One day he climbed into his auto and made a bee-line for the old ranch. He would have a rock on that old stump if it should cause a scandal in society. But the spot where the dug-out oncestood was now bare. The cabin had been burned to the ground by the new proprietors. He went home like a whipped cur. A link in his beautiful past had vanished. An impassable chasm, of his own making, yawned between him and his desire, and he cursed the day which lured him away from his natural, green pastures.
One day he disappeared entirely, and when he did not return for several days, and his wife was insane with grief, a search party was sent out in quest of him. They found him camping on the old trail, dressed in his aboriginal attire, eating beans and bacon with his knife, and chewing venison Indian fashion.
"This is the only square meal I have had since I left the woods," he said, when they captured him; and he filled his pipe with kin-i-kin-nick and puffed the sweet, mild fumes. He had returned to his natural element.
"I have been rounding up stock," he said, "and I shot this buck just over the hill there. Here, dig in, it is jake."
He had to live among the steers, and the coyotes, and the wild trails in accordance with his early training; original things were his food. Society, and his wife, demanded that he remain on the surface, but his aboriginal inclinations lured him to the woods; so, during six months of every year he was an Indian to all intents and purposes. Early in May he would load a cayuse with beans, bacon, canned milk, frying pan and blankets, and with this treasure he wouldtake to the hills and bask the livelong summer among the junipers, the firs, and the spruces; and he would eat huckleberries, choke-cherries and soap-o-lalies, and smoke kin-i-kin-nick until his complexion assumed the tan of the Chilcoten Indian.
The lure of the limelight had been great, but it had worn off just as soon as he had a surfeit of its false glories. He found that beans and bacon eaten with a knife were sweeter and more wholesome than "blanc mange," "consomme," or "café noir" cooked in French style, and served by a French chef.
Once upon a time, in the town of Lillooet, county of Lillooet, Province of British Columbia, there lived a man who was so sure of his footing that he closed his eyes and floundered along in the dark. When people told him there were chasms in front of him, or that there was ice on the trail ahead, he would not believe them, but put his fingers in his ears so that he could not hear, and thus became deaf and blind to his own interests. The people pestered him so much about his folly, and he learned to hate them so much for their interference in his personal matters, that he crossed the names of all his friends from his list of social possibilities, would recognize none of them, and refused to speak even when addressed; he thus became a blind, deaf and dumb mute. The result was that he ultimately slipped upon the ice on the trail, and fell into a chasm and has not been seen since. It was in the first days of the Lillooet quartz discoveries. Gold had been mined from Cayuse Creek, Bridge River, and the Fraser River, in uncountable ounces, in the free state, by the placer or hydraulic process of mining, for a great number of years, but the source of supply from which the free gold had originated had not yet been located. It was even doubted if there was any source of supply, although it was generally conceded that all gold wasoriginally pilfered by the streams and rivers from the hard quartz-rocks of which the great mountains of Cayuse Creek and Bridge River were formed. While some of the miners contented themselves with making wing-dams, turning streams from their natural courses, and scraping about the mud and gravel of the exposed beds for the pure, free gold, picking up nuggets at sight and capturing the "dust" with quicksilver, others, looking for bigger game, climbed the high mountains, tore the moss from their sides to expose the rock, and pounced upon every piece of "float" which would indicate the possible existence of a "mother lode" somewhere near at hand or higher up.
The Too Sure Man of this story was one of the latter. He had found a piece of "float rock" with a shining speck in it near where the nigger's cabin now stands on Cayuse Creek in the vicinity of Lillooet, and he traced it to the very spot where it had dropped from the mountain above. There he discovered a ledge several feet wide full of shining specks, and he traced it with his eyes right to the bed of the creek.
"All mine! All mine!" he shouted.
Now, he was a poor man, and he had a family—which made him poorer; but the sight of this precious piece of "float" with the gold sticking out of it, and the possession of this enormous ledge of gold-bearing quartz made him a millionaire in an instant. Here was a whole mountain "lousy" with gold, all his! Why, Solomon or Vanderbilt would be so small inthe puddle that he would splash mud on them with his superior tread in the sweet "very soon."
