Bytown

“ Thou art a man of early date—
Of '27 or '28—
in Bytown's history, and 'tis said,
Though hard to drive, thou may'st be led,
That is, if one could just agree
In view and argument with thee;
When standing in the days of yore
At "Pooley's Bridge," thine eye ran o'er
The picture with a prescient glance;
Experience taught thee that thy chance
Was then—thy foresight came
To aid thee in life's winning game. ”

“ Though strictly not of Bytown fame,
I can't forget John Egan's name,
It well deserves what I can give,
To make it unforgotten live;
For 'mongst the sons of enterprise,
Who rose with Bytown's early rise,
When "Norway Pine" was number one,
John Egan stands almost alone—
The king of the Grand River, then
The Wellington of lumber men
A man of boundless energy,
And vast capacity was he,
All difficulties had to fly,
And cower before his dauntless eye! ”

“ Gone is its fair renown of yore,
It's schoolboy battles all are o'er,
Which made it then a "Campo Bello"
For many an embryo daring fellow—
Too young to know what men of sense
Have called the art of self-defence;
There buttons flew, from stitching riven,
Black eyes and bloody noses given—
Even conflicts national took place,
Among old Bytown's youthful race. ”

“ As ancient Bytown went ahead.
Two rows of houses built of wood,
Near Enoch Walkley's brewery stood
With narrow little street between,
This was the village that I mean.
Then William Graham kept the peace
Of all the town with perfect ease;
Potato whiskey then was cheap,
And we had little peace to keep.
Such monstrous practice was unknown
As kicking when a man was down,
Though many a stunning blow was felt,
None ever struck below the belt ”

“ Proud in inventive dignity,
And dark in inmate mystery,
It flickered only, when sublime,
It might have left a light for time,
And wondering mortals to admire,
Tis gone! I saw its flame expire.
And John R. Stanley was among
Old Bytown's well remembered throng,
Whom memory's tuneful measure bears
Back from the shades of other years. ”

“ Of Bytown's distant early days
Before my vision doth appear,
To claim his right of entry here.
And Robert Stethem, too, his brother,
Of village denizens another;
John Miller too, of leather fame,
Who from the County Wexford came,
And first made here such boots and shoes
As fashion could not now refuse
In this fastidious age to take
And wear them for their matchless make. ”

“ How grand the sight which doth their vision bound;
A city stands in fair and youthful grace,
Where once old Bytown had its primal place;
And lo! in grandeur towering the skies
In marbled splendor upon yonder hill,
Our Legislative Temples proudly rise,
A columned glory of the artist's skill!
Thanks to our gracious Queen, who's royal hand
Made Ottawa chief city of the land!
Thanks to the men who fought through good and ill
The fight of right, and bravely battled still ”

“ Insensible to sight or sound,
'Twas a stone that almost killed him quite,
In a most lively faction fight
In Bytown's celebrated fair,
When stones flew thickly through the air,
I can't forget it, I was there ”

“ Stood in the good old days of yore;
There William Stewart flourished then,
A man among old Bytown's men;
And there, Ben Gordon ruled the roast,
Evoking many a hearty toast,
And purchase from the throngs who came
To buy cheap goods in friendship's name. ”

“ Told Bytown that the boat was in,
And at the sound the signal man
His banner up the flagstaff ran.
It was a good old time when thou
Bought beavers at a price which now,
When beaver skins are somewhat rare,
Would cause even Chauncey Bangs to stare.
Yes, 'twas a fine old time for trade,
Money was plenty—easy made,
And thou wert, aye, a canine blade. ”

“ A martyr to ill-judging friends,
Will always fall; but end I here
This record of his short career.
Honor, indeed! thy shrine appears,
Surrounded by a sea of tears.
George Shouldice is a man of old,
Henry was too, who 'neath the mould
Lies slumbering in solemn rest—
He many a pompous body drest
With garments fine and quite exotic,
When fashion was not so despotic.
And Charles Friel, an early man
With Bytown's history began,
A man of ready tongue and wit,
A politician who could hit
And sway with eloquence the throng,
Which shouts alike for right or wrong. ”

