d get a boy. But he was
disposed to accommodate. Yes, for money--sum named--he would give up his
plans, and start for Baddeck in an hour. Distance, sixty miles. Here
was a man worth having; he could come to a decision before he was out of
bed. The bargain was closed.

We would have closed any bargain to escape a Sunday in the Plaster Cove
hotel. There are different sorts of hotel uncleanliness. There is
the musty old inn, where the dirt has accumulated for years, and slow
neglect has wrought a picturesque sort of dilapidation, the mouldiness
of time, which has something to recommend it. But there is nothing
attractive in new nastiness, in the vulgar union of smartness and filth.
A dirty modern house, just built, a house smelling of poor whiskey and
vile tobacco, its white paint grimy, its floors unclean, is ever so much
worse than an old inn that never pretended to be anything but a rookery.
I say nothing against the hotel at Plaster Cove. In fact, I recommend
it. There is a kind of harmony about it that I like. There is a harmony
between the breakfast and the frowzy Gaelic cook we saw "sozzling" about
in the kitchen. There is a harmony between the appearance of the house
and the appearance of the buxom young housekeeper who comes upon the
scene later, her hair saturated with the fatty matter of the bear. The
traveler will experience a pleasure in paying his bill and departing.

Although Plaster Cove seems remote on the map, we found that we were
right in the track of the world's news there. It is the transfer station
of the Atlantic Cable Company, where it exchanges messages with
the Western Union. In a long wooden building, divided into two main
apartments, twenty to thirty operators are employed. At eight o'clock
the English force was at work receiving the noon messages from London.
The American operators had not yet come on, for New York business would
not begin for an hour. Into these rooms is poured daily the news of the
world, and these young fellows toss it about as lightly as if it were
household gossip. It is a marvelous exchange, however, and we had
intended to make some reflections here upon the en rapport feeling, so
to speak, with all the world, which we experienced while there; but
our conveyance was waiting. We telegraphed our coming to Baddeck, and
departed. For twenty-five cents one can send a dispatch to any part
of the Dominion, except the region where the Western Union has still a
foothold.

Our