Perhaps the next misdemeanour to making too joyful a noise before the Lord in the sanctuary was promoting appreciation of music in secular circles. One’s reluctance to claim any sort of literary credit is well-founded on experience. For years I contributed a musical column to “The Portage la Prairie Review”, signed “Baton”. The harmonious intent of these effusions was as sincere as the occasional attempts to flavour the column with a little cheerful humour were unappreciated, where they might have been heartily welcomed. I remember giving a local application to the story of Sir Michael Costa, who, annoyed by conversation in the audience while his orchestra was in its most classical throes, suddenly commanded silence, above which was heard a lady’s voice, “We fry ours in butter.” As a literary fun-provider the sequel to this venture indicated that accountancy and musical journalism were not a charming combination. A trifling outgrowth of the Minnesota massacres by Sioux Indians is said to have led to one of those allusions to Canadian life in the British Press which from time to time enrich “colonial” observations. Billy Smith was a prosperous farmer and miller, in whose scrupulosity about weights, those who sold him wheat had not unlimited confidence. Billy lent out a great many grain sacks on which “W. M. Smith” was printed. He lost track of several score of these sacks, and for some time suspected that they had been taken by certain critical customers. Among the Indians near Portage la Prairie was a band who had come in from Minnesota after the frightful massacres of the early sixties. They received no treaty money from the Dominion Government, and were locally called Bungay Indians, for a reason of which we were ignorant. Soon after Billy Smith missed his sacks, Indian bucks, squaws and papooses began to appear in town, breeched in trunks primitively adapted from what the miller intended to carry only two bushels of wheat; with “W. M. SMITH” appearing where the easy-going man, though a fool and poorly educated, could not fail to read. The Indians got their clothes and the town got its fun, at Billy Smith’s expense. The fun lasted longer than the breeches, for news came that a writing tourist, seeing some of the Smith-tailored Indians on the station platform, wrote in a widely circulated English periodical that the most striking evidence he had seen of the transformation of, and good order among the Indians of the Far West, was at Portage la Prairie, where the aborigines had not only assumed the good old English patronymic of Smith, but carried it conspicuously on their attire, which was approximating, though somewhat crudely, to European models.