Now, the B.C. law prevented him from staking off the entire Lillooet district for himself, so he took in a friend (who luckily died before the crash came), and they appropriated as large a portion each of the district as the Government at that time would allow. Both of those men had good, steady, paying jobs at the time of the discovery, but the next day they threw down their tools—work was too cheap for them. The only thing that prevented them from buying an automobile right away on the instalment plan was the fact that the auto had not yet been invented. However, they had to do something to elevate themselves from the common, so they became extravagant in their domestic curriculum. Having no money, the stores had to "carry them." And then they had their assessment work to do on the mine to enable them to hold the claim. They hired men to do this and gave them promissory notes payable by the claim at an indefinite period. When a man ceases work and begins to live on his "rainy day" money, or on the storekeeper, it does not take very long before he accumulates a burden greater than he can carry. When he begins to totter he tries to pass some of the load over to others, and it is usually the storekeepers who are willing to assist him to the limit if his assets are in good retrospect. And what could be a greater security than a whole mountain full of gold? So the storekeepers assumed a large portion of the Too SureMan's burden. And their loads became heavier and heavier. One day a company came along, attracted by the noise that had been made, and bonded the claims for a few hundred "plunks" down and the balance of one hundred thousand dollars in three months if they decided to take the claims over. The offer was gladly accepted, although they wondered why the company hesitated. This few hundred dollars enabled the Too Sure Man to tide his family through the winter with warm and expensive clothing from the T. Eaton Co., of Toronto, Ontario, while the local grocery man's burden got heavier and heavier. It was during, all this time that the people had been cautioning him for his personal benefit. And it was during this time that the Too Sure Man closed his ears, and his eyes, and his mouth, and became a blind, deaf and dumb mute. When the three months were up the company decamped, forfeiting their few hundred dollars, and then there was "something doing." The Too Sure Man opened his eyes and his ears and his mouth all at the same time as far as ever he could. The claim had proved a failure, there was no gold, and only a slight trace on the surface. The local storekeepers, groaning under their load, asked him to relieve them, but he might just as well have tried to lift the mountain that held his worthless quartz ledge. It was just at this point of our story that he slipped on the ice and fell into the chasm. He disappeared, bag, baggage, and family; and in truth it was the only course open to him.
To remain and work off his debt and sustain his family at the same time with the increasing pressure of the high cost of living holding him under, would have been an utter impossibility. The impending shock killed his partner, for he died before the crash came. The Too Sure Man has a burden in Lillooet supported by others which he can come and lift at any time, and welcome.
Once upon a time in Ashcroft a bachelor fellow realized abruptly that he had never been loved by one of the opposite sex, although he had reached the age of two score and two, and had a great longing to have one included in his assessable personal property. Now, as truth is stranger than fiction, the discovery staggered him. What was wrong? What machinery required adjusting? He had the sensation of a boycotted egg, and was in danger of spoiling before reaching the consuming market. So one day he perched himself on the sandhill and began to survey the environs for a solution to the problem. Why should he be denied this one sweet dream? Just think of it—no one had ever sympathized with him in his utter loneliness of bachelorhood. No girl had ever called him her "snooky ookums," and he had never had the opportunity of calling any fair vision his "tootsy wootsy." The horror of the situation was sufficient to stagger an empire. No girl had ever waited at the post-office corner for him. No girl had ever tapped on his office window on Railway Avenue and smiled back at him on her way home from the meat market. No girl had ever lingered outside for him that she might have the pleasure of his society home to lunch. He had to walk the bridge evenings and Sundays alone, while others went in limited liability companies.
