“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.