Lake Ontario—Canadian Pastimes—Tobogganing—On an Ice Slide—“Shooting Niagara, and After”—Toronto Students—Dressing for the Theatre—“God Save the Queen”—Incidents of Travel—Locomotive Vagaries—Stopping the Train—“Fined One Hundred Dollars”—The Hotels and the Poor—Tenement Houses—The Stage and the Pulpit—Actors, Past and Present—The Stage and the Bar-room—The Second Visit to Boston—Enormous Receipts—A Glance at the Financial Results of the Tour.

I.

The blizzard was in full possession of Toronto, but the air was dry, the sky blue and sunny. There was a brief interval for a snow-storm. But it came in a bright, frosty fashion. The sidewalks were hard. Sleighs dashed along the leading thoroughfares. Lake Ontario was a vast plain, upon which disported skaters, walkers, riders, drivers, and that most fairy-like of “white-wings,” the ice-boat. Did you ever fly across the silvery ice on runners, with sails bending before the wind? It is an experience. You may spin along at sixty miles an hour, or more. If you are not wrapped to the eyes in fur you may also freeze to death. The sensation of wild, unchecked motion is intensely exhilarating; but, if you are a novice, want of care or lack of grip may send you flying into space, or scudding over the ice on your own account. A secure seat is only obtained by accommodating yourself all the time to the motion of your most frail, but elegant, arrangement of timbers and skating-irons.

The leading characteristic winter sport of Canada is Tobogganing. The word “toboggan” is Indian for “sled.” The French call it Traine sauvage. Two or three light boards deftly fastened together, a mattress laid upon them, a sort of hollow prow in front, into which a lady thrusts her feet,—that is a “toboggan.” It is like a toy canoe, or boat, with a flat bottom and no sides. The lady passenger sits in front; the gentleman behind. He trails his legs upon the ice-slide, and thus guides the machine. It is not necessary, of course, that there should be two passengers; nor, being two, that one of them should be a lady. The contrivance was invented by the North American Indians. They used it for the transportation of burdens. The squaws sometimes made it available for hauling along their children. The pioneer troops of Courcelles, Tracy, and Montcalm, made a kit carriage of it.

There is a famous Tobogganing Club at Toronto. It has a slide of half a mile in length, down the side of a hill in a picturesque suburban valley. The slide starts at an angle of about forty-five degrees; then it runs along a short flat; then it drops, as if going over a frozen Niagara, to shoot out along a great incline, that might be the frozen rapids. To stand at the summit and watch the gay toboggans slip away, and then disappear down the Niagara-like precipice, to shoot out as a bolt from a gun along the remainder of the pass, is to realize the possible terrors of a first trip.

Miss Terry watched the wild-looking business with amazement, and built up her courage on the experiences of the ladies who took the flying leap with delight. They were dressed in pretty flannel costumes, and their faces glowed with healthful excitement. But they were practised tobogganers. Some of them could not remember when they took their first slide. A sturdy officer of the club explained the simplicity of the sport to the famous actress, and offered to let her try half the slide, beginning at the section below Niagara.

“I ought to have made my will first; but you can give my diamond ring to your wife,” she exclaimed, waving her hand to me, as she drew her cloak about her shoulders and stepped into the frail-looking sled.

As she and her stalwart cavalier, in his Canadian flannels, flew safely along the slide, her young English friend and admirer followed. They had not been upon the wintry scene ten minutes, in fact, before both of them were to be seen skimming the mountain-slide at the speed of the Flying Dutchman of the Midland Railway, and at one point, much faster, I expect.

“Oh, it was awful—wonderful—magnificent!” Miss Terry exclaimed, when she had mounted the hill again, ready for a second flight. “I have never experienced anything so surprising,—it is like flying; for a moment you cannot breathe!”

And away she went again, followed at respectful distances, to avoid collision, by other excursionists, the slide fairly flashing with the bright flannels and gay head-dresses of the merry tobogganers.

