have blown in from anywhere between thirty degrees of latitude—­and had to be carefully identified by hand.  To-day, the spacing, the headlines, the advertising of Canadian papers, the chessboard-like look of the open page which should be a daily beautiful study in black and white, the brittle pulp-paper, the machine-set type, are all as standardised as the railway cars of the Continent.  Indeed, looking through a mass of Canadian journals is like trying to find one’s own sleeper in a corridor train.  Newspaper offices are among the most conservative organisations in the world; but surely after twenty-five years some changes might be permitted to creep in; some original convention of expression or assembly might be developed.

I drew up to this idea cautiously among a knot of fellow-craftsmen.  ’You mean,’ said one straight-eyed youth, ’that we are a back-number copying back-numbers?’

It was precisely what I did mean, so I made haste to deny it.  ’We know that,’ he said cheerfully.  ’Remember we haven’t the sea all round us—­and the postal rates to England have only just been lowered.  It will all come right.’

Surely it will; but meantime one hates to think of these splendid people using second-class words to express first-class emotions.

And so naturally from Journalism to Democracy.  Every country is entitled to her reservations, and pretences, but the more ‘democratic’ a land is, the more make-believes must the stranger respect.  Some of the Tribal Heralds were very good to me in this matter, and, as it were, nudged me when it was time to duck in the House of Rimmon.  During their office hours they professed an unflinching belief in the blessed word ‘Democracy,’ which means any crowd on the move—­that is to say, the helpless thing which breaks through floors and falls into cellars; overturns pleasure-boats by rushing from port to starboard; stamps men into pulp because it thinks it has lost sixpence, and jams and grills in the doorways of blazing theatres.  Out of office, like every one else, they relaxed.  Many winked, a few were flippant, but they all agreed that the only drawback to Democracy was Demos—­a jealous God of primitive tastes and despotic tendencies.  I received a faithful portrait of him from a politician who had worshipped him all his life.  It was practically the Epistle of Jeremy—­the sixth chapter of Baruch—­done into unquotable English.

But Canada is not yet an ideal Democracy.  For one thing she has had to work hard among rough-edged surroundings which carry inevitable consequences.  For another, the law in Canada exists and is administered, not as a surprise, a joke, a favour, a bribe, or a Wrestling Turk exhibition, but as an integral part of the national character—­no more to be forgotten or talked about than one’s trousers.  If you kill, you hang.  If you steal, you go to jail.  This has worked toward peace, self-respect, and, I think, the innate dignity of the people.