Toronto of Old: Collections and recollections illustrative of the early settlement and social life of the capital of OntarioScadding, Henry
History
Toronto of Old: Collections and recollections illustrative of the early settlement and social life of the capital of Ontario
Scadding, Henry
Toronto (Ont.) -- Description and travel; Toronto (Ont.) -- History
Then came the "Jack of Clubs." Lord Thurlow, we are told, once enabled a
stranger to single out in a crowd Dunning, afterwards Lord Ashburton, by
telling him to take notice of the first man he saw bearing a strong
resemblance to the "Jack of Clubs." In the present case it was a worthy
trader in provisions who had acquired among his fellow-townsmen a
sobriquet from a supposed likeness to that sturdy court-card figure. He
was a short, burly Englishman, whose place of business was just opposite
the entrance to the Market. So absolutely did the epithet attach itself
to him, that late-comers to the place failed to learn his real name: all
which was good-humouredly borne for a time; but at last the distinction
became burdensome and irritating, and Mr. Stafford removed in disgust to
New York.
A well-known character often to be seen about here, too, was an
unfortunate English farmer of the name of Cowper, of disordered
intellect, whose peculiarity was a desire to station himself in the
middle of the roadway, and from that vantage-ground to harangue any
crowd that might gather, incoherently, but always with a great show of
sly drollery and mirthfulness.
On occasions of militia funeral processions, observant lads and others
were always on the look-out for a certain prosperous cordwainer of the
town of York, Mr. Wilson, who was sure then to be seen marching in the
ranks, with musket reversed, and displaying with great precision and
solemnity the extra-upright carriage and genuine toe-pointed step of the
soldier of the days of George the Second. He had been for sixteen years
in the 41st regiment, and ten years and forty-four days in the 103rd;
and it was with pride and gusto that he exhibited the high proficiency
to which he had in other days attained. The slow pace required by the
Dead March gave the on-looker time to study the antique style of
military movement thus exemplified.
It was at a comparatively late period that Sir John Smythe and Spencer
Lydstone, poets, were notabilities in the streets; the latter, Mr.
Lydstone, recognizable from afar by a scarlet vest, brought out, ever
and anon, a printed broadside, filled with eulogiums or satires on the
inhabitants of the town, regulated by fees or refusals received. The
former, Sir John Smythe, found in the public papers a place for his
productions, which by their syntactical irregularities and freedom from
marks of punctuation, proved their author (as a reviewer of the day once
observed) to be a man _supra grammaticam_, and one possessed of a genius
above commas. But his great hobby was a railway to the Pacific, in
connection with which he brought out a lithographed map: its peculiarity
was a straight black line conspicuously drawn across the continent from
Fort William to the mouth of the Columbia river.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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