I do not mean to give you the impression that Sir John was the worse for his wine. He was completely self-possessed, but I could not help being aware that he had consumed nine bottles of sherry without any assistance from me, and that he showed no sign of stopping. I knew—once again I was in the debt of Professor Careless for this information—that it was sherry he had favoured for those Herculean bouts of solitary drinking that are part of his legend. I was concerned, and I suppose my concern showed. Before I could begin my interrogation, might not my companion lose the power of coherent speech? I sipped my champagne and nibbled abstractedly at a stuffed monkey wondering what to do. Suddenly Sir John turned to me.

“Have a weed?” he said, I accepted an excellent cigar from the box he pushed toward me.

“And a b. and s. to top off with?” he continued. Once again I murmured my acquiescence, and he prepared a brandy and soda for me at the sideboard. But for himself he kept right on with the sherry.

“Now, Doctor,” said Sir John, “I can see that you have something on your mind. Out with it.”

“It isn’t very easy to put into words,” said I. “Here am I, just as Canada’s centennial year is drawing to a close, sitting alone with the great architect of our Confederation. Naturally my mind is full of questions; the problem is, which should come first?”

“Ah, the centennial year,” said Sir John. “Well, in my time, you know, we didn’t have this habit of chopping history up into century-lengths. It’s always the centennial of something.”

“But not the centennial of Canada,” said I. “You cannot pretend to be indifferent to the growth of the country you yourself brought into being.”

“Not indifferent at all,” said he. “I’ve put myself to no end of inconvenience during the past year, dodging all over the continent—a mari usque ad mare—to look at this, that and the other thing.”

I could not control myself; the inevitable question burst from my lips. “Did you see Expo?” I cried.

“I certainly did,” said he, laughing heartily, “and I took special trouble to be there at the end when they were adding up the bill. The deficit was roughly eight times the total budget of this Dominion for the year 1867. You call that a great exposition? Why, my dear Doctor, the only Great Exposition that made any sense at all was the Great Exposition of 1851. It was the only world’s fair in history that produced a profit. And why was that? Because it was dominated by that great financier and shrewd man of business Albert the Prince Consort. If you had had any sense you would have put your confounded Expo under the guidance of the Duke of Edinburgh; no prince would have dared to bilk and rook the country as your politicians did, for he would have known that it might cost him his head. Expo!—” And then Sir John used some genial indecencies which I shall not repeat.

“But Sir John,” I protested, “this is a democratic age.”

“Democracy, sir, has its limitations, like all political theories,” said he, and I remembered that I was talking, after all, to a great Conservative and a titled Canadian. But now, if ever, was the time to come to the point.

“We have hopes that our mighty effort may reflect itself in the future development of our country,” said I. “Because you have been so kind as to make yourself palpable to me I am going to ask a very serious question. Sir John, may I enquire what you see in store for Canada, the land which you brought into being, the land which reveres your memory, the land in which your ashes lie and your mighty example is still an inspiration? May I ask what the second century of our Confederation will bring?”

“You may ask, sir,” said Sir John; “but it won’t signify, you know. I see, Doctor, that I must give you a peep into the nature of the realm of which I am now a part. It is a world of peace, and every man’s idea of peace is his own. Consider the life I led: it was one long vexation. It was an obstacle race in which my rivals were people like that tendentious, obstructive ass Brown, that rancorous, dissident ruffian Cartier, even such muttonheaded fellows as Tupper and Mowat. It was a world in which I would be interrupted in the task of writing a flattering letter to an uncomprehending Queen in order to choke off some Member of Parliament who wanted one of his constituents appointed to the post of a lighthouse-keeper. It was a life in which my every generous motive was construed as political artfulness, and my frailties were inflated into examples to scare the children of the Grits. It was, doctor, the life of a yellow dog. Now—what would peace be to such a man as I was? Freedom, Doctor; freedom from such cares as those; freedom to observe the comedy and tragedy of life without having to take a hand in it. Freedom to do as I please without regard for consequences.”

During this long speech Sir John had finished the final bottle of his dozen of sherry. Those which he had drunk before had all floated, each as it was emptied, to the sideboard, where they now stood in a cluster. He picked up the twelfth bottle, and whirled it round his head like an Indian club, closing one eye to take more careful aim.

“You ask about the future of Canada, my dear sir?” he shouted. “Understandably you want to tell the world what I know it to be. But you can’t, my dear Doctor, because I haven’t taken the trouble to look. And the reason for that, my dear sir, is that I DO NOT GIVE A DAMN!”

And as he uttered these fearful words the Father of My Country hurled that last sherry bottle at the eleven on the sideboard. There was a tremendous smash, the gaslight went out, and I lost consciousness.

How much later it was I cannot tell, but when I was myself again I was walking around the quad, somewhat dazed but strangely elated. For, although I had been baulked in my wish to learn something of the future in this world, had I not been admitted to a precious, soothing, heartlifting secret about the next? To be a Canadian, yet not to have to give a damn—was it not glorious!

And to have eaten the Charlottetown banquet in such company! A smile rose to my lips, and with it the ghost of a hiccup.

When Satan Goes Home for Christmas

One of the Fellows of this College—a distinguished scholar whose name is familiar to all of you—said to me a few weeks ago: “Well, I suppose we are going to have another of your ghost stories at the Gaudy.”

My ear is sensitive, and it seemed to me that his remark contained less of eager enquiry than of resigned acceptance. I asked him at once what it was he disliked about my ghost stories.

“The ghosts,” he said, bluntly. “We’ve heard about your meetings with the shades of Queen Victoria, and George V and George VI, and Sir John A. Macdonald; it is as if nobody was fit to haunt you who had not first gained a distinguished place in history. It’s ectoplasmic elitism of the most disgusting kind.”

I could have told him that these ghosts were not inventions; I did not seek them—they sought me. But it is useless to argue with jealous people who, if they are haunted at all, are clearly haunted by ghosts drawn from the lower ranks of the Civil Service. But I determined that I would show him. I did not expect a real ghost this year; after all, five in a row is surely enough even for the most-haunted College in the University. I knew I should have to invent a ghost; it would be a simple matter to invent a ghost who would be acceptable to listeners with strong egalitarian views.

I did so. It is an excellent story—what used to be called in an earlier day “a ripping yarn”—and quite original. It is about a Junior Fellow of this College called Frank Einstein, a brilliant young biologist who discovers the secret of life in an old alchemical manuscript, and manufactures a living creature out of scraps he steals from the dissection lab in the new Medical Building. He fits it together secretly in his bedroom. But because he cannot give his creation a soul, it is a Monster, and kills the Bursar and the Librarian and finally deflowers and then eats Frank’s girlfriend, a graduate student called Mary Shelley. It is a lively narrative, and I had looked forward to reading it—especially the soliloquies of the Monster—but last night—