Once, when he was ill, no angel had volunteered to smooth his pillow, and a Chinaman brought up delicacies left over from some other person's previous meal. He had no silent partner. None of the girls knew he had been ailing, and when he told them weeks after they feigned surprise. There seemed to be an unsurmountable stone wall between him and the sweet things of this world. So, day after day, in his leisure moments, he would pace the brow of the sandhill seeking in his mind for a solution to an issue that seemed unfathomable. Was he ugly? No. Was he repulsive? No. Was he a woman hater? No. Was he a criminal? No. Had he offended the fair sex in any way? No. Was he poor? No. Did he belong to the human family? Yes. With what disease then was he afflicted? Was it heredity? Could he cast the blame upon his ancestors? Up and down the Thompson valley he searched and searched but he could find no answer—even the echo would not speak. Other fellows seemed to have no difficulty in getting themselves tangled up in the meshes of real beautiful love nets. Even the young bucks who had no visible means of support for their own apparently useless avoirdupois, picked up the local gems before his eyes and had them hired out at interest to supply the new family with bread and butter. And all this in the face of the fact thathewas one of the most prodigious admirers of womankind that ever left his footprints on the sands of Ashcroft.
"The most flattering appointment a man can have is to be chosen the custodian of one woman," he said to himself. "Life, to a man, is nothing if barred from an association of this kind."
At last in despair he wrote to a correspondence paper, and put the whole case before them.
"I am a young man, aged forty-two, unmarried. I want a solution to the problem why I am unmarried. I have tried and failed. I have had Cupid working overtime for me, but he has failed to pierce any of the bosoms I have coveted. No woman has ever loved me, and although I am aware that it is better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all, I may say that this affords very poor manna for my hunger."
He received this answer:—
"Young man"—(emphasis was placed upon the young)—"you are too slow. You are asleep, stagnant, dormant, hibernating. The whole world is 'beating you to it.' Get over your baby superstition about love, and 'get busy.'"
The letter dropped from his fingers as though it had been his monthly grocery bill. "Heavens!" he exclaimed, "here is the solution to the whole mystery.—Forget love and 'get busy.'" Instead of expecting to be loved, he would love. If he could not get one who would wanthim, he would get one he wanted himself.
Now, he had had such an admiration for the fair sex as a whole, that he could not concentrate his attention on the individual one. He had been trying to extract a cinder from the eye of the opposition when he could not see properly owing to having a large obstacle in his own eye. However, he proceeded to "get busy." But what vision would he "get busy" on? Every woman had an attraction peculiar to herself, one of which could not be said to extinguish the other. And then, most of them were "staked off." One fellow or another had "strings" on every one he approached. But he kept on fishing with all his might. In the meantime it came to pass that the girls continued to cast their spells upon almost anyone but him; even the itinerant stranger who just chanced along "hitting the high spots," and "travelling on his face" came in for large portions of the "sweet stuff" that was being cast lavishly abroad.
It seemed cruel that he who had such an admiration for those on the other side of the house, and who had such an ambition to own one as an asset, should be so unmercifully neglected. His efforts to catch a wife by the legitimate method, according to his idea, had ended like a fishing expedition in the off season in the Thompson river. About this time he found that the nomads were catching all the fish. He made up his mind to become a nomad and be a wanderer on the face of the Cariboo district. He could not love.
He resigned his position in Ashcroft and migrated up the Cariboo road. He invaded Lillooet, Clinton, 150 Mile House, Soda Creek, Quesnel, Barkerville and Fort George. To secure a wife he became anitinerant. Within the space of a year he was back at his position at Ashcroft more lonely than ever. It was of no avail—he was hoodooed. He could not love.