“Yes,” she said, on her return, “it is a splendid pastime. The Canadians are quite right,—it beats skating, ice-boating, trotting, everything in the way of locomotion; what matters the cold, with such exercise as tobogganing?”[51]

“The Montreal Daily Star,” during this Toronto week, had a brief description of tobogganing, apropos of the winter carnival that was being held in the neighboring city, during our too brief visit to Canada. A proper slide is constructed on “scientific principles, and blends a maximum of enjoyment with a minimum of danger.” “The Star” has a picture of the enjoyment and the danger. It depicts an enormous mountain slide by torchlight. Many sleds are coming down in fine, picturesque style. There are wayside incidents of spills, however, which suggest a good deal of possible discomfort. “Try your luck on one of these sleds,” says the descriptive text. “Take two or three girls with you. That is indispensable; and there is a shrewd suspicion that much of the popularity of tobogganing comes from its almost essential admission of ladies. Let them be well wrapped up. Take a firm seat on the cushions, never stir an inch, and all will be right. They may shut their eyes and utter their little shrieks; but, at their peril, they must not move. You occupy your station at the rear. The position is optional. The general mode is to lie on the left side, propped on one arm, with right leg extended; but some sit, others kneel, and on short, easy inclines some venture to stand. One invariable rule is to hold on to your girl; an occasional squeeze may be allowed; indeed, there are critical moments when it cannot be helped. All is ready; the signal is given, and the descent begins. At first it is gradual, and one might fancy that he could regulate it; but, like a flash, the grand propulsion is given; like an arrow’s, the speed is instantaneous and resistless. A film passes before your eyes; your breath is caught. One moment you feel yourself thrown into space; the next you hear the welcome crunch of the firm snow, and then comes the final tumble, topsy-turvy, higgledy-piggledy, in the fleecy bank at the foot. There is the crisis of the fun, and you must take particular care of the girls just then. The weary ascent next begins, to be followed by another vertiginous descent, and still another, till the whole afternoon, or the whole of the starry evening, is spent in this exquisite amusement.”

II.

The short season at Toronto was very successful, in every way. A great body of students filled the gallery of the Opera House every night. Stalls, boxes, and dress-circle were crowded, the audience being in full evening dress. The house looked like a London theatre on a first night. Boston and Philadelphia were the only cities that had shown anything like an approach to uniformity in dressing for the theatre in America, though New York made a good deal of display in regard to bonnets, costumes, and diamonds. New York copies the French more than the English in the matter of dressing for the theatre, consulting convenience rather than style,—a very sensible plan.

On the Saturday night, after repeated calls and loud requests for a speech, Irving, in his “Louis XI.” robes, stepped down to the foot-lights, amidst thunders of applause.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “I regret that I have to appear before you as somebody else, though I feel quite incompetent in my own person to respond to your kindness at all as I could wish, or in such a way as to make you understand how keenly I feel the compliment of your enthusiastic welcome. I thank you with all my heart for myself and comrades, and more especially for my co-worker, Miss Terry, for the right-royal Canadian, I will say British, welcome you have given us. I can only regret that the arrangements of this present tour do not enable me to extend my personal knowledge of Canada beyond Toronto.”

“Come again!” shouted a voice from the gallery, quite after the manner of the London gods; “come again, sir!”

“Thank you very much,” Irving replied, amidst shouts of laughter and applause. “I will accept your invitation.”

“Hurrah!” shouted the gallery; and the house generally applauded Mr. Irving’s prompt and gratifying repartee.

“I would have liked,” said Irving, pulling his “Louis XI.” robes around him, “to have travelled right through the Dominion, and have shaken hands with your neighbors of Montreal, Quebec, and Ottawa. That, however, is only a pleasure deferred. In the Indian language, I am told, Toronto means ‘The place of meeting.’ To you and me, ladies and gentlemen, brother and sister subjects of the English throne”—

A burst of applause compelled the speaker to pause for some seconds.

“To us, ladies and gentlemen, to you before the curtain, to us behind it, I hope Toronto may mean ‘The place of meeting again and again.’”

His last words of thanks were drowned in applause. The students tried to recall him again, even after he had spoken. The band struck up “God save the Queen,” and a few minutes later the audience was on its way home, and Irving was conducting a rehearsal of scenes in “Much Ado,” and “The Merchant of Venice,” rendered necessary by the illnesses which are referred to in another chapter.

III.

Two hours after midnight we were once more on the cars, bound for Boston.[52]

“These long journeys,” said Irving, “are most distressing. I wonder what sort of a trip this will be. We ought to arrive at Boston, on Sunday, at about six, they say.”

“The agent of the road,” replied Mr. Palser, “tells me he hopes to make good time. But I told him that the only occasion when we have done a long journey on time has been when we had no railroad agent to take care of us. They are very good fellows, and anxious to help us, but they have been unfortunate. Our flat baggage car is a trouble. You will remember that the Erie could not take it, and some of the other companies consider it an extra risk. It affords an excuse for not exceeding a certain speed. Besides this, we have not had so much snow in America for over twenty years as this winter. Our trains have been snowed up, and this has occasioned all sorts of delays, as you know. But I hope we will get through to Boston in good time.”

