Canada -- Description and travel; Canada -- Emigration and immigration
This letter is as usual addressed to you and meant for a good many
other people besides. Firstly, I think I shall have to start some
sort of arrangement by which I shall be able to find out, on
reference to it, what the subject-matter of such-and-such a letter
was.--In fact, what I really want is a copying-press, for I can't
remember what I have told you in answer to your letters and what I
have not, and I notice the same questions occur in a good many of
them. Well, I sha'nt get a copying-press anyhow, I'll practice
self-denial, and get a five-cent. diary instead. Talking about
cents. reminds me of an item of news concerning money. Money will
undoubtedly go further here than in the old country, but it needs a
more determined economy to make it do so, and the reason is that
it's all in such small pieces. The only coins are half-dollars,
quarters, ten and five cent, pieces, and the copper cents.--of these
the cents. and half-dollars are comparatively rare. As a rule, the
lowest price charged for anything is five cents. It is such an
insignificant little piece of tin, and there are such _a tremendous
lot of them knocking about_. I don't think I have had a quarter of a
dollar's worth of copper through my fingers since I've been in the
country. There is scarcely any use for them except for stamp-money
and to give to beggars, which happily are also rare. In England the
small silver coins are almost useless, and the prices of different
things vary by pence or half-pence. One goes into an hotel, for
instance, for a glass of beer and forks out twopence, or a packet of
cigarette papers, one penny. There it goes up from the pence to the
shillings, and from the shillings to the pound, and the shillings
form a sort of barrier between the small every-day expenses (that
_might be avoided_) and the pounds which are the real wealth. Here
the practical scale of money is 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, etc., cents.
I got in a rage and smashed my pen because the brute would'nt write,
which has blown all my sophistries, as Daddy would call them, to the
winds, so I'll shut up for to-night. Now here's a new pen and a new
night, Friday night too, so I must look sharp. I don't think my
sophistries need much addition, being quite as clear as mud as they
are. In England there are a hundred half-pence to four and twopence,
and as many different prices for different things according to their
value. Here there are also a hundred cents. to the dollar, but
practically only twenty different prices. Therefore, one very soon
looks upon a five-cent piece in about the same light as one would
look at an English penny. This is a horrible pen; it's like writing
with the dirty point of a pin. Now to answer father's postscript
which I had overlooked till last night. As yet the weather is too
mild to need more than a thin overcoat, though it is prophesied that
we are going to have an exceptionally severe winter. Be that as it
may, I shall wait until it comes before spending any more money. I
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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