The Vancouver independent. (Vancouver, W.T. [Wash.]) 1875-1910, 1882-08-03
TUDOR VERSUS TANTRILL.

has kept me at the mercy OF the tele-
graph and connecting trains, and if a
veteran traveller gains nothing else, he
ACQUIRES q comfortable resignation and q
convenient mental elasticity as regards
the inevitable. Summer hotels are the
headquarters of giggle and cackle. l
detest giggle and abhor cackle. The
Hotel Fiddlestick is no exception to the
rule. But the interests of Aremberg &
Co. kept me there during two months Of
the past season; and made myself COM
Portable.
To begin: my room, No. %, is the
best in the hotel. A southerly exposure,
two windows, a balcony; view of the
Narrows crowded with sails; of New
York glorifed like SO much opal against
family tinted sky; of the water darken-
ing and ripping in freshening breeze;
all the steamers as they pass; all the
trimmest yachts; should you ever visit
the Fiddlestick, ask for No. 81, and if
you get it, congratulate yourself, and
remember Ine gratefully. To end;
though I hate giggle, like girls-genu-
inc girls; not the sham. There is de-
licious enthusiasm about them lit
exhales, of course, like dew, or the
bouquet of wine); but. while it lasts,
taken in conjunction with curves of
waist and shoulder, light and shade in
hair, smooth or tossed, trim shoes dainty
collars, happy looks, cooling voices why,
there is nothing else so pretty in life.
And the girls like me. They always like
appreciative old bachelors with a fine
taste in flowers, bonbons and horses.
There was O snake in our paradise
that is inevitable first catch your snake,
if you wish to be sure you are in para
dise) or rather what l call q spider.
You have noticed, of course, that
spider is q restless, uncanny beast, re-
fusing to fit into chance holes and odd
corners, and with not grain of decent
respect in her for the proprieties. As
solomon says or was it David?-"She
taketh hold with her hands in kings
palaces" There you have her. Wher-
ever she goes, no matter where she goes,
2 she must spin her own system about her.
There is no peace till she does. Vesti-
bule, anteroom, inner chamber. so mary
lines and threads to each, and there she
sits all day and pounces on flies, and
would do it in the very temple Of the
MUSES.. Mrs. J. G. Tudor Smith accent
on the Tudor was our spider. She was
no mathematical morality, no sense of
social proportions, in the woman. In q
summer hotel, with, say, five hundred
guests, she insisted on setting out her.
self and belongings on the same scale as
at home; that is, at home your friends
bow to yon with an implied conscious
ness of the history of Gerritt, your
father, and David, your grandfather; of
-. 30 ~ md oh fxy
bazars; of the cost of your silver, and
the style of your conversation. There
is q sum total in their minds of your
views, virtues, and claims. great and
small, and they never think of you apart
from it.
Among strangers, there can be nothing
of this sort. You stare at them, they
stare at you. To each other you are
simply a stenographic character. How
much or how little it may mean there is
seldom leisure to discover. You accept
each other in outline. By common con-
sent you receive and bestow so much
CONSERVATION as belongs to outlines and
title-pages. You are kind and courteous
as to chance passengers in q car; you
nod, smile, chat. help amuse and be
amused, say goodbye, and don't forget
each other as rule. Now don't let
some dear little woman rise up and storm
at me AS hard-hearted old bachelor and
bring up his own case and some half
dozen others. am not talking of the
exceptions, but of the rule. Quite right,
quite reasonable, it is. I take the world
as it wags; Mrs. j. c. Tudor Smith
would not take the world as it wags,
with its culpable Indifference to the cost
of her bonnets, and what she said thirty
years ago. She would tell you about it.
She would give You her views on her an
cestors, and your probable lack of them.
She might have been butcher, for the
persistence With which she came back to
''blood." She might have lived in the
twelfth century. for the energy with
which she opposed 1.-THE education of the
masses" She might have belonged to
the tenth, for her sins against the
grammar Of her own native tongue. She
might have been directory, so loudly
did she claim ito know everybody o.
any consequence" She lay in wait fol
every chance proper name, and pro
claimed that the family grand mother
was . wssker-woman, or that they mus
have been very interior people, as sh'
had never heard of them. Undoubtedl,
. woman might be created who coult
make herself more disagreeable, but un
doubtedly one never was. She stirret
even my gall. and rs an old traveller
pique myself on my tolerance. In short,
wish you to observe that she had mad