Frenzied Fiction: Ch. 17 - In Dry Toronto

Ch. 17 - In Dry Toronto

A LOCAL STUDY OF A UNIVERSAL TOPIC

Note.--Our readers--our numerous readers--who live in
Equatorial Africa, may read this under the title "In Dry
Timbucto"; those who live in Central America will kindly
call it "In Dry Tehauntepec."

It may have been, for aught I know, the change from a
wet to a dry atmosphere. I am told that, biologically,
such things profoundly affect the human system.

At any rate I found it impossible that night--I was on
the train from Montreal to Toronto--to fall asleep.

A peculiar wakefulness seemed to have seized upon me,
which appeared, moreover, to afflict the other passengers
as well. In the darkness of the car I could distinctly
hear them groaning at intervals.

"Are they ill?" I asked, through the curtains, of the
porter as he passed.

"No, sir," he said, "they're not ill. Those is the Toronto
passengers."

"All in this car?" I asked.

"All except that gen'lman you may have heard singing in
the smoking compartment. He's booked through to Chicago."

But, as is usual in such cases, sleep came at last with
unusual heaviness. I seemed obliterated from the world
till, all of a sudden, I found myself, as it were, up
and dressed and seated in the observation car at the back
of the train, awaiting my arrival.

"Is this Toronto?" I asked of the Pullman conductor, as
I peered through the window of the car.

The conductor rubbed the pane with his finger and looked
out.

"I think so," he said.

"Do we stop here?" I asked.

"I think we do this morning," he answered. "I think I
heard the conductor say that they have a lot of milk cans
to put off here this morning. I'll just go and find out,
sir."

"Stop here!" broke in an irascible-looking gentleman in
a grey tweed suit who was sitting in the next chair to
mine. "Do they _stop_ here? I should say they did indeed.
Don't you know," he added, turning to the Pullman conductor,
"that any train is _compelled_ to stop here. There's a
by-law, a municipal by-law of the City of Toronto,
_compelling_ every train to stop?"

"I didn't know it," said the conductor humbly.

"Do you mean to say," continued the irascible gentleman,
"that you have never read the by-laws of the City of
Toronto?"

"No, sir," said the conductor.

"The ignorance of these fellows," said the man in grey
tweed, swinging his chair round again towards me. "We
ought to have a by-law to compel them to read the by-laws.
I must start an agitation for it at once." Here he took
out a little red notebook and wrote something in it,
murmuring, "We need a new agitation anyway."

Presently he shut the book up with a snap. I noticed that
there was a sort of peculiar alacrity in everything he
did.

"You, sir," he said, "have, of course, read our municipal
by-laws?"

"Oh, yes," I answered. "Splendid, aren't they? They read
like a romance."

"You are most flattering to our city," said the irascible
gentleman with a bow. "Yet you, sir, I take it, are not
from Toronto."

"No," I answered, as humbly as I could. "I'm from Montreal."

"Ah!" said the gentleman, as he sat back and took a
thorough look at me. "From Montreal? Are you drunk?"

"No," I replied. "I don't think so."

"But you are _suffering_ for a drink," said my new
acquaintance eagerly. "You need it, eh? You feel already
a kind of craving, eh what?"

"No," I answered. "The fact is it's rather early in the
morning--"

"Quite so," broke in the irascible gentleman, "but I
understand that in Montreal all the saloons are open at
seven, and even at that hour are crowded, sir, crowded."

I shook my head.

"I think that has been exaggerated," I said. "In fact,
we always try to avoid crowding and jostling as far as
possible. It is generally understood, as a matter of
politeness, that the first place in the line is given to
the clergy, the Board of Trade, and the heads of the
universities."

"Is it conceivable!" said the gentleman in grey. "One
moment, please, till I make a note. 'All clergy--I think
you said _all_, did you not?--drunk at seven in the
morning.' Deplorable! But here we are at the Union
Station--commodious, is it not? Justly admired, in fact,
all over the known world. Observe," he continued as we
alighted from the train and made our way into the station,
"the upstairs and the downstairs, connected by flights
of stairs; quite unique and most convenient: if you don't
meet your friends downstairs all you have to do is to
look upstairs. If they are not there, you simply come
down again. But stop, you are going to walk up the street?
I'll go with you."

