The Land of Promise: A Comedy in Four Acts (1922)

'You don't suppose,' said Hornby, rising slowly to his feet, 'I'd have let them send me if I'd have known what I was in for, do you? Not much. Up at five in the morning and working about the place like a navvy till your back feels as if it 'ud break, and then back again in the afternoon. And the same thing day after day. What was the good of sending me to Harrow and Oxford if that's what I've got to do all my life?'

There was a tragic dignity in his tone which for the moment held even Gertie silent. It was her husband who answered him, and Gertie's jealous ear detected a certain wistfulness in his voice.

'You'll get used to it soon enough, Reg. It is a bit hard at first, I'll admit. But when you get your foot in, you wouldn't change it for any other life.'

'This isn't a country for a man to go to sleep in and wait for something to turn up,' said Gertie aggressively.

'I wouldn't go back to England now, not for nothing,' said Trotter, stung to an unusual burst of eloquence. 'England! Eighteen bob a week, that's what I earned. And no prospects. Out of work five months in the year.'

'What did you do in England!' asked Nora curiously.

'Bricklayer, Miss.'

'You needn't call her Miss,' said Gertie heatedly. 'You call me Gertie, don't you? Well, her name's Nora.'

'What with strikes and bad times,' went on Trotter unheeding, 'you never knew where you was. And the foreman always bullying you. I don't know what all. I 'ad about enough of it, I can tell you. I've never been out of work since the day I landed. I've 'ad as much to eat as I wanted and I'm saving money. In this country everybody's as good as everybody else.'

'If not better,' said Nora dryly.

'In two years I shall be able to set up for myself. Why, there's old man Thompson, up at Pratt. He started as a bricklayer, same as I. Come from Yorkshire, he did. He's got seven thousand dollars in the bank now.'

'Believe me, you fellows who come out now have a much softer thing of it than I did when I first came. In those days they wouldn't have an Englishman, they'd have a Galician rather. In Winnipeg, when they advertised in the paper for labor, you'd see often as not: 'No English need apply.''

'Well, it was their own fault,' stormed Gertie. 'They wouldn't work or anything. They just soaked.'

'It was their own fault, right enough. This was the dumping ground for all the idlers, drunkards and scallywags in England. They had the delusion over there that if a man was too big a rotter to do anything at all at home, he'd only got to be sent out here and he'd make a fortune.'

'I guess things ain't as bad as that now,' spoke up Taylor. 'They send us a different class. It takes an Englishman two years longer than anybody else to get the hang of things, but when once he tumbles to it, he's better than any of them.'

'Ah, well!' said Marsh, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, 'I guess nowadays everyone's glad to see the Englishman make good. When I nearly smashed up three years ago, I had no end of offers of help.'

'How did you nearly smash up?' asked Hornby interestedly.

'Oh, I had a run of bad luck. One year the crop was frosted and the next year I was hailed out. It wants a good deal of capital to stand up against that.'

'That's what happened to me,' said Taylor. 'I was hailed out and I hadn't got any capital, so I just had to hire out.' He turned suddenly to Nora. 'If it hadn't been for that hail storm you wouldn't have had the pleasure of makin' my acquaintance.'

'How hollow and empty life would have been without that!' she said ironically.

'I wonder you didn't just quit and start out Calgary