There can be no comparison between the activity and commercial development of towns on the American and on the Canadian side of the great lakes, although Montreal prospers and Toronto has increased greatly in importance and in wealth, but still the credit and resources of the Dominion are more than respectable, and Canadian firms are extending their business in the United States very remarkably and rapidly. In the course of a charming excursion we had occasion to contrast the aspect of the American city with Canadian Windsor, just opposite; the towering elevators, lofty church steeples, smoking factory chimneys, crowded quays, piers, and stores, and the suburbs bright with gay villas, were in strong opposition to the air of rather amateur repose on the British side, which was only remarkable for an enormous whisky distillery vomiting masses of smoke into the sky. But on the American side we were somewhat comforted, whether our solace was derived from sound bases or not, by seeing that Canadian banks and insurance offices were installed in handsome well-appointed offices. Detroit proved a most agreeable surprise to us; there was a pleasant air about it, and an unassuming perkiness very agreeable.
It is the fashion to consider Canada as the Sleepy Hollow of the American continent; but if the giant Progress who is going to devour the East, and who is feeding it meanwhile to make it fat and plump, does not advance with leaps and bounds north of the St. Lawrence (as he does down south), his march is assured and his footsteps are on solid ground.
"Lands divided by a narrow strait abhor each other," sang Cowper. The St. Lawrence (Detroit River) is deep, full, and strong at the town--a very potent stream, but it is not quite broad enough. Windsor was a favourite retreat for Secesh enemies in the Civil War. Detroit is not quite innocent of Fenian enterprise. Windsor, too, makes bad but cheap whiskey--Detroit has a protective tariff, and so there is some little bickering and occasionally a threat of "eating up" the Canadians.
There are, perhaps, many more Englishmen prejudiced and unfair towards things and persons American than there are Americans perverse in their opinions regarding the Old World and their British ancestors, and the Americans are I think remarkable for their abstinence from allusions to the great Civil War in ordinary conversation, nor do they obtrude their party views generally on strangers. A pompous gentleman, a harmless little Dogberry enough, who held civic office at Detroit, considered it right to express some strong opinions about the Battle of Bull Run, at which he had not been. I have remarked that expressions of political feeling relative to the great conflict of 1861-5 were most forcible in the mouths of men who had not ventured their legs, heads, or bodies in the fray, and of such was our bourgeois Boanerges. He was desirous of astonishing the Duke by exhibiting "our society" and "our young ladies," of whom he talked as if they were his private property. Judging by what we saw, Detroit may be proud with reason and without the help of the Mayor, of both, but he probably did not mean what he said and meant to be patronising only. The gentlemen of Detroit were most courteous and agreeable, and full of the desire to please and to show their city, without missing one feature of it, but our programme did not permit us to dally on the way, and we had to continue our journey to Chicago in the afternoon, resign the pleasure of Russell House and reject the blandishments of our kindly conductors. Throughout the whole of our tour the only offensive remark concerning the only lady of our party appeared in a Detroit paper, and I am bound to say no one expressed greater disgust and indignation at the attack, which was after all only some coarse criticism on a travelling costume, than the American gentlemen who spoke of it. We dined at the Russell House and drove to the Michigan Central railroad station after midnight, having been ten hours in Detroit.