At the outer door of the station--just as I had remembered
it--stood a group of hotel bus-men and porters.

But how changed!

They were like men blasted by a great sorrow. One, with
his back turned, was leaning against a post, his head
buried on his arm.

"Prince George Hotel," he groaned at intervals. "Prince
George Hotel."

Another was bending over a little handrail, his head
sunk, his arms almost trailing to the ground.

"_King Edward_," he sobbed, "_King Edward_."

A third, seated on a stool, looked feebly up, with tears
visible in his eyes.

"Walker House," he moaned. "First-class accommodation
for--" then he broke down and cried.

"Take this handbag," I said to one of the men, "to the
_Prince George_."

The man ceased his groaning for a moment and turned to
me with something like passion.

"Why do you come to _us_?" he protested. "Why not go to
one of the others. Go to _him_," he added, as he stirred
with his foot a miserable being who lay huddled on the
ground and murmured at intervals, "_Queen's_! Queen's
Hotel."

But my new friend, who stood at my elbow, came to my
rescue.

"Take his bags," he said, "you've got to. You know the
by-law. Take it or I'll call a policeman. You know _me_.
My name's Narrowpath. I'm on the council."

The man touched his hat and took the bag with a murmured
apology.

"Come along," said my companion, whom I now perceived to
be a person of dignity and civic importance. "I'll walk
up with you, and show you the city as we go."

We had hardly got well upon the street before I realized
the enormous change that total prohibition had effected.
Everywhere were the bright smiling faces of working
people, laughing and singing at their tasks, and, early
though it was, cracking jokes and asking one another
riddles as they worked.

I noticed one man, evidently a city employe, in a rough
white suit, busily cleaning the street with a broom and
singing to himself: "How does the little busy bee improve
the shining hour." Another employe, who was handling a
little hose, was singing, "Little drops of water, little
grains of sand, Tra, la, la, la, _la_ la, Prohibition's
grand."

"Why do they sing?" I asked. "Are they crazy?"

"Sing?" said Mr Narrowpath. "They can't help it. They
haven't had a drink of whisky for four months."

A coal cart went by with a driver, no longer grimy and
smudged, but neatly dressed with a high white collar and
a white silk tie.

My companion pointed at him as he passed.

"Hasn't had a glass of beer for four months," he said.

"Notice the difference. That man's work is now a pleasure
to him. He used to spend all his evenings sitting round
in the back parlours of the saloons beside the stove.
Now what do you think he does?"

"I have no idea."

"Loads up his cart with coal and goes for a drive--out
in the country. Ah, sir, you who live still under the
curse of the whisky traffic little know what a pleasure
work itself becomes when drink and all that goes with it
is eliminated. Do you see that man, on the other side of
the street, with the tool bag?"

"Yes," I said, "a plumber, is he not?"

"Exactly, a plumber. Used to drink heavily--couldn't keep
a job more than a week. Now, you can't drag him from his
work. Came to my house to fix a pipe under the kitchen
sink--wouldn't quit at six o'clock. Got in under the sink
and begged to be allowed to stay--said he hated to go
home. We had to drag him out with a rope. But here we
are at your hotel."

We entered.

But how changed the place seemed.

Our feet echoed on the flagstones of the deserted rotunda.

At the office desk sat a clerk, silent and melancholy,
reading the Bible. He put a marker in the book and closed
it, murmuring "Leviticus Two."

Then he turned to us.

"Can I have a room," I asked, "on the first floor?"

A tear welled up into the clerk's eye.

"You can have the whole first floor," he said, and he
added, with a half sob, "and the second, too, if you
like."

I could not help contrasting his manner with what it was
in the old days, when the mere mention of a room used to
throw him into a fit of passion, and when he used to tell
me that I could have a cot on the roof till Tuesday, and
after that, perhaps, a bed in the stable.

Things had changed indeed.

"Can I get breakfast in the grill room?" I inquired of
the melancholy clerk.

He shook his head sadly.

"There is no grill room," he answered. "What would you
like?"

"Oh, some sort of eggs," I said, "and--"

The clerk reached down below his desk and handed me a
hard-boiled egg with the shell off.

"Here's your egg," he said. "And there's ice water there
at the end of the desk."

He sat back in his chair and went on reading.

