I began to understand, through my intercourse with our neighbors on the estate and the village people, those words of Drummond--Drummond who has shown us the hearts of Canada's children:
"Our fathers came to win us This land beyond recall-- And the same blood flows within us Of Briton, Celt and Gaul-- Keep alive each glowing ember Of our sireland, but remember Our country is Canadian Whatever may befall.
"Then line up and try us, Whoever would deny us The freedom of our birthright, And they 'll find us like a wall-- For we are Canadian, Canadian forever, Canadian forever--Canadian over all!"
One night in February, just before the Doctor's mid-winter visit, a friend of the dead poet passed a night beneath the roof of the old manor house as Mr. Ewart's guest. After the yellow chintz curtains were close drawn, so shutting out the wintry night, and while the backlog was glowing, he read to us from those poems that at the author's will exact tears or smiles from their hearers. After the reading of "The Rossignol", Jamie took his seat at the piano and played softly that exquisite old French Canadian air "_Sur la montagne_".
Mr. Ewart rose and, taking his stand beside him, sang the words of the poem which have been set to this music.
"Jus' as de sun is tryin' Climb on de summer sky Two leetle birds come flyin' Over de mountain high-- Over de mountain, over de mountain, Hear dem call, Hear dem call--poor leetle rossignol!"
They recalled to me that twin song of Björnson's which, despite its joyous note of anticipation, holds the same pathos of unsatisfied longing.
The last note had scarcely been struck when Jamie broke into the jolly accompaniment to
"For he was a grand Seigneur, my dear, He was a grand Seigneur."
And, listening so to poems and music and the talk of these men of fine mind and high aspirations, to their hopes for Canada as a whole, to their expression of pride in her marvellous growth and their faith in her future, I said to myself:
"Am I the girl, or rather woman now, who a few years ago made her way up from the narrow thoroughfares about Barclay Street to her attic room in 'old Chelsea'--up through the traffic-congested streets of New York, in the dark of the late winter afternoon, the melting snow falling in black drops and streams from the elevated above her; the avenues running brown snow-water; the rails gleaming; the steaming horses plashing through slush; the fog making haloes about the dimmed arc-lights; the hurrying, pressing tide of humanity surging this way and that and nearly taking her off her feet at the crossings; the whole city reeking with a warm-chill mist, and the shrieking, grinding, grating, whistling, roaring polyglot din of the metropolis half deafening her?"