and toss,
To-day success, to-morrow loss.
But let him rest, he sleeps beside
The Ottawa's majestic tide!
Perhaps I'd better mention here
Who and what the "shiners" were,
Who gave of yore such sturdy thumps,
And brought forth phrenologic bumps
Unknown to scan of craniology,
With bludgeons or aid of geology.
A band of Irish raftsmen, who
Were to each other always true,
Combined together, war they made,
To banish from the lumber trade
All French-Canadian competition
By dooming it to abolition;
They made the wild attempt, at least,
To extirpate poor Jean Baptiste.
Among their victims they enrol'd him,
And made the place too hot to hold him,
Yet were the tales that rumor told,
Worse than the shiners' acts of old,
Though memory's charged with many a fray
That happened in the early day,
When shiners with an iron hand
Reigned here the terror of the land!
Few were the victims of the strife--
If any--and the loss of life,
Was fanciful much more than real
In that blood-letting old ordeal.
Among the medico's of old,
Doctor Stratford I behold,
Who foolishly I thought deemed best
To emigrate towards the West,
And leave behind a work which few
Could with a single lancet do
When venesection--old idea,
Combined with the Phamacopeiae
Was patent as a panacea
For almost every mortal ill,
Like calomel jalap, or blue pill.
He disappeared from healing fame,
And young Edward Vancortlandt came;
For he was young and active, too,
When first he met the minstrel's view,
And striding rapidly did go
Along full forty years ago!
VanCortlandt's had a long career
Since first he bled and blistered here;
His own hand hath his fortune made--
His own hand the foundation laid--
And if success, with hoards of wealth
He has not now--the public health
Has never suffered at his hand;
Nor has the mystic spirit land
Been peopled by the shades of those
Who in their last dissolving throes,
Gave evidence that power to kill
Was mingled with Vancortlandt's skill--
When to that distant coast he'll steer,
No crowd of ghosts will hover near,
And cry out. "Van, you sent us here!"
Edward McGillivray, how is this,
That I by accident should miss
So long an ancient name like thine,
'Twould be unpardonable, if mine
The fault to leave thy well-known name
Unwritten in my roll of fame?
Bytown was young, and so wert thou,
Years long before the "Shannon's" prow
Cleft Ottawa's bosom on her way
To Grenville in our early day.
No steam whistle's discord