At this juncture he made another and final discovery, and it was the most important one he had made at this period of his renaissance. He found out that "get busy" had two meanings. It meant "forget love of all kinds and go to it in a business-like way." This had been a chronic case of a man, in his ignorance, who was prospecting around the hills of this British Columbia of ours for a metal that had no existence. He did not know that ninety out of every hundred marriages resulted merely from convenience, or a mere desire to be married on the part of the man, and the love of a private home on the part of the woman; that nine out of the remaining ten were marriages in which one of the parties only was the love-giver, and that the remaining one was the ideal, in which love was mutual and beautiful. This Ashcroft bachelor fellow was a sentimental monstrosity. He was imbued with the superstition that one must love, and be loved, before one could marry. No aphorism could be further removed from the truth. The glaring realism dawned upon him that it was quite possible for a person to flounder through this world and be entirely immune from the love epidemic; that few people ever marry the one they do really love, that some are never sought after by one of the opposite sex during their whole life, only in a business-like way; that modernsociety was too busy to entertain such a silly superstition as love—that Cupid was a dead issue. He had been waiting until he fell in love or till someone fell in love with him, and thus opportunity had been knocking at his door all those years in vain. When he had joined the iconoclast society, and had shattered this pet idol of his, he began to look around for a wife in the same manner as he would for a car of Ashcroft potatoes—and he soon "landed" one branded with the "big A." And the amusing part of it is they lived happily—all of which goes to prove our contention that those who love before marriage are not always the happier after their nuptials; and sometimes it is a mere matter of making the best of a bad bargain, and you will be perfectly happy though married, even if your stock in trade of the love commodity is very much impoverished.
Once upon a time in the Thompson valley there lived a mighty warrior kookpi (chief) called Netaskit. He was chief of all the Shuswaps. His name had become a household word the entire length and breadth of the Pacific coast, and the tribes along the Fraser river and the Pemberton Meadows had knowledge, through many sad experiences, of his bravery and daring. Among his own people his word was law, and to show the white feather in the face of an enemy meant certain court martial and death at his hands. Although his subjects feared him, they respected him beyond belief; and to serve him was considered a great honor. It is not our purpose to convey the impression that this kookpi was cruel, treacherous, cold-blooded and selfish only, and a man who had no other ambition than war and the spoils of war. No, if he was a fiend on the battlefield, he was a lamb at home. He had a soft side that battled with the concrete in him at times. His weakness was his insane love for woman, and in his own kikwilly house (home) he was as timid as the smumtum (rabbit). His respect for Cupid had as much avoirdupois as his respect for Mars. His love for his wife was an insane love—it far outdid hislove for his chiefdom. And he had a wife who was worthy of him and as faithful to him as he was to her—she adored the very skins he wore across his shoulders. Being happily united himself, and having such a respect for Cupid and the fair sex, he passed a law that no man or woman should take unto themselves a partner for life until thoroughly satisfied and convinced that the love flames between them would be of everlasting duration, and were genuine.
"Woman," he said, "was made to be loved, and not enslaved. My consideration for the welfare of our women exceeds that for our men, because man is so constituted as to be more able to take care of himself." So much was this old prehistoric chief away ahead of his dark, heathen times. But this masculine weakness of his was nearly his undoing with his warriors, as we shall see.
One day a rumor went abroad that the Statlemulth (Lillooet Indians) were making their way through the Marble Canyon, and down Hat Creek, to attack the Shuswaps on the Bonaparte, in revenge for some misdemeanor at some former time, on the part of the latter. It was just about the time of the year when the Shuswaps were in the habit of invading the Fraser river at Pavilion for their winter supply of salmon; and, to be cut off from this source of revenue would mean a great deal to the Bonaparte Indians. The invading army must be met and the entire band put to death, or made prisoners.
Telephone messages in Indian fashion were flashed from kikwilly house to kikwilly house, and in a couple of days the entire strength of the Shuswaps was gathered in a great army with Netaskit at its head. The march began at an early hour the following morning, and the enemy was met near the mouth of the canyon where they had called a halt for the purpose of hunting and putting up o-lil-ies (berries). In a moment the air was filled with war whoops, and the arrows flew thick and fast. The women took to their heels and ran the moment the fray began, and they did not stop until they reached Squilachwah (Pavilion) near the Fraser river. The smumtum and the groundhog betook themselves to the high mountains, so great was the battle, and their fright—and it is only within recent years that they have ventured back to that spot. The battle raged loud and long. Netaskit was in the thick of the fight and claimed that he had killed twenty of the enemy with his own bow. Many were wounded and slain on both sides; but the Shuswaps won the day, and they led home in triumph fifty prisoners. And now comes the most interesting part of our story. A counsel of war was held, and it was decided that the prisoners should be put to death the following day. When the time arrived, the unfortunate men were brought out, bound with thongs hand and foot and placed in line near the big chief's wigwam. Fifty victors were lined up in front of them with their bows and arrows ready toshoot at the word of command from their chief, who was pacing up and down in his dignity and anger. Suddenly the love demon took possession of him. He thought of his love for his wife—her love for him. He pictured to himself his possible death and the agony of his widow. He pictured her death and his own agony of mind at his loss. He shuddered as the messages flashed through his mind. He looked at the unfortunate victims—he thought of their women—sweethearts, wives.