"You don't understand," said Mr Narrowpath, who still
stood at my elbow. "All that elaborate grill room breakfast
business was just a mere relic of the drinking days--sheer
waste of time and loss of efficiency. Go on and eat your
egg. Eaten it? Now, don't you feel efficient? What more
do you want? Comfort, you say? My dear sir! more men have
been ruined by comfort--Great heavens, comfort! The most
dangerous, deadly drug that ever undermined the human
race. But, here, drink your water. Now you're ready to
go and do your business, if you have any."

"But," I protested, "it's still only half-past seven in
the morning--no offices will be open--"

"Open!" exclaimed Mr. Narrowpath. "Why! they all open at
daybreak now."

I had, it is true, a certain amount of business before
me, though of no very intricate or elaborate kind--a few
simple arrangements with the head of a publishing house
such as it falls to my lot to make every now and then.
Yet in the old and unregenerate days it used to take all
day to do it: the wicked thing that we used to call a
comfortable breakfast in the hotel grill room somehow
carried one on to about ten o'clock in the morning.
Breakfast brought with it the need of a cigar for
digestion's sake and with that, for very restfulness, a
certain perusal of the _Toronto Globe_, properly corrected
and rectified by a look through the _Toronto Mail_. After
that it had been my practice to stroll along to my
publishers' office at about eleven-thirty, transact my
business, over a cigar, with the genial gentleman at the
head of it, and then accept his invitation to lunch, with
the feeling that a man who has put in a hard and strenuous
morning's work is entitled to a few hours of relaxation.

I am inclined to think that in those reprehensible bygone
times, many other people did their business in this same
way.

"I don't think," I said to Mr. Narrowpath musingly, "that
my publisher will be up as early as this. He's a comfortable
sort of man."

"Nonsense!" said Mr. Narrowpath. "Not at work at half-past
seven! In Toronto! The thing's absurd. Where is the
office? Richmond Street? Come along, I'll go with you.
I've always a great liking for attending to other people's
business."

"I see you have," I said.

"It's our way here," said Mr. Narrowpath with a wave of
his hand. "Every man's business, as we see it, is everybody
else's business. Come along, you'll be surprised how
quickly your business will be done."

Mr. Narrowpath was right.

My publishers' office, as we entered it, seemed a changed
place. Activity and efficiency were stamped all over it.
My good friend the publisher was not only there, but
there with his coat off, inordinately busy, bawling
orders--evidently meant for a printing room--through a
speaking tube. "Yes," he was shouting, "put WHISKY in
black letter capitals, old English, double size, set it
up to look attractive, with the legend MADE IN TORONTO
in long clear type underneath--"

"Excuse me," he said, as he broke off for a moment. "We've
a lot of stuff going through the press this morning--a
big distillery catalogue that we are rushing through.
We're doing all we can, Mr. Narrowpath," he continued,
speaking with the deference due to a member of the City
Council, "to boom Toronto as a Whisky Centre."

"Quite right, quite right!" said my companion, rubbing
his hands.

"And now, professor," added the publisher, speaking with
rapidity, "your contract is all here--only needs signing.
I won't keep you more than a moment--write your name
here. Miss Sniggins will you please witness this so help
you God how's everything in Montreal good morning."

"Pretty quick, wasn't it?" said Mr. Narrowpath, as we
stood in the street again.

"Wonderful!" I said, feeling almost dazed. "Why, I shall
be able to catch the morning train back again to Montreal--"

"Precisely. Just what everybody finds. Business done in
no time. Men who used to spend whole days here clear out
now in fifteen minutes. I knew a man whose business
efficiency has so increased under our new regime that he
says he wouldn't spend more than five minutes in Toronto
if he were paid to."

"But what is this?" I asked as we were brought to a pause
in our walk at a street crossing by a great block of
vehicles. "What are all these drays? Surely, those look
like barrels of whisky!"

"So they are," said Mr. Narrowpath proudly. "_Export_
whisky. Fine sight, isn't it? Must be what?--twenty
--twenty-five--loads of it. This place, sir, mark my
words, is going to prove, with its new energy and
enterprise, one of the greatest seats of the distillery
business, in fact, _the_ whisky capital of the North--"

"But I thought," I interrupted, much puzzled, "that whisky
was prohibited here since last September?"

