Charlie Kent was, of course, the hero of the day. Sam Massie, brilliantly as he had played, was quite forgotten. But he did not forget to come up and clap Charlie warmly on the back, saying,—
"Bravo, my boy! You’ll make a championship player some day. You must come up to Toronto. We want your kind up there."
Three things have the "red children of the forest" given to the white children of the cities which are so perfect in their way that it is hardly possible there will ever be an invention filed in the pigeon-holes of the patent-office that will surpass them. The canoe for shallow water and what might be called cross-country navigation, the toboggan, and the snow-shoe for deep snow, seem to be the very crown of human ingenuity, even though they are only the devices of ignorant Indians. One cannot help a feeling of hearty admiration when looking at them, and noting how perfectly they fulfil the purpose for which they were designed, and are at the same time as light, graceful, and artistic in form and fashion as the most finished work of highly-civilized folk. They all follow the line cf beauty so closely that it is no wonder the ladies love to decorate their drawing-rooms and boudoirs with them, or to have their pins and brooches modelled after them.
To the Indian the canoe, snow-shoe, and toboggan were quite as important implements as the spade, the plough, and the rake are to the farmer. Without them he could not in winter-time have roamed the snow-buried forests, whose recesses supplied his table, or voyaged in the summer-time upon the broad rivers and swift-running streams, whose bountiful waters furnished him their ready toll of fish. His white brother has in adopting them put them to a different use. He had no particular need for them in his work, but he was quick to see how they would help him in his play, and erelong they had all three become favourite means of sport and recreation.
Snow-shoeing disputes with tobogganing the honour of being Canada’s national winter sport; for although snow-shoes have been seen in Siberia and Tartary, and are used to some extent in Scandinavia, in none of these places do the people derive much amusement from them. Simple as the snow-shoe seems, I would not advise any one to try to make a pair for himself. Only the Indians can do this really well, and even in Canada the vast majority of shoes are put together by dusky hands.