new enterprises, that should restore our fortunes, was for ever at the piano in the upstairs room. We played together while our little Rome was burning--Tchaikowsky, Chopin, Wagner, and the latest songs with choruses. Kay donned his Irving wig from time to time and roared his "Bells" and "Suicide." Our last days rattled by.
The pain of the failure was mitigated for me personally by the intense relief I felt to be free of the nightmare at last. Whatever might be in store, nothing could be worse than that six months' horror. Besides, failure in Canada was never final. It held the seeds of success to follow. From its ashes new life rose with wings and singing. The electric air of spring encouraged brave hopes of a thousand possibilities, and while I felt the disaster overwhelmingly, our brains at the same time already hummed with every imaginable fresh scheme. What these schemes were it is difficult now to recall, beyond that they included all possibilities of enterprise that a vast young country could suggest to penniless adventurous youth.
What memory still holds sharply, however, is the face of a young lawyer of our acquaintance, as he looked at me across the fiddle and said casually: "You can live on my island in Lake Rosseau if you like!" Without a moment's hesitation we accepted the lawyer's offer of his ten-acre island in the northern lakes. The idea of immediate new enterprise faded. Kay was easily persuaded into a plan that promised a few weeks' pleasant leisure to think things over, living meanwhile for next to nothing. "I shall go to New York later," he announced, "and get on the stage. I'll take Shakespeare up to the island and study it." He packed his Irving wig. It was the camping-out which caught me with irresistible attraction: the big woods, an open air life, sun, wind and water.... "I'll come up and join you later," promised the sanguine Louis B----. "I'll come with some new plan we can talk over round your camp-fire." He agreed to pack up our few belongings and keep them for us till
we went later to New York. "We'll all go to the States,"