"Export whisky--_export_, my dear sir," corrected Mr.
Narrowpath. "We don't interfere, we have never, so far
as I know, proposed to interfere with any man's right to
make and export whisky. That, sir, is a plain matter of
business; morality doesn't enter into it."

"I see," I answered. "But will you please tell me what
is the meaning of this other crowd of drays coming in
the opposite direction? Surely, those are beer barrels,
are they not?"

"In a sense they are," admitted Mr. Narrowpath. "That
is, they are _import_ beer. It comes in from some other
province. It was, I imagine, made in this city (our
breweries, sir, are second to none), but the sin of
_selling_ it"--here Mr. Narrowpath raised his hat from
his head and stood for a moment in a reverential
attitude--"rests on the heads of others."

The press of vehicles had now thinned out and we moved
on, my guide still explaining in some detail the distinction
between business principles and moral principles, between
whisky as a curse and whisky as a source of profit, which
I found myself unable to comprehend.

At length I ventured to interrupt.

"Yet it seems almost a pity," I said, "that with all this
beer and whisky around an unregenerate sinner like myself
should be prohibited from getting a drink."

"A drink!" exclaimed Mr. Narrowpath. "Well, I should say
so. Come right in here. You can have anything you want."

We stepped through a street door into a large, long room.

"Why," I exclaimed in surprise, "this is a bar!"

"Nonsense!" said my friend. "The _bar_ in this province
is forbidden. We've done with the foul thing for ever.
This is an Import Shipping Company's Delivery Office."

"But this long counter--"

"It's not a counter, it's a desk."

"And that bar-tender in his white jacket--"

"Tut! Tut! He's not a bar-tender. He's an Import Goods
Delivery Clerk."

"What'll you have, gentlemen," said the Import Clerk,
polishing a glass as he spoke.

"Two whisky and sodas," said my friend, "long ones."

The Import Clerk mixed the drinks and set them on the
desk.

I was about to take one, but he interrupted.

"One minute, sir," he said.

Then he took up a desk telephone that stood beside him
and I heard him calling up Montreal. "Hullo, Montreal!
Is that Montreal? Well, say, I've just received an offer
here for two whisky and sodas at sixty cents, shall I
close with it? All right, gentlemen, Montreal has effected
the sale. There you are."

"Dreadful, isn't it?" said Mr. Narrowpath. "The sunken,
depraved condition of your City of Montreal; actually
_selling_ whisky. Deplorable!" and with that he buried
his face in the bubbles of the whisky and soda.

"Mr. Narrowpath," I said, "would you mind telling me
something? I fear I am a little confused, after what I
have seen here, as to what your new legislation has been.
You have not then, I understand, prohibited the making
of whisky?"

"Oh, no, we see no harm in that."

"Nor the sale of it?"

"Certainly not," said Mr. Narrowpath, "not if sold
_properly_."

"Nor the drinking of it?"

"Oh, no, that least of all. We attach no harm whatever,
under our law, to the mere drinking of whisky."

"Would you tell me then," I asked, "since you have not
forbidden the making, nor the selling, nor the buying,
nor the drinking of whisky, just what it is that you have
prohibited? What is the difference between Montreal and
Toronto?"

Mr. Narrowpath put down his glass on the "desk" in front
of him. He gazed at me with open-mouthed astonishment.

"Toronto?" he gasped. "Montreal and Toronto! The difference
between Montreal and Toronto! My dear sir--Toronto--Toronto--"

I stood waiting for him to explain. But as I did so I
seemed to become aware that a voice, not Mr. Narrowpath's
but a voice close at my ear, was repeating "Toronto
--Toronto--Toronto--"

I sat up with a start--still in my berth in the Pullman
car--with the voice of the porter calling through the
curtains "Toronto! Toronto!"

So! It had only been a dream. I pulled up the blind and
looked out of the window and there was the good old city,
with the bright sun sparkling on its church spires and
on the bay spread out at its feet. It looked quite
unchanged: just the same pleasant old place, as cheerful,
as self-conceited, as kindly, as hospitable, as quarrelsome,
as wholesome, as moral and as loyal and as disagreeable
as it always was.

"Porter," I said, "is it true that there is prohibition
here now?"

The porter shook his head.

"I ain't heard of it," he said.

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