“ Comes Laird of Bytown, Nicholas Sparks,
Who came across in '26
From Hull, his lucky fate to fix
Upon a bush farm which he bought
For sixty pounds—and little thought,
While grumbling at a price so high,
That fortune had not passed him by.
He little dreamed of Ottawa now,
When 'mongst the stumps his wooden plough
Stir'd the first sod in times of old;
He knew not then, that 'twas not mould
He turne'd up, and tilled, but gold.
'Tis not my business here to flatter,
Or with enconiums to bespatter
The shadows of departed men
Whom we shall never see again. ”

“ That I have changed my mind is entirely owing to the solicitations of friends desirous of having them in compact shape, and not to any particular ambition of my own to write a book.
I do not pretend to present the reader with anything perfect in rhythm, polished in measure, or labored in style of construction. I have aimed at the truth, and imagine I have hit it.
My object has been, simply, to gather together as many of the names and incidents connected with Bytown's early history as memory alone could recal. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The names of yore in song of mine,
Can I forget a name like thine?
Ah, no! although thine ashes rest
Beneath our common mother's breast,
No name more spotless doth engage
My muse, or grace my tuneful page.
Stern Matthew Connell, fiery Celt,
Below the present Bywash dwelt,
Beside John Cowan, o'er whose grave
The grass of '32 did wave.
No man got in a passion faster
Than did old Bytown's first postmaster ”

“ I shall only say, as an atonement for the unwitting lapses of an imperfect memory, in the language once used by a friend and countryman in my hearing, as he passed a very pretty girl: "Remember, my dear, that I do not pass you with my heart."
William Pittman Lett.
Ottawa, March, 1873.
BYTOWN. CHAPTER I.
In '28, on Patrick's Day,
At one p.m., there came this way
From Richmond, in the dawn of spring,
He who doth now the glories sing
Of ancient Bytown, as 'twas then,
A place of busy working men,
Who handled barrows and pickaxes,
Tamping irons and broadaxes,
And paid no Corporation taxes ”

“ It is not these things, superadded characteristics, negligible details, which cause one to cry or to laugh—which mark the difference between town and town. It does not matter how one sees a town—but how one feels it, the soul, the meaning, the reason of it.
And one can feel New York as one can feel no other town—not even London. ”

“ He had imagined himself telling them of the wonders of New York,—tales as marvelous as any of the thousand and one told in Oriental bazaars,—of the buildings that tower as high as the Irish mountains; of the river of light that is Broadway; of the shop windows on Fifth Avenue, each of which holds a king's ransom; of the motley throngs in New York, greater in number than all Ireland holds; of the struggle and competition in which he, their son and brother, had won a sound business worth ten thousand dollars. ”

“ New York has very little corresponding to our Walthamstow, Enfield, Catford, Ilford, Camberwell, and all those dreary congested parishes that lie eight to ten miles from the centre of London. The American suburbs are garden cities without being called so. Each house is detached from its neighbour, there is a stretch of greenest lawn in front of it, there is a verandah on which are fixed hammocks and porch-swings, there are flower-beds, blossoming shrubs, the shade of maples and cherry trees. ”

“ The city, built all of a gray and lustrous granite, has a look of cleanness and neatness almost inconceivable. Since the days of Byron's boyhood great must have been the changes. The main streets are all evidently new; and on advancing into the great street which traverses almost the whole length of the city, Union-street, a mile in length and seventy feet wide, you are struck with a pleasant surprise. The width and extent, the handsome yet plain buildings of clean granite, and the fine public buildings visible in different directions, are far more than you expected in a town so far north. ”

“ America was New York, and New York was down town, and down town was a vortex of new duties. There I learned the bewildering foreign tongue of earning a living, and the art of eating at Childs’. At night the hall-bedroom near Broadway, and the resourceless promenade up and down Broadway for amusement. The only women to say “dear,” the women who say it on the street.
In Chicago, not in New York, I found the United States. The word “settlement” gave me my first puzzled intimation that there was somewhere a clew to this grim struggle down town. ”

