.

"Cheer up, old man!" said I to Eric, who was sitting with face buried in
his hands. "Cheer up! Do you hear the bells? It's a God-speed for you!"

CHAPTER V

CIVILIZATION'S VENEER RUBS OFF

My uncle accompanied our flotilla as far as Lachine and occupied a place
in my division of canoes. Many were the admonitions he launched out like
thunderbolts whenever his craft and mine chanced to glide abreast.

"If you lay hands on that skunk," he had said, the malodorous epithet
being his designation for Louis Laplante, "If you lay hands on that
skunk, don't be a simpleton. Skin him, Sir, by the Lord, skin him! Let
him play the ostrich act! Keep your own counsel and work him for all
you're worth! Let him play his deceitful game! By Jove! Give the villain
rope enough to hang himself! Gain your end! Afterwards forget and
forgive if you like; but, by the Lord, remember and don't ignore the
fact, that repentance can't turn a skunk into an innocent, pussy cat!"

And so Mr. Jack MacKenzie continued to warn me all the way from Quebec
to Montreal, mixing his metaphors as topers mix drinks. But I had long
since learned not to remonstrate against these outbursts of explosive
eloquence--not though all the canons of Laval literati should be
outraged. "What, Sir?" he had roared out when I, in full conceit of new
knowledge, had audaciously ventured to pull him up, once in my student
days. "What, Sir? Don't talk to me of your book-fangled balderdash! Is
language for the use of man, or man for the use of language?" and he
quoted from Hamlet's soliloquy in a way that set me packing my pedant
lore in the unused lumber-room of brain lobes. And so, I say, Mr. Jack
MacKenzie continued to pour instructions into my ear for the venturesome
life on which I had entered. "The lad's a fool, only a fool," he said,
still harping on Louis, "and mind you answer the fool according to his
folly!"

"Most men are fools first, and then knaves, knaves because they have
been fools," I returned to my uncle, "and I fancy Laplante has graduated
from the fool stage by this time, and is a full diploma knave!"

"That's all true," he retorted, "but don't you forget there's always
fool enough left in the knave to give you your opportunity, if you're
not a fool. Joint in the armor, lad! Use your cutlass there."

Apart from the peppery discourses of my kinsman, I remember very little
of the trip up the St. Lawrence from Ste. Anne to Lachine with Eric
sitting