Letters in Summer Time, Montreal, 1911

Montreal Daily star, 21 July 1911, page 8

LETTERS IN SUMMER TIME

 

It is not always easy to write letters when off on a vacation but, if anyone who will be made happier by writing it should be done, no matter at what sacrifice of time and inclination.  There is a great deal, too much fuss, made about writing letters anyhow.  So many persons make such a business of it.  It is a work to get the ink, the pen, paper and envelopes.  It is a work to sit down and compose a letter.  Everyone should have all the necessities on hand and then surely it is a very little matter to sit down and chat for a few minutes on paper.  Do not trouble about composition, about grammar, about anything except the fat that you are going to talk for a few minutes with a friend who is interested in what you are doing and what you are seeing.  People seem to think that when they write letters they must only write of matters of tremendous importance.  Such bosh.  What the recipients of letters from friends want is to get all the little daily happenings.  The best letter writer I know tells of all the little things of life, how the dogs are, if the cat has a new family of kittens, how lovely the hollyhocks are in the garden, what a success the new frock is and what a failure the new cook.  I have seen men and women sit down to write a letter and screw their foreheads all up and sit motionless pen in hand for minutes at a time trying to think of something to say, something to fill up space with.  Yet if the friend to whom they are writing were sitting there opposite them, they would have plenty to say.  There is the new book in discuss, the people one has met, the places one has been to.  The real trouble about a letter is not what to say, but what not to say.  There is always so much even in places where nothing happens that it is difficult to stop.  Writing letters is all a habit anyhow.  And the sooner those who have not already formed the habit to do so the better.  Think of all the friendships broken, the relations estranged for lack of a few words on paper.  A letter is a small thing but one of tremendous importance.

AC

 

 

The Summer as it is- and as it should be- Montreal, 1900

Montreal Daily Star, 11 August 1900, page 7

 

From a Feminine Standpoint:

 

The Summer as it is- and as it should be- the moral effect of the thermometer’s capers- also the weather caddle

 

There are a few things to which one can never do justice, which defy the limitations of human speech and deprive the most facile pen of eloquence, and surely the summer of 1900 should be numbered among them.  Words are weak, yet if granted a vocabulary more forcible than elegant one might almost succeed in expressing oneself to one’s own satisfaction, if not to the point.  When restricted entirely to “ladylike” forms of speech it is wisdom to leave the subject undiscussed and to suffer in silence, for the situation is quite beyond the verbal range of the amateur.

 

Most of us are patient mortals, or are prone to fancy that we are, and I, in common with many other well intentioned and equally mistaken beings, have flattered myself for more years than I care to tell, that patience is my strong point, the trump card as it were, of a character otherwise purely commonplace.  And now I am bereft of that belief and my only remaining bit of vanity, and all by those apparently easily borne afflictions, sudden atmospheric changes, and the wonderful faculty the mercury has developed of late, for playing tag up and down the tube of the thermometer, until it drops with a thud through the bottom, or goes up with a bang through the top.

 

To be amiable under the circumstances would be angelic, and very few of us, I fancy, to judge at least by those with whom I am brought into contact, are qualifying at the present moment for any such apprenticeship.  Temperature is not only a question of amiability, but embraces the great issues of health, food and exercise, as well as the less important, but equally considered question of clothes. All of these things are factors of importance in one’s mental as well as one’s physical well being.  Health is essential to comfort, proper food to good nature, exercise to both.  To be at one’s best in a wilted collar is as impossible as to keep it unwilted- every other day.  Poise of manner is an unknown, or perhaps absent, quality, when one is resorting to violent gymnastic exercise in an endeavour to creep into as small a space as possible in order to keep from freezing, or is engaged in spasmodic attempts to keep cool by pursuing with a vengeful hand impertinent flies bound on investigating one’s complexion; or in preventing apoplexy by the injudicious use of ice cream, profanity and palm leaf fans.  Nowadays hot drinks alternate with those that are frappe.  Shirt waists follow furs in rapid succession; and the ice, so necessary to chill our food to-day is left to dissolve slowly on the sidewalk to-morrow, while we in despair tear the summer decorations from the drawing room grate, and get out our winter flannels.  To be content one must have a chameleon like character, a varied and accessible wardrobe, and the ability to adapt oneself to circumstances that characterizes a weather vane in perfect condition.