“ Suddenly, within a few hours, the whole nature of the great city is changed—your city and mine, New York or Chicago, or Boston or Buffalo or Philadelphia.
Though nobody seems to say much about it afterward. Just sort of take the thing for granted.
It is just like Armistice Night, every once in awhile. Total strangers suddenly begin to call each other "Neighbor." Voices everywhere become jollier. Numerous passersby begin to whistle and sing. People go with a skip and a jump. Catcalls are heard. Groups may be seen all around going arm in arm, and here and there with arms about necks. ”

“ The true suburbs lie farther out. You have to go well beyond the Brixton Bon Marché before you can find such a place as Streatham, with its endless, well-kept, villa streets of red brick houses, nearly all alike, creeper and grass plot complete. Those suburbs outline a new social order; with a little experience you can easily tell the thirty-five-pounds-a-year street from the fifty-two-pounds-a-year street; you come with a feeling of familiarity upon the corner house, where lives the doctor or the surgeon. ”

“ The Twilight Veil New York! How few of us call it home! We have been sucked into it, as into a whirlpool, and as we spin round and round on its mighty unrest our hearts and fancies find repose in memory—the memory of an old New England village, or a corn field and a split-rail fence and then the level prairie, or cotton fields and the red handkerchiefs of the negroes, or the vineyard slopes of Sicily, or the great white surf beating up the cliffs of Connemara. ”

“ It is the fashion in the East to speak of New York as poor of environment, unpossessed of the agreeable, accessible countryside that crowns the convenience not only of London and of Paris, but even, with more humiliating promptitude, that of Boston, of Philadelphia, of Baltimore. ”

“ While we may properly speak of cities as having started from one centre, the largest cities have swallowed up many villages and towns, both their own offshoots and independent settlements. Thus New York absorbed Greenwich, Chelsea, Bowery, Harlem, Brooklyn, Long Island City, etc.; Philadelphia absorbed Spring Garden, Northern Liberties, Kensington, South-walk, Moyamensing, etc., and Boston absorbed Roxbury, Dorchester, Charleston, Brighton, East Boston, South Boston, etc. The impetus of the chief city is so great as to practically obliterate the influence of the smaller towns. ”

“ After breakfast, righted my things, and wrote journal. Took a walk with my father through some of the principal streets. The town is perfect silence and solitude, compared with New York; there is a greater air of age about it too, which pleases me. The red houses are not so fiercely red, nor the white facings so glaringly white; in short, it has not so new and flaunting a look, which is a great recommendation to me. The city is regularly built, the streets intersecting each other at right angles. ”

“ It is still sorting itself out from the plain which its elevators, business blocks and delightful residential districts are yet occupied in thrusting back. It is a characteristic town on the uplift. It snubs and encroaches upon the illimitable fields with its fine American architecture, and its stone university buildings. It has new suburbs full of houses of symmetrical Western comeliness in a tract wearing the air of Buffalo Bill.
It grows so fast that you can almost see it doing it. It has grown so fast that it has outstripped the guide-book makers. ”

“ As I sit now in my library, I raise my eyes from my writing and look east to see the morning sun just rising in the gap and pouring a long golden flood of light upon the awaking village below and about me, and gilding the spires of the not far distant city of Newtown, and making even its smoke ethereal, as though throngs of angels hung over the city unrecognized by its too busy inhabitants. ”

“ Is New York or Chicago, where the inhabitants are obliged to chain door-mats to steps, and fasten burglar-alarms to windows, where pickpockets throng the city thoroughfares, and shoplifters prowl about counters under the dazed eyes of detectives, — is New York going to throw the first stone? ”

“ But the town, prosperous in spite of many changes of fashion, has completely lost any antique air it may ever have enjoyed, and now, in all the smugness of brick, quite realises the idea of a borough which at every election is for sale to the highest bidder. ”

“ What new neighborhood ever stopped on its way into the country, to hearken to the passive remonstrance of the fields, or to bow to the indignation of outraged admirers of the picturesque? Never was suburb more impervious to any faint influences of this sort, than that especial suburb which grew up between Baregrove Square and the country; removing a walk among the hedge-rows a mile off from the resident families, with a ruthless rapidity at which sufferers on all sides stared aghast. ”