{"product_id":"2940013703209","title":"My Remarkable Uncle and other Sketches","description":"The most remarkable man I have ever known in my life was my uncle, Edward\u003cbr\u003ePhilip Leacock--known to ever so many people in Winnipeg fifty or sixty\u003cbr\u003eyears ago as E.P. His character was so exceptional that it needs nothing\u003cbr\u003ebut plain narration. It was so exaggerated already that you couldn't\u003cbr\u003eexaggerate it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen I was a boy of six, my father brought us, a family flock--to settle\u003cbr\u003eon an Ontario farm. We lived in an isolation unknown, in these days of\u003cbr\u003eradio, anywhere in the world. We were thirty-five miles from a railway.\u003cbr\u003eThere were no newspapers. Nobody came and went. There was nowhere to come\u003cbr\u003eand go. In the solitude of the dark winter nights the stillness was that\u003cbr\u003eof eternity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eInto this isolation there broke, two years later, my dynamic Uncle\u003cbr\u003eEdward, my father's younger brother. He had just come from a year's\u003cbr\u003etravel around the Mediterranean. He must have been about twenty-eight,\u003cbr\u003ebut seemed a more than adult man, bronzed and self-confident, with a\u003cbr\u003esquare beard like a Plantagenet King. His talk was of Algiers, of the\u003cbr\u003eAfrican slave market, of the Golden Horn and the Pyramids. To us it\u003cbr\u003esounded like the Arabian Nights. When we asked, 'Uncle Edward, do you\u003cbr\u003eknow the Prince of Wales?' he answered, 'Quite intimately,' with no\u003cbr\u003efurther explanation. It was an impressive trick he had.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn that year, 1878, there was a general election in Canada. E.P. was in\u003cbr\u003eit up to the neck in less than no time. He picked up the history and\u003cbr\u003epolitics of Upper Canada in a day, and in a week knew everybody in the\u003cbr\u003ecountryside. He spoke at every meeting, but his strong point was the\u003cbr\u003epersonal contact of electioneering, of bar-room treats. This gave full\u003cbr\u003escope for his marvellous talent for flattery and make-believe. 'Why, let\u003cbr\u003eme see,' he would say to some tattered country specimen beside him, glass\u003cbr\u003ein hand, 'surely, if your name is Framley, you must be a relation of my\u003cbr\u003edear friend General Sir Charles Framley of the Horse Artillery?' 'Mebbe,'\u003cbr\u003ethe flattered specimen would answer, 'I guess, mebbe; I ain't kept track\u003cbr\u003every good of my folks in the old country.' 'Dear me! I must tell Sir\u003cbr\u003eCharles that I've seen you. He'll be so pleased...' In this way, in a\u003cbr\u003efortnight E.P. had conferred honours and distinctions on half the\u003cbr\u003etownship of Georgina. They lived in a recaptured atmosphere of generals,\u003cbr\u003eadmirals and earls. Vote? How else could vote than conservative, men of\u003cbr\u003efamily like them!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt goes without saying that in politics, then and always, E.P. was on the\u003cbr\u003econservative, the aristocratic side, but along with that was\u003cbr\u003ehail-fellow-well-met with the humblest. This was instinct. A democrat\u003cbr\u003ecan't condescend. He's down already. But when a conservative stoops, he\u003cbr\u003econquers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe election, of course, was a walk-over. E.P. might have stayed to reap\u003cbr\u003ethe fruits. But he knew better. Ontario at that day was too small a\u003cbr\u003ehorizon. For these were the days of the hard times of Ontario farming,\u003cbr\u003ewhen mortgages fell like snow-flakes, and farmers were sold up, or sold\u003cbr\u003eout, or went 'to the States,' or faded humbly underground.","brand":"WDS Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47073831256304,"sku":"2940013703209","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013703209_p0.jpg?v=1763584708","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013703209","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}