So for awhile, whenever we paddled down to the Grove in the canoe for the mail we stopped at the meat-shop. The Grove was where the giddy-go-round was; the razzle-dazzle air-ship, the whistle of whose tiny engine squealed like a frightened pig; the cake-and-coffee shop, the “red-hot” stand; the high-class “vawdvill,” admission ten cents, children five; the dancing floor, patronized by youth and beauty in duck jumpers and sleeves rolled high on red and peeling arms, ragged with strips of tissue-paper hide, each mouth distorted with an “all-day sucker” whose pine stem appetizingly protruded; the combination barber-shop and post-office where they were all out of two-cent stamps for weeks together, and “Joe’s.” I’ll get round to “Joe’s” in a minute if you’ll just be patient, but now I must tell you about the meat-shop. He was a fine fellow, the first butcher, much sought after when he had got into people’s confidence. There was the landlord that rented him the shop; there was the landlady where he roomed and boarded; there was the man he bought his meat of; there was the man he bought his twine and paper of; the man he borrowed $20 of and the man he borrowed $5 of—all seeking him and not finding him. He was—and then he was not. It was one of those mysterious disappearances you read about. After he went away, we summer folks ungratefully conspired to ruin the land that sheltered us. You know there is no quicker and surer way to do that to a country than by shipping valuables into it. The more iron and steel and wool and chinaware and diamonds—all kinds of things you pay money for—the more of them are brought into a country, the poorer it gets. If it were possible to cover the ground knee-deep with all that heart could wish but brought from another country, the inhabitants would have to give right up, and everything would go to smash. Conversely a country which imports nothing is always immensely rich and prosperous. You know how that is in private life. The man that raises everything he eats; that does his own butchering, makes his own shoes, whose wife spins all the flax and wool the family needs—such a man is always well-to-do; he’s independent. While those who have to buy everything are always poor and forlorn. We all know this, but such is the depravity of the human heart, we want to buy things without asking whether they are made in our country or not. If it wasn’t for our wicked hearts prompting us to want things, we could easily keep out the foreign goods. So as to sort of even up the injury we do our country, it is arranged that whenever we thus sinfully buy foreign wares we pay a fine for it. The fine for ruining Canada by bringing in fresh meat to eat is six cents a pound. Now I want to tell you that when we had no butcher and the village butcher wouldn’t stop for us, there were people so selfish that they not only ruined Canada by bringing over fresh meat, but they smuggled it! Yes sir! Smuggled it.