To the honor of Canadians be it said, they as a rule do not belong to the light-fingered gentry class, and our grip-sacks and great-coats left unguarded in the car are comparatively safe. It is only around the depot that any real danger of pilfering exists. There one may expect some “artful dodger” lying in wait for just such opportunities. The journey once commenced there’s no danger at all, and “traps” may be left about promiscuously. But my smoke is done, and I will return to my seat. Ah! I see someone has taken it--a lady. Of course, I cannot ask her to vacate it, although that seat by the ordinary courtesies of travel is mine by right of pre-possession and as the receptacle of my belongings. The next seat behind is occupied by a single lady, and there’s room for another person. “Is this seat occupied, madam?” in as polite a voice and gesture towards the seat as the occasion demands. “I think not, sir,” and I sit by her side. Some one of her “uncles, or her cousins or her aunts” may possibly be known to me. Just how the ice is broken one can scarcely tell, but it is broken, and we chat away as the train clips off the usual thirty miles an hour. Who, I ask, ever thought of speaking unintroduced to a lady in a first-class car in England? I tried it once when a green boy, and received such a stony stare as froze me for all my subsequent railway journeys in the old land. But we do things differently in Canada. My companion chats, and so do I, and so do all my neighbors, and the car is just an incessant hum of pleasant, softly intoned voices. Such seems to be the almost universal custom in Canada, and the millionaire (we have a few) sits down beside the schoolmaster or the drummer, and it would take a keener eye than Canada has yet produced to tell “which from t’other” without previous knowledge or having been duly informed. Were I an M.P. or an M.P.P., or possibly a Cabinet Minister (with or without a portfolio), I suppose it would be among my prerogatives not to talk to my seat-mate. But not being so fortunate, I can enjoy my freedom and talk with decent, respectable people, though they are strangers.