The Ottawa Free Trader

A Case of Envy.

Marseilles has a few narrow-minded people who can see no further beyond their several noses than smelling distance; but it is fortunate for Marseilles that this class is small. The majority of the people of that enterprising town are energetic, whose social and business relations with the people of Ottawa are such that they very properly regard the interests of Ottawa as identical with their own. Unlike the little faction alluded to, they do not consider any of the new improvements in Ottawa as detrimental to anybody for anything in Marseilles. This little handful of envying persons at Marseilles get the horrors every time Ottawa puts up a new building, and the great water power and the magnificent dams here which have rendered it available, have been a constant cause of nightmare to them. Of this class we may name the verdant youth who runs an apology for a newspaper, called the Advertiser. It is a sort of a hybrid concern—a cross between a handbill and a dirty handkerchief. The youth referred to imagines that the only way to advance Marseilles is to pull Ottawa down, and hence always fires his weak pop-gun in this direction.

Last week he alluded to an accident to one of the two dams here. In his case "the wish was father to the thought." Hence, it was that he magnified two hundred feet out of fifty, the distance damaged, and three feet out of one-half, the depth of the comb injured.

We can assure the verdant youth referred to that the damage in question is a mere trifle, not half so serious as that which happened to the dam at Marseilles, and that the repairs required can be done for about $200, and will be made in due time. The water is and has been flowing freely over the entire one thousand feet of dam. The accident was caused by the dam at that point being a trifle higher, and the extreme low water in the rivers, and the shutting off of the deep cut and severe weather of last winter, caused the water at that point to freeze to the comb of the dam, and by its expansive force to push the upper planking over. The same thing happened to the dam at Marseilles the past winter, and frequently, in severe winters, happens to all dams.

There is no occasion for any jealousy or rivalry between Marseilles and Ottawa. Both have magnificent water powers, the former not half developed. Let each strive to bring into use all of the advantages, and they are great, which nature has given them, and go on in a laudable rivalry without any petty jealousy or attempt of one to belittle the other.