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-m AT THE FORKS OF THE GRAND The world of Bobby West was ostensibly peopled by Ladies and Gentlemen. Was it his fault if some of us did not quite measure up ? Tactful, sensitive, the very soul of discretion as I remember him, this strange hero of a mental underworld never forgot, never ceased to remind me of the time my mother played Greig's violin concerto at a concert down town (it must have been about 1906). For Bobby it was not just great music; it was the greatest. For, on that occasion, his mother had been truly, completely happy. The memory was sacred to him, his gratitude to our family un- dying. And so the years passed. Bobby became crippled with rheuma- tism. He shuffled along, bent forward at the waist, attired in a battered bowler hat, black-rimmed motor-goggles, and dirty non- descript clothes. Around his neck he wore a pure-white scarf of cheese-cloth, supplied new almost daily through the courtesy of J. M. Hall. In the fall when leaves along the Nith had turned to red and gold and were drifting down from the trees, Bobby donned extra layers of clothing and stuffed them with old newspapers, so that when he moved he rustled like brittle leaves on a forest's floor. In the spring, after the ice had rushed away on flooding waters, and warm winds had blown up a mist of living green, he pulled out the crump- led pages and stuffed them into his glowing stove, a burnt offering to the Vernal Queen. When Bobby met a lady, he bowed and lifted his hat with gentle grace, in the manner of Charlie Chaplin. His mammy, he would say, had often told him to be polite to the ladies, and to wear a hat that could be raised with grace and dignity. An example of his formal courtesy is related by Mrs. James Sinclair: A piece of steel had struck Bobby's eye, severely injuring it. One day, as he passed her home, Mrs. Sinclair solicitously inquired about the state of the eye. Bobby described its condition in detail; and then, bowing full low, and continuing to bob and bow as though he were performing an occidental kow-tow, he backed slowly away, while intoning: "Thank you very much, Mrs. Sinclair, for your kind consideration and thoughtfulness in connection with the recent accident that has befallen my eye". In later years, when he had no way of earning money, Bobby regularly called at the grocery stores to receive small gifts of food. And during cold weather, he slept at the fire-hall. Many people went out of their way to be kind to him. For example, they took him food, and when his house burned down, they collected money to build him a new one. But although people were kind, he was a lonely old man - alone in the little world his father had created. When he attended the Paris Presbyterian Church (as he regularly did), he sat alone and remote in the empty gallery, gazing down from a distance upon the minister and his flock. His Christmas poem for I937, composed when he was almost eighty years old, reveals his solitude: 252