The boat was due to leave at seven. There was no doubt about the hour,—not only seven, but seven sharp. The notice in the Newspacket said: “The boat will leave sharp at seven;” and the advertising posters on Missinaba Street that began with “Ho, for Indian’s Island!” ended up with the words: “Boat leaves at seven sharp.” There was a big notice on the wharf that said: “Boat leaves sharp on time.”
So at seven, right on the hour, the whistle blew loud and long, and then at seven fifteen three short peremptory blasts, and at seven thirty one quick angry call,—just one,—and very soon after that the Mariposa Belle sailed off in her cloud of flags…
This is an absolutely charming little book, perfect for summer reading. I read the first couple of chapters and found them pleasantly entertaining, but by the third chapter, about the picnic excursion aboard the town steamboat (one of the funniest in the book) I was completely sold. By the time I reached “The Great Election in Missinaba County” I was practically shrieking with laughter. (My family, who knew I had their lunch in the oven, were not so amused.)
Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, first published in 1912, is a series of loosely interconnected humorous stories about a typical small town in northeastern Canada. They deal with the everyday occurrences and the momentous, and some that are a bit of both—the congregation’s efforts to pay off the debt on the new church, a bank clerk’s attempts to court the judge’s daughter, the aforementioned excursion and election. Stephen Leacock’s cheerful, witty style of humor was right up my alley. Although it’s called satire, Sunshine Sketches is plainly filled from beginning to end with great affection and nostalgia for its source material. The people of Mariposa, with all their particular quirks and traits, have the quality of being highly memorable characters and at the same time people you feel you could meet anywhere, or might have been able to meet in times past. Among the most memorable is Mr. Smith, the hotel keeper of large bulk and few words who is a leading citizen in multiple senses of the word. Mariposa, in fact, felt to me like it could be a representative small town from almost anywhere in North America. The Canadian setting actually slipped my mind once or twice until I was reminded by a reference to Canadian politics or one of the good-humored pokes at the U.S. of A.
This book is sure to be enjoyable for anyone who has known and loved a small town—or who wishes they had. For the real thing behind the humor is definitely attractive. As fellow blogger Ron Scheer pointed out the other day in his excellent piece on social networking, ‘community’ is a word that seems to have lost its meaning. I live in a town that may be small on the map, but doesn’t have any real connection among its inhabitants. A town like Mariposa, where, as Leacock puts it “everybody is in everything,” seems both foreign and appealing in today’s world where some of us may be lucky if we know the names of everyone who lives on our street.
Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town is widely available; I read it for free on my Kindle.
Kelly Hashway says
Nice review. I've always wanted to live in a small town. I used to watch the show Gilmore Girls and I loved Stars Hollow. It would be so much fun to live in a town like that.