 

We all know what summer in the country should be.  We have learned all about it in books inspired by the imagination of dreamers or poets much given to idealization and little to truth.  A recipe for a perfect summer is as easy to write as it is impossible to find.  First there must be turf that is level, daisy-starred, and never too damp for daintily slippered feet when accompanied in a ramble by a pair of masculine shoes.  There must be trees of course, big and graceful and never tearful warranted to keep the sun’s caress from pretty faces; while the moon beams must slip between the leaves to add a touch of romance to a prosaic situation.  And, of course, there must be stars, there are always on any self-respecting evening in a story book.  The sentimentalists and the common place alike demand them, for they are to the ideal night what currants are to the successful cake.  The novelist’s summer is well nigh perfection, full of roses plucked from bushes that know not of the venturesome and hungry aphid; fruit fragrant and luscious, always ripe and never “under-done”; sunny slopes “where tides of grass break into foam of flowers.”  Truly the summer one read of- outside of newspapers- is anEdenof stalwartAdamsand bewitching Eves, where the serpent takes no more dreaded form than that of the chaperone given to sleep, embonpoint and an easy chair.

 

We have in all the past experienced a real country summer and know it for what it is; yet we keep on grumbling because the printed one never comes our way.  Summer as it exists, in spite of the optimists, is full of drawbacks.  It is a series of picnics, at which the only comfortable guests are those unbidden but expected visitors the ants and earwigs.  There are walks over rickety boards, or through mud puddles and dust, where one is obliged to pick one’s way among caterpillars or potato bugs according to the season.  There are drives that begin anywhere and go nowhere and return.  There are evenings of never varying monotony when one fits surrounded by smudges to keep off mosquitoes, or in darkness, lest one encourage the tender and unappreciated attentions of the affectionate June bug.  Even a hammock loses its attractiveness when unprotected by a fly netting.  Real summer has many advantages as well as numerous failings.

 

It is only the combination of winter, the inferno and a cloud-burst, at present masquerading as summer that calls forth universal condemnation, and turns the most inoffensive person into a pronounced pessimist, and makes life a hardship and the joys of existence as nothing, when weighed against its stickiness.  The many misdeeds for which the atmospheric conditions of the past three months are responsible, should be blotted from our individual records, though it would take the tears of more than the recording angel to do it.

 

To be properly equipped for emergencies during these summer days one should be armed with a great coat, mackintosh, sun shade, umbrella, galoshes, overshoes, a golf skirt and muslin frock, or knickers and the new shirt wait- according to the sex of the wearer- to say nothing of gloves, mittens, a fur cape and a muffler, and none of these articles would prove superfluous, as a change from one hour to another is quite in order. The problem of each morning is “how to dress?”  The serious question of the evening is an extra blanket, or the electric fan going?  Life’s a puzzle.  Even the weather man can’t solve it.  And if he can’t, what can the average mortal hope to do in his helplessness.  Pretty soon if the existing condition of things continues the golf enthusiast will put his caddie to practical use and let him carry a change of raiment instead of clubs in his bag, and thus equipped let him follow his employer from office to office, from café to restaurant.  There’s no doubt this year’s summer is a failure of the direst kind.  No one can remedy matters but the clerk of the weather, and his position at present is apparently filled by an amateur who’s fooling with the switches and hasn’t got things down as yet to a practical basis.

CCM

 

Summer people and the noise nuisance, Montreal, 1897

Montreal Daily Star, 7 August 1897, page 6

The summer people and the noise nuisance

The autumn would appear to be a capital time to start an anti-noise campaign.  People then are returning from the quiet country where even the somnolent noises sooth the nerves; and they feel with painful acuteness the sharp blows that fall upon their ears from the thousand hammers of the clattering city.  It is the passage from quiet to noise which is the most unpleasant feature of the summer holiday makers’ return home.  The big cool house with the wide beds is as grateful to him after the narrow accommodations of the summer hotel as is a plunge into the lake on a hot day: the return to the home cuisine is a delicious treat; but the increasing assault upon him long for the silences of the hills and quieting plash of water.  He can no longer sit out in the evening and bathe his nerves in stillness.  The night serves all screech and clang: and at no other time during the year does he notice how full of noise the city is.

Then, if ever, should be the opportunity of the anti-noise campaign to enlist the sympathy and support of this distressed citizen.  Presently he will get a little used to it and imagine that all the world is as noisy as his street.  But the day after his return from the country he knows better; and then it is that a cry for quiet will appeal to his inmost being.

Summerings… fishing etc, Montreal, 1906

Montreal Daily Star, 21 July 1906, page 7

Summerings (?) fishing: mythology and finance.