We did not, “by a large majority,” as Bardwell Slote says. It was a tedious and unsatisfactory journey. So soon as we left the West Shore line we began to have trouble. It was on a short section of an unimportant road that we encountered most delay, the character of which will be best illustrated by a brief conversation between Irving and several other persons:—

“Well, what is the matter now, George?” Irving asked the colored conductor of the private car.

“Oh, this is the third time he’s stopped in the woods to tinker up his darned old engine,” said George; “seems it needs it!”

Everybody laughed at this rough criticism of the engineer and his locomotive.

“Stops in the woods, eh?” says Irving,—“that nobody may see him? But suppose another train comes along?”

“If the brakeman should neglect to go back and flag it, there might be no performance at the Boston Theatre on Monday,” said Palser. “That is how Wagner, the car-builder, lost his life. He was killed in one of his own cars, on the New York Central. The train stopped suddenly,—it is said somebody on board pulled the check-string in joke,[53]—and an oncoming train, not being warned, ran into them, and Mr. Wagner was killed.”

“Ah,” Irving replied, “there must have been a good deal of flag-signalling done on this journey of ours, seeing how often we have stopped.”

“Yes, that’s so; yah, yah!” remarks the privileged colored servant.

“I don’t think any of the tracks we have crossed are as good as the Pennsylvania,” said Irving; “they are certainly not as good as the Midland or Great Western in England. The West Shore road is evidently a fine one; but I have more than once during our travels been reminded of a story I came across recently, relating to a passenger’s question: ‘We’ve struck a smoother strip of road, have we not?’ The Arkansas railway conductor replied, ‘No, we’ve only run off the track.’”

“Yah! yah!” shouted George, as he disappeared to tell the story to Peter in the kitchen.

“The newspaper that told the story added, as American journals are apt to do, a line or two of its own, to the effect that the Arkansas conductor’s reply was almost as uncomplimentary as that of an Eastern conductor, who, upon being discharged, said, ‘Well, I was intending to quit anyway, for there is nothing left of your old road but two streaks of iron rust and a right of way.’”

IV.

During one of the very long delays in question Irving and I talked of many things.

“You were speaking of the waste of food at hotels and restaurants one day,” Irving remarked. “I am told that at some of the best houses in Chicago the clean scraps that are left on dishes after each meal are collected and given to poor families every day. Children with large baskets call for them. Another class of scraps go to charitable institutions, more particularly Roman Catholic establishments. These are the leavings of the carver’s tables in the kitchens. One is glad to know this, for I, too, have often been struck with the abundance that is taken away untouched from tables where I have dined; though I have seen nothing of the public breakfast and dining rooms. It is quite a system in England, I believe, the collection of food for the humbler ‘homes’ and charities; but one does not see in America any poor of the abject, poverty-stricken class that is familiar at home. Life to many must, nevertheless, be a bitter struggle.

“There are many who are well off; thousands who would be happier even in the most wretched districts of Ireland. An Irish friend of mine, in New York, said to me only the other day, ‘The worst hut in Connemara is a palace to some of the tenement-house dens where my countrymen herd together in New York.’”

“They don’t go West, I am told, as the Germans and Swedes and Norwegians do. It is a little odd that they do not take full advantage of the unrestricted freedom of the West, and the gift of land which can be obtained from the American government. Sixty acres, is it not?”

“Yes, that is the endowment America offers to settlers in some of her finest territory; and it is true that, as a rule, the Irish do not become farmers on this side of the Atlantic. They prefer city life, even with its disabilities. When I was in America one hot summer, two years ago, children of the poor, who live in the common tenement-houses down-town in New York, were dying of the heat at the rate of hundreds a day. In her most crowded alleys London has nothing to compare with the lodging-houses in the poorer districts of New York for squalor and misery. But human nature is alike all the world over; more than one rich man collects heavy rents from these death-traps.”

“Just as a few of our fellow-countrymen in London supplement their rents by the contributions of infamous tenants. I dare say some of these hypocrites make speeches against the stage, and go ostentatiously to church; otherwise they would be found out by their associates. Religion is, indeed, a useful cloak for these gentry. It is gratifying to find that in some American cities, that are noted for their church discipline, the preachers are not afraid to tell their flocks that, properly used, the stage, as a moral teacher, is not unworthy of alliance with the pulpit.

“Did Mr. Beecher talk about the morality of the stage, or its relations to the public?”

