Buck's dog, who had been duly brought over with the calf, and left on the mountain. No old man Butler did _not_ go hunting alone, but waited till Buck came back from town. Buck sold the calf for a dollar and a quarter and not for seventy-five cents as was falsely asserted by interested parties. _Then_ the two went after the fox together. This much learned, everybody breathes freely, if life has not been complicated in the meantime by more strange counter-marchings. Five or six sleighs a day we can understand, if we know why they are abroad; but any metropolitan rush of traffic disturbs and excites. LETTERS TO THE FAMILY 1908 These letters appeared in newspapers during the spring of 1908, after a trip to Canada undertaken in the autumn of 1907. They are now reprinted without alteration. THE ROAD TO QUEBEC. A PEOPLE AT HOME. CITIES AND SPACES. NEWSPAPERS AND DEMOCRACY. LABOUR. THE FORTUNATE TOWNS. MOUNTAINS AND THE PACIFIC. A CONCLUSION. * * * * * THE ROAD TO QUEBEC (1907) It must be hard for those who do not live there to realise the cross between canker and blight that has settled on England for the last couple of years. The effects of it are felt throughout the Empire, but at headquarters we taste the stuff in the very air, just as one tastes iodoform in the cups and bread-and-butter of a hospital-tea. So far as one can come at things in the present fog, every form of unfitness, general or specialised, born or created, during the last generation has combined in one big trust--a majority of all the minorities--to play the game of Government. Now that the game ceases to amuse, nine-tenths of the English who set these folk in power are crying, 'If we had only known what they were going to do we should never have voted for them!'