Leacock, Stephen, 1869-1944 / 2008-11-25 00:00:00
Not that the little town is always gay or always bright in the
sunshine. There never was such a place for changing its character
with the season. Dark enough and dull it seems of a winter night, the
wooden sidewalks creaking with the frost, and the lights burning dim
behind the shop windows. In olden times the lights were coal oil
lamps; now, of course, they are, or are supposed to be, electricity,
brought from the power house on the lower Ossawippi nineteen miles
away. But, somehow, though it starts off as electricity from the
Ossawippi rapids, by the time it gets to Mariposa and filters into
the little bulbs behind the frosty windows of the shops, it has
turned into coal oil again, as yellow and bleared as ever.
After the winter, the snow melts and the ice goes out of the lake,
the sun shines high and the shanty-men come down from the lumber
woods and lie round drunk on the sidewalk outside of Smith's
Hotel--and that's spring time. Mariposa is then a fierce, dangerous
lumber town, calculated to terrorize the soul of a newcomer who does
not understand that this also is only an appearance and that
presently the rough-looking shanty-men will change their clothes and
turn back again into farmers.
Then the sun shines warmer and the maple trees come out and Lawyer
Macartney puts on his tennis trousers, and that's summer time. The
little town changes to a sort of summer resort. There are visitors up
from the city.
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