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Authors: Stephen Leacock
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Rupert Drone.
P ERHAPS I OUGHT TO EXPLAIN that when I speak of the excursion as being of the Knights of Pythias, the thing must not be understood in any narrow sense. In Mariposa practically everybody belongs to the Knights of Pythias just as they do to everything else. That’s the great thing about the town and that’s what makes it so different from the city. Everybody is in everything.
You should see them on the seventeenth of March, for example, when everybody wears a green ribbon and they’re all laughing and glad—you know what the Celtic nature is—and talking about Home Rule .
On St. Andrew’s Day every man in town wears a thistle and shakes hands with everybody else, and you see the fine old Scotch honesty beaming out of their eyes.
And on St. George’s Day!—well, there’s no heartiness like the good old English spirit, after all; why shouldn’t a man feel glad that he’s an Englishman?
Then on the Fourth of July there are stars and stripes flying over half the stores in town, and suddenly all the men are seen to smoke cigars, and to know all about Roosevelt and Bryan and the Philippine Islands. Then you learn for the first time that Jeff Thorpe’s people came from Massachusetts and that his uncle fought at Bunker Hill (it must have been Bunker Hill ,—anyway Jefferson will swear it was in Dakota all right enough); and you find that George Duff has a married sister in Rochester and that her husband is all right; in fact, George was down there as recently as eight years ago. Oh, it’s the most American town imaginable is Mariposa,—on the Fourth of July.
But wait, just wait, if you feel anxious about the solidity of the British connection, till the twelfth of the month, when everybody is wearing an orange streamer in his coat and the Orangemen (every man in town) walk in the big procession. Allegiance! Well, perhaps you remember the address they gave to the Prince of Wales on the platform of theMariposa station as he went through on his tour to the west. I think that pretty well settled that question.
So you will easily understand that of course everybody belongs to the Knights of Pythias and the Masons and Oddfellows, just as they all belong to the Snow Shoe Club and the Girls’ Friendly Society.
And meanwhile the whistle of the steamer has blown again for a quarter to seven:—loud and long this time, for any one not here now is late for certain; unless he should happen to come down in the last fifteen minutes.
What a crowd upon the wharf and how they pile on to the steamer! It’s a wonder that the boat can hold them all. But that’s just the marvellous thing about the Mariposa Belle.
I don’t know,—I have never known,—where the steamers like the Mariposa Belle come from. Whether they are built by Harland and Wolff of Belfast, or whether, on the other hand, they are not built by Harland and Wolff of Belfast, is more than one would like to say offhand.
The Mariposa Belle always seems to me to have some of those strange properties that distinguish Mariposa itself. I mean, her size seems to vary so. If you see her there in the winter, frozen in the ice beside the wharf with a snowdrift against the windows of the pilot house, she looks a pathetic little thing the size of a butternut. But in the summer time, especially after you’ve been in Mariposa for a month or two, and have paddled alongside of her in a canoe, she gets larger and taller, and with a great sweep of black sides, till you see no difference between the Mariposa Belle and the Lusitania. Each one is a big steamer and that’s all you can say.
Nor do her measurements help you much. She draws about eighteen inches forward, and more than that,—at least half an inch more, astern, and when she’s loaded down with an excursion crowd she draws a good two inches more. And above the water,—why, look at all the decks on her! There’s the deck you walk on to, from the wharf, all shut in, with windows along it, and the after
P ERHAPS I OUGHT TO EXPLAIN that when I speak of the excursion as being of the Knights of Pythias, the thing must not be understood in any narrow sense. In Mariposa practically everybody belongs to the Knights of Pythias just as they do to everything else. That’s the great thing about the town and that’s what makes it so different from the city. Everybody is in everything.
You should see them on the seventeenth of March, for example, when everybody wears a green ribbon and they’re all laughing and glad—you know what the Celtic nature is—and talking about Home Rule .
On St. Andrew’s Day every man in town wears a thistle and shakes hands with everybody else, and you see the fine old Scotch honesty beaming out of their eyes.
And on St. George’s Day!—well, there’s no heartiness like the good old English spirit, after all; why shouldn’t a man feel glad that he’s an Englishman?
Then on the Fourth of July there are stars and stripes flying over half the stores in town, and suddenly all the men are seen to smoke cigars, and to know all about Roosevelt and Bryan and the Philippine Islands. Then you learn for the first time that Jeff Thorpe’s people came from Massachusetts and that his uncle fought at Bunker Hill (it must have been Bunker Hill ,—anyway Jefferson will swear it was in Dakota all right enough); and you find that George Duff has a married sister in Rochester and that her husband is all right; in fact, George was down there as recently as eight years ago. Oh, it’s the most American town imaginable is Mariposa,—on the Fourth of July.
But wait, just wait, if you feel anxious about the solidity of the British connection, till the twelfth of the month, when everybody is wearing an orange streamer in his coat and the Orangemen (every man in town) walk in the big procession. Allegiance! Well, perhaps you remember the address they gave to the Prince of Wales on the platform of theMariposa station as he went through on his tour to the west. I think that pretty well settled that question.
So you will easily understand that of course everybody belongs to the Knights of Pythias and the Masons and Oddfellows, just as they all belong to the Snow Shoe Club and the Girls’ Friendly Society.
And meanwhile the whistle of the steamer has blown again for a quarter to seven:—loud and long this time, for any one not here now is late for certain; unless he should happen to come down in the last fifteen minutes.
What a crowd upon the wharf and how they pile on to the steamer! It’s a wonder that the boat can hold them all. But that’s just the marvellous thing about the Mariposa Belle.
I don’t know,—I have never known,—where the steamers like the Mariposa Belle come from. Whether they are built by Harland and Wolff of Belfast, or whether, on the other hand, they are not built by Harland and Wolff of Belfast, is more than one would like to say offhand.
The Mariposa Belle always seems to me to have some of those strange properties that distinguish Mariposa itself. I mean, her size seems to vary so. If you see her there in the winter, frozen in the ice beside the wharf with a snowdrift against the windows of the pilot house, she looks a pathetic little thing the size of a butternut. But in the summer time, especially after you’ve been in Mariposa for a month or two, and have paddled alongside of her in a canoe, she gets larger and taller, and with a great sweep of black sides, till you see no difference between the Mariposa Belle and the Lusitania. Each one is a big steamer and that’s all you can say.
Nor do her measurements help you much. She draws about eighteen inches forward, and more than that,—at least half an inch more, astern, and when she’s loaded down with an excursion crowd she draws a good two inches more. And above the water,—why, look at all the decks on her! There’s the deck you walk on to, from the wharf, all shut in, with windows along it, and the after
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