Читать книгу The Fair Dominion: A Record of Canadian Impressions онлайн

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To go back to the inn—I suppose it was ten o'clock before we got there. A few men sat smoking, with their feet against the wall in the entrance room where the office was; and after we had waited about for ten minutes or so, one of them told us if we wanted to see the clerk we'd better ring a bell. We did so, and presently a youth turned up and patronisingly accorded us rooms for the night.

'Is there any chance of getting a meal to-night?' we inquired, somewhat damped by his unenthusiastic reception. (I may say that I never met an office clerk in a Canadian hotel who did seem keen on welcoming guests. That is one of the differences between the old world and the new.)

'Yup, there's a café downstairs,' said the youth, as he lit a cigar and sat down to read a newspaper.

We went downstairs, and there in a narrow little room behind a long counter which had plates of sausage rolls, under meat covers to keep them from the flies, upon it, and little high stools upon which you sit in discomfort to eat the sausage rolls quickly in front of it, we found a small pale-faced boy who said 'Sure!' in the cheeriest way when we repeated our question about food. Five minutes later he had produced from a stove which he was almost too small to reach fried bacon and eggs and coffee, and while we sat and ate these good things, he gave us advice about the future. He evidently knew without asking that we were emigrants from the old country, and he supposed we wanted jobs. He recommended waiting as a start—waiting in a hotel. Waiting was not, he said, much of a thing to stick at; but there was pretty good money to be made at it in the season. Lots of tourists gave good tips—especially in Quebec—and you could save money as a waiter if you tried. He himself was from the States, but he liked Quebec well enough. Of course it was not as hustling as further west, and not to be compared to the States. If a man had ideas, the States was the place for him. There were more opportunities for a man with ideas in the States than there were in Canada. We asked him how much a man with ideas could reckon upon making in the States, and he said such a man could reckon upon making as much as five dollars a day. It did not seem an overwhelming amount to my aspiring mind—not for a man with ideas. Perhaps that is because one has heard of so many millionaires down in the States, beginning with Mr. Rockefeller. But then again, perhaps millionaires are not men with ideas themselves so much as men who know how to use the ideas of others.