“No, but one of the writers for a Brooklyn journal asked me some questions on the subject. I told him that the world has found out that they live just like other people, and that, as a rule, they are observant of all that makes for the sweet sanctities of life, and they are as readily recognized and welcomed in the social circle as the members of any other profession. The stage has literally lived down the rebuke and reproach under which it formerly cowered, and actors and actresses receive in society, as do the members of other professions, exactly the treatment which is earned by their personal conduct. He asked me about the morality of attending the theatre, and I said I should think the worst performances seen on any of our stages cannot be so bad as drinking for a corresponding time in what you call here a bar-room, and what we term a gin-palace. The drinking is usually done in bad company, and is often accompanied by obscenity. Where drink and low people come together these things must be. The worst that can come of stage pandering to the corrupt tastes of its basest patrons cannot be anything like this, and, as a rule, the stage holds out long against the invitation to pander; and such invitations, from the publicity and decorum that attend the whole matter, are neither frequent nor eager. He informed me that the clergy, as a rule,—he used the term dissenting clergy, I suppose, as an explanation to me to denote the class who are not Episcopalians, that I might the better compare them with the ministers at home,—he told me that they are opposed to theatres. He asked me what I felt about this. I told him I thought that both here and in England the clerical profession are becoming more liberal in their views. Some people think they can live and bring up their children in such a way as to avoid all temptation of body and mind, and be saved nine-tenths of the responsibility of self-control. But that seems to me to be a foolish notion. You must be in the world, though you need not be of it. The best way for the clergy to make the theatre better is not to stay away from it, and shun the people who play in it, but to bring public opinion to bear upon it,—to denounce what is bad and to encourage what is good. When I was a boy I never went to the theatre except to see a Shakespearian play, and I endeavored to make my theatrical experiences not only a source of amusement, but of instruction.’”

V.

“It was a glorious audience,” said the “Boston Daily Globe,” of February 26, “that welcomed Irving and Terry back to Boston last evening. No better evidence of the great popularity of the English artists could have been given than that which was implied in the presence of such an assemblage. The Boston was thronged, and the gathering represented the best class of our play-goers,—a company that accorded the stars a cordial greeting both, and that was appreciative of all the excellences that marked the entertainment.”

The theatre was crowded in all parts. “Louis XI.” and “The Belle’s Stratagem” were played. “Much Ado” closed the engagement. It was received by the audience as if it were a revelation of stage work, and criticised in the press in a similar spirit. At the end of the play the audience summoned the leading actors before the curtain over and over again. It was a scene of the most unaffected excitement. At last there arose cries of “A speech!” “A speech!” to which Irving responded, visibly moved by the enthusiasm of his Boston admirers and friends. He said:—

“Gentlemen and Ladies,—I have no words in which to express my thanks for your kindness; ‘only my blood speaks to you in my veins.’ A few weeks since we came here, and you received us with unbounded hospitality, and gave us a welcome that touched us deeply,—a true Boston welcome. (Applause.) We come back, and you treat us not as strangers, but as old friends. (Applause.) Again, I say, I can find no words adequately to convey our thanks. I need not tell you that this is to us a matter of the deepest gratitude and pleasure, for it is a proof that we have perhaps realized some of your expectations, and have not absolutely disappointed you. (Applause.) I say ‘we,’ because I speak in behalf of all,—not for myself alone, but for my comrades, and especially for one who has, I am sure, won golden opinions; you know to whom I allude (Applause, and cries of ‘Yes!’ ‘Yes!’)—my friend, and fellow-artist, Miss Ellen Terry. (Applause and cheers.) When we have recrossed the Atlantic, and are in our homes, we shall ever bear you in our kindliest memories. I hope to be here again. (Applause, cheers, and shouts, ‘Come again!’ ‘That’s right!’) Even before the present year closes I hope to be with you. (Cheers.) Once more I thank you with all my heart, and bid you good-night, only hoping that your memories of us may be as agreeable as those we shall cherish of you.” (Applause and cheers.)

This second visit, it is agreed on all hands, brought more money into the treasury of the Boston than had ever before been taken during one week at that or any other theatre in the city, namely, $24,087,—and this was the largest sum that had been received during any previous week of the Irving engagement.

It will be interesting, at this period of the tour, to glance at its financial results. The following figures are taken from the cash-book of Mr. J. H. Palser, the business manager and treasurer, who supplied them to the “Boston Herald,” and “vouched for their absolute accuracy”:—

The total receipts in cities where Mr. Irving has played more than one week were as follows:—

The total receipts of the tour, thus far, have been $292,571.