The Marine Excursions of the Knights of Pythias Half-past six on a July morning! The Mariposa Belle is at the wharf, decked in flags, with steam up ready to start.
Excursion day!
Half past six on a July morning, and Lake Wissanotti lying in the sun as calm as glass.The opal colours of the morning light are shot from the surface of the water.
Out on the lake the last thin threads of the mist are clearing away like flecks of cotton wool.
The long call of the loon echoes over the lake.The air is cool and fresh.There is in it all the new life of the land of the silent pine and the moving waters.Lake Wissanotti in the morning sunlight! Don't talk to me of the Italian lakes, or the Tyrol or the Swiss Alps.Take them away.Move them somewhere else.I don't want them.
Excursion Day, at half past six of a summer morning! With the boat all decked in flags and all the people in Mariposa on the wharf, and the band in peaked caps with big cornets tied to their bodies ready to play at any minute! I say! Don't tell me about the Carnival of Venice and the Delhi Durbar.Don't! I wouldn't look at them.I'd shut my eyes! For light and colour give me every time an excursion out of Mariposa down the lake to the Indian's Island out of sight in the morning mist.Talk of your Papal Zouaves and your Buckingham Palace Guard! I want to see the Mariposa band in uniform and the Mariposa Knights of Pythias with their aprons and their insignia and their picnic baskets and their five-cent cigars!
Half past six in the morning, and all the crowd on the wharf and the boat due to leave in half an hour.Notice it!--in half an hour.
Already she's whistled twice (at six, and at six fifteen), and at any minute now, Christie Johnson will step into the pilot house and pull the string for the warning whistle that the boat will leave in half an hour.So keep ready.Don't think of running back to Smith's Hotel for the sandwiches.Don't be fool enough to try to go up to the Greek Store, next to Netley's, and buy fruit.You'll be left behind for sure if you do.Never mind the sandwiches and the fruit! Anyway, here comes Mr.Smith himself with a huge basket of provender that would feed a factory.There must be sandwiches in that.I think I can hear them clinking.And behind Mr.Smith is the German waiter from the caff with another basket--indubitably lager beer; and behind him, the bar-tender of the hotel, carrying nothing, as far as one can see.
But of course if you know Mariposa you will understand that why he looks so nonchalant and empty-handed is because he has two bottles of rye whiskey under his linen duster.You know, I think, the peculiar walk of a man with two bottles of whiskey in the inside pockets of a linen coat.In Mariposa, you see, to bring beer to an excursion is quite in keeping with public opinion.But, whiskey,--well, one has to be a little careful.
Do I say that Mr.Smith is here? Why, everybody's here.There's Hussell the editor of the Newspacket, wearing a blue ribbon on his coat, for the Mariposa Knights of Pythias are, by their constitution, dedicated to temperance; and there's Henry Mullins, the manager of the Exchange Bank, also a Knight of Pythias, with a small flask of Pogram's Special in his hip pocket as a sort of amendment to the constitution.And there's Dean Drone, the Chaplain of the Order, with a fishing-rod (you never saw such green bass as lie among the rocks at Indian's Island), and with a trolling line in case of maskinonge, and a landing net in case of pickerel, and with his eldest daughter, Lilian Drone, in case of young men.There never was such a fisherman as the Rev.Rupert Drone.
Perhaps I ought to explain that when I speak of the excursion as being of the Knights of Pythias, the thing must not be understood in any narrow sense.In Mariposa practically everybody belongs to the Knights of Pythias just as they do to everything else.That's the great thing about the town and that's what makes it so different from the city.Everybody is in everything.
You should see them on the seventeenth of March, for example, when everybody wears a green ribbon and they're all laughing and glad,--you know what the Celtic nature is,--and talking about Home Rule.
On St.Andrew's Day every man in town wears a thistle and shakes hands with everybody else, and you see the fine old Scotch honesty beaming out of their eyes.
And on St.George's Day!--well, there's no heartiness like the good old English spirit, after all; why shouldn't a man feel glad that he's an Englishman?
Then on the Fourth of July there are stars and stripes flying over half the stores in town, and suddenly all the men are seen to smoke cigars, and to know all about Roosevelt and Bryan and the Philippine Islands.Then you learn for the first time that Jeff Thorpe's people came from Massachusetts and that his uncle fought at Bunker Hill (it must have been Bunker Hill,--anyway Jefferson will swear it was in Dakota all right enough); and you find that George Duff has a married sister in Rochester and that her husband is all right; in fact, George was down there as recently as eight years ago.Oh, it's the most American town imaginable is Mariposa,--on the fourth of July.
But wait, just wait, if you feel anxious about the solidity of the British connection, till the twelfth of the month, when everybody is wearing an orange streamer in his coat and the Orangemen (every man in town) walk in the big procession.Allegiance! Well, perhaps you remember the address they gave to the Prince of Wales on the platform of the Mariposa station as he went through on his tour to the west.Ithink that pretty well settled that question.So you will easily understand that of course everybody belongs to the Knights of Pythias and the Masons and Oddfellows, just as they all belong to the Snow Shoe Club and the Girls' Friendly Society.
And meanwhile the whistle of the steamer has blown again for a quarter to seven:--loud and long this time, for any one not here now is late for certain; unless he should happen to come down in the last fifteen minutes.
