A CANADIAN "ROTUNDA."
G-REAT marble-paved hall, 75 ft. long by 55 ft. JOL wide, with columns supporting a dome 45 ft. in height. On your right, as you enter it from the street, are smoking and writing rooms; on your left a Bitting-room for ladies. On the south side the main staircase and a general ticket and telegraph office, fenced round with leaflets and time-tables of nearly every railroad on the Continent. Each pamphlet, or "folder," is adorned with a map of the dis- trict through which the railway runs ; its own particular line being printed in a broad black stripe to impress you with its extent and general superiority over all rivals. The west end, facing the entrance, is lined with counters for the sale of "European novelties" and "souvenirs." The latter consist principally of spoons, silver and silver- gilt, enamelled with the arms and badges of all nations : maple leaves for Canada, the stars and stripes for the States, the Royal arms for English travellers, and so on ; trays of hatpins, brooches, sleeve-links, drinking-flasks, and opera-glasses, melting imperceptibly into pipes, cigar- cases, and cigars enveloped in gold and silver foil, and look- ing remarkably expensive, as indeed they axe. Then a book- stall for the sale of paper-covered novels and journals, yellow and otherwise. On the north a mysterious-looking door, leading down a passage from which men issue forth furtively Wiping their upper lips. Next to that the office where visitors register their names and addresses in portly looking volumes. Next to that again a cloak-room. Chairs everywhere, in bunches of three and four ; also "cuspidors." Business men in dark suits and every variety of hat; negro waiters in clean- looking white jackets; smart, rather cheeky bell-boys ;American " drummers" with cigars uptilted from the corner of the mouth; unmistakable English tourists, with luggage labelled " Wanted" and "Not wanted," and bulky fasces of coats impaled on umbrellas and walking-sticks. The father of the flock is explaining to the much-tried clerk how the latter should run his own business; the rest of the family are gathered round their handbags and hat-boxes, evidently prepared to defend them with their lives, and—incidentally--" rubbering." This expression is of American origin, derived from the noun
rubber neck," signifying a person who gazes around him With undue curiosity (cf. Ifibernic, " gandherin' "). The jeu.nes gmroneaz of the neighbourhood are wandering about with their hats at the back of their heads, and their fringed over their eyes. They are chewing wooden
toothpicks and trying to look as if they were guests of the house and had just finished dinner. Gigantic photograph- frames, adorned with likenesses of the latest theatrical troupe performing in the city, and—propped up on easels- oil-paintings and more photographs of waterfalls, rocky gorges, snow-capped mountains, moose, and Indian chiefs. The whole place is ablaze with electric lights, and life, and bustle. A Transcontinental train has just arrived, and the negro waiters and white bell-boys are drawn up in two parti. coloured rows, facing one another, at right angles to the office counter, awaiting orders. Between them is a motley crowd of Westerners; cowboys in Stetson hats and black shirts laced down the front (buttons are scarce on the prairie) ; a returned Klondiker with a frieze pea-jacket and bushy beard, who is reported to be weighted down with gold dust, and who turns out to be a preacher; little khaki-faced Japs in American-made clothes ; and Chinamen in wrought garments, which even the inexpert male eye can detect to be of marvellous richness and texture. There are men in dress clothes and ladies in demi-toilette ; there is a great railway contractor, whose interests are world-wide, his hat tilted over one eye, his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, and the inevitable cigar revolving slowly in the corner of his jaw. There are American tourists with colossal snowshoes strapped on to their shoulders, which in August look as much in place as a pair of skates. The American boy—Harvey Cheyne, a year or two before he took his dip in the Atlantic—is ubiquitous. He is fat, spectacled, attired in a dress waistcoat, black tie, " Tuxedo " coat, short "pants," black stockings, and walking boots. He is evidently on terms of the closest intimacy with the bell- boys, and full of affable conversation to the rest of the staff, usually on the topic of dollars and cents. Four or five electric bells are pealing, frantically and furiously, at the same time, but no one pays them any attention whatever ; while the air is permeated with a strong smell of cigars and a faint aroma of cooking. As you stroll up and down you catch queer, suggestive fragments of talk from the different groups. "I gave my word of honour th4re should be no boodling in the business," says a despondent-looking Englishman, "but I have a price- list upstairs of the whole output, from the President down, and I could have bought them all for a less amount than my personal expenses have cost the Company during the past year." A long-haired individual, with a blue chin, is making his way to the bar with his hand on the shoulder of an exact counterpart of himself, whom he calls "Dear boy," and is discussing "one-night stands." A well-known rancher from the North-West Territories is relating gleefully to a casual acquaintance an adventure which occurred to him recently at the Auditorium at Chicago. "I'd just had a drink at the bar, when I saw a whole posse of queer-looking hayseeds come in, with blue ribbons hanging from their buttonholes, marked B. E.' in gold letters. You know my natural thirst for information," adds the Major modestly (he is notoriously the most inquisitive