a reasonable degree of
activity and independence in colonial towns. One could almost say,
standing there in the door at Murchison's, where the line of legitimate
enterprise had been overpassed and where its intention had been none
too sanguine--on the one hand in the faded, and pretentious red brick
building with the false third storey, occupied by Cleary which must have
been let at a loss to dry-goods or anything else; on the other hand
in the solid "Gregory block," opposite the market, where rents were as
certain as the dividends of the Bank of British North America.

Main Street expressed the idea that, for the purpose of growing and
doing business, it had always found the days long enough. Drays passed
through it to the Grand Trunk station, but they passed one at a time; a
certain number of people went up and down about their affairs, but they
were never in a hurry; a street car jogged by every ten minutes or so,
but nobody ran after it. There was a decent procedure; and it was felt
that Bofield--he was dry-goods, too--in putting in an elevator was just
a little unnecessarily in advance of the times. Bofield had only two
storeys, like everybody else, and a very easy staircase, up which people
often declared they preferred to walk rather than wait in the elevator
for a young man to finish serving and work it. These, of course, were
the sophisticated people of Elgin; countryfolk, on a market day, would
wait a quarter of an hour for the young man and think nothing of it;
and I imagine Bofield found his account in the elevator, though he
did complain sometimes that such persons went up and down on frivolous
pretexts or to amuse the baby. As a matter of fact, Elgin had begun
as the centre of "trading" for the farmers of Fox County, and had soon
over-supplied that limit in demand; so that when other interests added
themselves to the activity of the town there was still plenty of room
for the business they brought. Main Street was really, therefore, not a
fair index; nobody in Elgin would have admitted it. Its appearance and
demeanour would never have suggested that it was now the chief artery
of a thriving manufacturing town, with a collegiate institute, eleven
churches, two newspapers, and an asylum for the deaf and dumb, to
say nothing of a fire department unsurpassed for organization and
achievement in the Province of Ontario. Only at twelve noon it might be
partly realized when the prolonged "toots" of seven factory w