“There’s another sensible thing I like about your British ways. Whether you make much better laws or much about the same, if a man breaks them you get after him, and give him his medicine quick. We call ourselves hustlers! You don’t give your scallywag a thousand miles of rope and let him play around dodging the law as long as he can pay a lawyer.”
“As for the King, you’ve hit the nail on the head,” I remark. “If everybody looked for the facts as you do, without prejudice, half the differences of opinion on all sorts of questions would simply vanish. There is no nation without a king. Our neighbors, as you say, elect a King every four years and call him a President—we elect our President whenever we see cause, and call him a King. King George holds office entirely by authority of an Act of Parliament, and so will his son; though we are always glad to remember that they inherit the blood of Alfred the Great. We are a practical people, though we know well the value of sentiment and high tradition; and we have found the greatest practical advantages in possessing an independent and impartial president, who has no party bias, favors no class or sectional interest, and belongs not to the mother-land alone but to every country of our world-wide brotherhood. He, as no one else can, unites and represents us all.
“As for our laws, they are not perfect, and I’m afraid we have not caught all the rascals yet; but on the whole the impression you have got is well justified.”
Half a mile away, in the darkening air, we see the outline of a house, with a cheerful beckoning light in the window, and we gallop across to see who is there. We find a French-Canadian couple who left Quebec in their youth and have just come back to their native land. Monsieur is unhitching his ox team in the dark. His habit is to rise at three, put in at least six hours’ work on the land before ten, rest through the mid-day heat, and then stick to the plow or harrow as long as he can see the animal’s horns. The house is a perfect model of cleanliness and good order. It has only one room, but is well if plainly furnished, and every utensil, bright as a new pin, hangs from its proper hook on the neatly plastered wall.