and then shuffle their feet vigorously.  On completing the circuit, they could produce a combined spark over two inches long, with a correspondingly sharp shock.  In my bedroom at Ottawa there was an old-fashioned high brass fender.  Had I put on slippers, and have attempted to warm myself at the fire previous to turning-in.  I should be reminded, by a sharp discharge from my protesting calves into the metal fender, that I was in dry Canada.  (At that date the dryness of Canada was atmospherical only.) Curiously enough, a spark leaving the body produces the same shock as one entering it, and no electricity whatever can be generated with bare feet.  One of the footmen at Ottawa must have been an abnormally high-strung young man, for should one inadvertently touch silver dinner-plate he handed one, a sharp electric shock resulted.  The children delighted in one very pretty experiment.  Many books for the young have their bindings plentifully adorned with gold, notably the French series, the “Bibliotheque Rose.”  Should one of these highly-gilt volumes be taken into a warm and dry place, and the lights extinguished, the inner side of the binding had only to be rubbed briskly with a fur-cap for all the gilding to begin to sparkle and coruscate, and to send out little flashes of light.  The children took the utmost pleasure in this example of the curious properties of electricity.

The Ottawa of the “eighties” was an attractive little place, and Ottawa Society was very pleasant.  There was then a note of unaffected simplicity about everything that was most engaging, and the people were perfectly natural and free from pretence.  The majority of them were Civil servants of limited means, and as everybody knew what their neighbours’ incomes were, there was no occasion for make-believe.  The same note of simplicity ran through all amusements and entertaining, and I think that it constituted the charm of the place.  I called one afternoon on the very agreeable wife of a high official, and was told at the door that Lady R—­was not at home.  Recognizing my voice, a cry came up from the kitchen-stairs.  “Oh, yes!  I am at home to you.  Come right down into the kitchen,” where I found my friend, with her sleeves rolled up, making with her own hands the sweets for the dinner-party she was giving that night, as she mistrusted her cook’s capabilities.  The Ottawa people had then that gift of being absolutely unaffected, which makes the majority of Australians so attractive.  Now everything has changed; Ottawa has trebled in size since I first knew it, and on revisiting it twenty-five years later, I found that it had become very “smart” indeed, with elaborate houses and gorgeous raiment.