n write his letters on
train paper at a desk; can go out to the broad railed platform at the
rear of the car, and sit and smoke, and see Canada unrolling behind him.

And at the appropriate times for breakfast, dinner and supper--that is
the Canadian routine, and there is no tea--the passenger goes to the
diner and has a meal from a menu that would make the manager of many a
London hotel feel anxious for his reputation.

II

We had some experience of the lavishness and variety of Canadian meals
in St. John, when we had ordered what would have been an ordinary
dinner in London, and had had to cry "_Kamerad!_" after the fish.

The first Canadian breakfast we had on the Canadian National was of the
same order. It began, inevitably, with ice-water. Ice-water is the
thing that waiters fill up intervals with. Instead of pausing between
courses for the usual waiter's meditation, they make instinctively for
the silver ice-water jug, and fill every defenceless glass. Ice-water
is universal. It is taken before, during and after every meal, and
there are ice-water tanks (and paper cups) on every railway carriage
and every hotel. At first one loathes it, and it seems to create an
unnatural thirst, but the habit for it is soon attained.

The menu for breakfast is always varied and long--and I speak not
merely of the special trains we travelled in, for it was the same on
ordinary passenger trains. One does not face a _table d'hote_ meal
outside of which there is no alternative but starvation, but one is
given the choice of a range of dishes for any of the three meals that
equals the choice offered by the best hotels in London.

Breakfast begins with fruit; breakfast is not breakfast in the American
continent unless it begins with fruit. And at that precise time
breakfast fruit was blueberries. Other fruit was on the menu:
raspberries, melon, grape-fruit, canteloupe, orange-slices, orange
juice, and so on; but to avoid blueberries was to be suspected of being
eccentric, and even an alien enemy.

Blueberries were in season. Blueberries and cream were being eaten at
breakfast with something more than mere satisfaction by the entire
Canadian nation. Blueberries were being consumed with a sort of
patriotic fervour, for blueberries have a significance to the Canadian.
It is a fruit peculiarly his own; he treats it as a sort of emblem, he
waxes enthusiastic over it, and the stranger feels that if he does not
eat it (wit