How little I then dreamed what adventures, what adversities, what
ignominies--yes, and what triumphs were to be mine in those back
blocks of North America! I saw but a bleak wilderness, a distressing
contact with people who never for a moment would do with us. I
shuddered. I despaired.
And outside the windows gay Paris laughed and sang in the dance, ever
unheeding my plight!
CHAPTER TWO
In that first sleep how often do we dream that our calamity has been
only a dream. It was so in my first moments of awakening. Vestiges of
some grotesquely hideous nightmare remained with me. Wearing the
shackles of the slave, I had been mowing the corn under the fierce sun
that beats down upon the American savannahs. Sickeningly, then, a wind
of memory blew upon me and I was alive to my situation.
Nor was I forgetful of the plight in which the Honourable George would
now find himself. He is as good as lost when not properly looked
after. In the ordinary affairs of life he is a simple, trusting,
incompetent duffer, if ever there was one. Even in so rudimentary a
matter as collar-studs he is like a storm-tossed mariner--I mean to
say, like a chap in a boat on the ocean who doesn't know what sails to
pull up nor how to steer the silly rudder.
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