I am writing from Calgary, a little but growing collection of huts and wooden houses planted on a lovely plain with hills all around, a river at my feet, on the banks of which some poplars flourish, and I can almost fancy I am in Derbyshire itself. It is a gay place, this rising town, at the foot, as it were, of the Rockies, and just now is unusually gay, as the Queen’s birthday is being celebrated with athletic sports and a ball; and, besides, a new clergyman has made his appearance, the Rev. Parks Smith, from a Bermondsey parish, who is to preach in the new Assembly Hall, which is to be set apart as a church on Sundays. I am going to hear him, and already I feel somewhat of a Pharisee—I have on a clean collar, which I religiously preserved for the occasion, and have had my boots blackened. The sight is so novel that I have spent half an hour on the prairie contemplating the effect of that operation. Already I feel six inches higher.
I can’t say that I think quite so much of Calgary as do the people who live in it. In splendour, in wealth, in dignity, and importance, they evidently anticipate it will be a second Babylon. Well, a good deal has to be done first. The situation is pleasant, I admit. You incline to think well of Calgary after the dreary ride across the prairie, and you have quite a choice of hotels, and of shops, all well stocked; but then these shops are little better than huts, and the hotels certainly don’t throw the shops into the shade.
For instance, I am in the leading hotel. It is too far from the railway, but that is because the C.P.R. have moved their station a little further on, where the new town of Calgary is springing up. We have an open room, where I am writing—a dark dining-room on one side, and then, on the other, a little row of closets, which they dignify by the name of bedrooms. I am the proud possessor of one. It holds a bed, whereon, I own, I slept soundly; a row of pegs, on which to hang one’s clothes; and a little shelf, on which is placed a tiny wash-hand basin; while above that is a glass, in which it is impossible to get a good view of yourself—a matter of very small consequence, as the glass certainly reflects very poorly the looker’s personal charms, whatever they may be. I ought to have said there is a window; and as my bedroom is on the ground floor (upper rooms are rare in these wooden houses in the North-West), I am much exercised in my mind as to whether that window may not be opened in the course of the night, and the roll of dollars I have hidden under my pillow carried off. Then, just as I am getting into bed, I discover somebody else’s boots. That is awkward—very. It is with a sigh of relief I discover that they are not feminine. Suppose the owner of those boots comes into my bedroom and claims to be the rightful owner? Suppose he resorts to physical force? Suppose, in such a case, I got the worst of it?