d I have so little time for
work of that kind."

He glanced at the last sentence and nodded approvingly. Perhaps
Canadians were too Scotch to be spontaneous. They were worthy, he
admitted, but the word implied to him certain attributes that made life
a little difficult, and, he silently concluded, a little cold. He
would have desired them to be a trifle less deliberate and a shade more
responsive. He felt that, however, he might persuade they would never
fundamentally understand him, and perceived in this the cause of that
condescension he had observed in so many Canadians toward the American.
It did not worry him in the slightest as an American. He put it down
to that self-satisfaction which is not infrequently acquired by
self-made men in the process of their own manufacture, and to remnants
of that cumulative British arrogance of forebears who had for centuries
led the world.

Early next morning the private car swung through the mining district of
Sudbury. Clark's Toronto visitors were still asleep, but he was up and
dressed and on the rear platform. The district, covered once by a
green blanket of trees, now seemed blasted and dead. Close by were
great piles of nickel ore, from which low clouds of acrid vapor rose
into the bright air. Clark knew that the ore was being laboriously
roasted in order to dissipate the sulphur it contained, prior to
further treatment.

The scene, naked and forbidding, struck him forcibly, and the great
mining buildings towering in the midst of the desolation they had
created looked like ugly castles of destruction. He had noted the
place often before, but this morning, refreshed by the incidents of the
previous day, his mind was working with unexampled ease and insight.
Here, he reflected, two things of value--sulphur and vegetation--were
being arduously obliterated. It suddenly appeared fundamentally
against nature, and whatever violated nature was, he held,
fundamentally wrong.

The train stopped for a few moments and, jumping from the platform, he
ran across to the nearest pile. Here he picked up several pieces of
ore fresh from the mine, inhaling as he stood the sharp and killing
fumes. At St. Marys he made but one kind of pulp--mechanical pulp--in
which the soft wood was disintegrated by revolving stones against which
it was thrust under great pressure. But he had always desired to make
another kind of pulp, so now he thrust the ore samples in his pocket
and climb