and Peter's Visage had been marred by three gaping cracks. Long experience with a canoe had taught him the value of pitch and resin in all cases of leakage, and three tarry seams across the jaw now kept water out and stronger fluid in. Peter's prowess with the canakin was Wllll31lliS never-failing topic. No wonder! 'Were they not Arcadians both ? As far as the Matawabika, Wfilliam had been in his own country, and his right as a leader of men had been unchallenged by us. But he was soon to tumble from his high estate: and sad is the story of his fall. All through the long narrows of Vlfaswaning and Obowanga he chanted a wild miserere of the