“Ottawa is a very pretty place, and its winter climate good—if you ask
about the city as a city. If you ask about it socially ———”
“It is best described as the re-incarnation of the home of the original
snob,” broke in Mr. Bang.
What else was said, I shall not here set down. I think it will be much
better to set down my own ideas of Ottawa.
And then the conversation drifted to comparisons of the men of these and
other days. Uncle was of the opinion that the general code of honour was
higher now than it was at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Mr.
Bang agreed with this but stated it was unwise to lean too heavily upon
any man’s sense of honour.
“I once sued a descendant of an Irish king for one hundred dollars. I
thought the fellow could not evade the facts, but when he got into the
stand he lied a hole through a stone-wall. If you wish a sample of a
high-class liar, get a weak creature on the wrong side of a law-suit and
then watch him wiggle. My friend was of people who fancy themselves of
superior clay, and yet he lied—lied confusedly—to beat one, who had
befriended him, out of one hundred dollars. Imagine a man being
admonished by a judge to remember he was on his oath! Is such
humiliation worth the privilege of cheating a friend out of one hundred
dollars?”
My mind keeps playing upon Charlie Lien. I did not meet him to-day. It
is so humiliating to think he does not seem to care. As I passed the
Henry-the-Eighth to-day, I felt I would like a glass of wine and a
cigarette, my nerves seem to demand them.
[3] Possibly Elsie might have spelt this word differently.