man in the Dominion), "and I began puzzling out what 'B. E.' meant. All I could think of was 'Blooming Englishmen,' but somehow that didn't seem to fill the bill. At last I saw one of them ordering a cocktail, so I stepped up and ordered one too. Then I invited him to drink with me, and he sort of sized me up, and refused flat. However, I wasn't going to let a little thing like that worry me, so I offered him a cigar. Said he didn't smoke with strangers, so I bowed and drank his health; but he only turned his back and grinned at the bar-tender till I began to get mad. Suddenly the bar-tender began to laugh, and —would you believe it, Sir, that fellow had taken me for a bunco-steerer ! And, to rub it in, he was attending a Dairy Convention, and 'B E.' stood for Butter and Eggs! But the beauty of the whole thing was, that not two hours after I told the whole story to a very nice chap I'd never met before, and he turned out to be a bunco- steerer himself, and he steered me into a faro lay-out, and I had to fight my way out with a chair." And the Major chuckles fondly over the reminiscence. Then there is a sudden rush for the doorway, heralding the approach of a prominent politician. Everybody tries to shake hands with him at once, and he disappears _up the staircase, surrounded by a mob of admirers, each of whom clutches any part of his clothes he can manage to reach, and beams proudly with reflected glory. A man with cold blue eyes, upturned moustache, and short, pointed beard, who looks like a tranquil Mephistopheles, is talking to me quietly. "A lock of the Maiiinskiy Canal system, through which all vessels bound for the Volga must pass, is only 75 ft. long, with a depth of 4 ft. 8 in., while the dimensions of the steamer were : length, 252 ft. ; breadth, 55 ft. 6 in. ; depth, 14 ft. 6 in. The question was, how to get her through." "Well, unless yea made a new lock—" I suggest weakly. "No, it was much simpler than that; we just cut her into four parts, towed her through on barges, and then put her together again on the other side." Whereat I smile appre- ciatively, bethinking me that cutting ice-breaking steamers 250 ft. in length into quarters, and then building them to- gether again and talking of it as "quite simple," is finer work than hanging on to the coat-tails of a politician, be he never so prominent. A lady in blue spectacles, with a blue badge of some Women's Convention, is asking the clerk questions : "Will it be fine to-morrow?" "Can I get a special rate if I decide to go vitt St. Paul and Minneapolis?" "Do you get much snow here in winter?" "Would it be cheaper to get my washing done at the hotel, or to send it to a Chinese laundryman ? " And—to his everlasting credit—the clerk answers each question civilly and intelli- gently. "Yes, we get them all shapes and sizes here," says the e dreamily, "principally Americans at this time of year though. We had the Medical Congress here a few years ago, and it was amusing to notice the difference between the English and American doctors. I could pick them every time. The Americans were quick, alert, and always darting about from one place to the other; while the English were cool and methodical; they moved about as if they had all eternity before 'them. But they got there just the same," he added, reflectively. "The number of big business schemes that have been hatched out right here in this rotunda would probably astonish people if they knew it. To say nothing of politics. We get loafers too, of course, but more in winter than in summer; they come in to get warm. There's a regular number whose faces we've known for years; we call them the Chair-boarders.' They sit around in chairs, and never spend a cent for the good of the house. They die off by degrees, and I quite miss them when they're gone." An individual curled up in a chair near one of the pillars is calling attention to the beauty of the sunset. As his enunciation is a little emotional, and as he is gazing due East at the reflection of an electric lamp on a red roof, I infer that he, at all events, has been spending money "for the good of the house." But there is very little of that kind of thing to be noticed. Two men are discussing their last holiday: at their feet are a couple of brand-new gun cases and a well-bred Irish setter, who objects strongly to sitting down on the marble floor, and appears to be intensely bored by his surroundings. "Well, Sir," says one of them, "we unhitched that horse all right and tied him up in the middle of a bluff, and shot till sunset. But when it came to hitching him up again, we found that neither of us had ever tackled such a job before. We managed somehow till it came to putting the bit in, but nothing we could do would induce the beast to open his mouth. We tried again and again, but he only stood and blinked at us. So at last I said, George, have you got any baccy ? " Lots,' he replied. 'Well, then, there's only one thing for as to do; we've got to sit down and wait till he yawns.' " The
rest of the story is lost by the sudden arrival of the omnibus. Of course, there are rotundas and rotundas. It has been my fate to tramp up and down for five cheerless hours in a small
Eastern hotel, where all the crowd talked unintelligible Quebec patois and spat copiously. I have learnt time-tables
and patent-medicine advertisements by heart in Western hostelries, where quiet-looking, black-shirted, high-booted men conversed in low tones on the price of steers and the prospect
a the grain crop. But I have been in club smoking-rooms and at big "crushes," afternoon and evening, that were infinitely duller and less instructive than a couple of hours spent in the rotunda of a great Canadian hotel.
C. H. W.
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