Free Wishful Seeing by Janet Kellough

third, that they had unveiled plans to build a substantial town hall to reflect the glory that would soon be Cobourg’s. This seemed rash to Thaddeus. Better to wait and see whether the bridge fell down and the lines heaved first.
    Bemused, he turned to the next page, which featured the international news. Trouble was brewing on the Crimean Peninsula, and it looked as though France and England were prepared to go to war with Russia in a complicated dispute that somehow involved the rights of Christians in Jerusalem. Although this was something that Thaddeus was all in favour of, his understanding was that the city was controlled by the Ottoman Empire, and he couldn’t quite follow the article well enough to discover how so many other countries had become embroiled in the dispute. The Crimea was nowhere near Jerusalem. Or at least he didn’t think it was. Just another of Britain’s imperial squabbles, he decided, and unlikely to affect Canada. He leafed through the paper looking for reading that was a little less taxing, but he had exhausted the intellectual offerings of The Star. The rest of the paper was filled with social news and advertisements.
    He reached for the Toronto Globe. Tucked beneath it was a small volume. Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Life Among the Lowly , he read. It was a popular novel, he knew, a tale that exposed the evils of slavery.
    â€œIs this yours?” he asked.
    Martha glanced at the book. “Oh, that’s where it went. Yes, it’s mine now, I suppose. One of the guests left it at the hotel, but we couldn’t ever figure out who it belonged to, so father gave it to me.”
    â€œHave you read it?”
    â€œAbout five times. Whenever I get tired of the papers and don’t have anything new to read, I go back to my old favourites.”
    Thaddeus was surprised. “You read the newspapers?”
    â€œYes, of course. They’re here anyway. You needn’t bother reading them yourself. Just ask me what you want to know and I’ll tell you all about it.” She set his tea in front of him.
    â€œCan you explain the situation in the Crimea?”
    â€œNobody can explain the situation in the Crimea. There is no explanation.”
    â€œThat was my conclusion as well.”
    She laughed and returned to cooking their makeshift meal.
    He was impressed by her, but he tried not to let it show as he once again buried his nose in the day’s news.
    Â 

V
    Thaddeus was surprised by the little twinge of disappointment he felt when he failed to see Ellen Howell in Sully the following week. There was no reason why he should, he told himself. She was not a Methodist. She had been at the camp meeting with her husband, who evidently had business to conduct there. Like many others, she had attended The Great Baptism Debate, he was sure, for the entertainment of it, nothing more. Old Mrs. Gordon said that the Howell farm was south of Sully, but even if she lived in the village itself, he couldn’t expect to see her flitting about on the very day he happened to be there. And more to the point, why had he been hoping to see her at all? Yes, of course, there was a concern about her circumstances, but no more so than any number of other people, some of whom were actual members of his congregation. He would address the question of the bruised arm if he could, but it wasn’t really an overwhelming concern. He didn’t know why he kept thinking about it.
    This was his first visit to Sully since the debate at Cold Springs, and he was pleased to see that here the effect of his triumph had not yet worn off. The meeting was full, but Thaddeus estimated that approximately half of the new faces attended out of curiosity, and he was sure that when they found it less exciting than the debate they would wander away again. A handful of the new attendees, however, seemed genuinely interested in joining the church on a permanent basis, and he hoped that he could safely