"Halt!" he shouted to his men. And turning to the wretches before him he said:
"Statlemulth! listen. You have committed a great wrong in making this expedition against the Shuswaps. The Ko-cha Kookpi (god) is very angry. You should be shot dead but you can save yourselves. Listen. I will pardon every man of you who can produce a wife or a sweetheart who can prove to my satisfaction that her love for you is greater than the voice of the Thompson, and fiercer than the roar of the Fraser."
"Never!" shouted the tribesmen, and every bow and arrow was turned simultaneously upon the chief.
"Slaves! Cowards!" thundered the enraged and fearless kookpi, like a mountain lion in pain. In a moment every bow and arrow fell by its warrior's side.
As the consequence of this act on the part of his subjects is of no importance to this story, we will leave it to the reader's imagination just what sort ofpunishment was doled out to them. It is safe to say, however, that Netaskit was too wise a kookpi to order the death of so many brave followers, as this means of gratifying his wounded pride would simply mean the weakening of the tribe, and would put his own life in jeopardy.
A message was sent to the Lillooet illihae (country) with the glad tidings, and at the close of two days a swarm of smootlatches (women), and keekas (girls), rushed into camp breathless, and began hysterically searching for their respective sweethearts or husbands among the prisoners. The scene was more than poetic; and it was pathetic in the extreme. It was a scene that had not occurred before on the broad surface of the earth—those fifty distracted squaws rushing into the jaws of death in their eagerness to rescue the ones without whom life would be empty, useless, aimless. It is said that it melted the heart of the very rocks about the place, so that to this day the surface of the earth at that spot betrays evidence of having at one time been running lava.
The captives were lined up before the kookpi's kikwilly house, and the little army of love-mad squaws, awful in their primitiveness, rushed at the line, selected their respective skiuchs (men), and clung to them, hugged them, kissed them wildly in the awful heat of their passion, each in her eagerness to save one at all hazards for her own selfish, but natural self. And no power on earth could tear them asunder. It melted the hearts of the victors sothat they called out with one voice: "Go, you have won!" and as they moved away shouting, and laughing, and dancing, Netaskit was seen to weep, so great was his respect for Cupid.
"O woman! woman!" he was heard to exclaim. And this is the reason there is so much harmony between the Statlemulth and the Shuswap to-day.
Once upon a time in Ashcroft there lived a "Simon" who had no knowledge of the purchasing value of his salary asset. He did not know that its buying powers were narrowed down to bread and butter and overalls; and as a consequence he was victimized down into a very precarious financial predicament, to say nothing about the valuable and most vigorous and productive years of his life, that were thrown into the scrap heap of time, and had to be cancelled from his list of revenue-producers.
When you contemplate a steady wage asset of one hundred dollars per month coming in with the regularity of clockwork and as sure as the first day comes around (and the months go by very quickly), you think you are in a fair way to make some of the local financiers look very cheap in a few years to come. Why, this means twelve hundred dollars every time the earth circumnavigates the sun, and is sixty thousand dollars in fifty years, which is not very long to a man if he can start just as soon as he passes the entrance and can build on no intervening lay-off by getting on the wrong side of the boss. But when we offset with our liabilities, such as tobacco money, moving picture money, car fare, gasoline, rent, taxes, repairs to the auto, and other trifling incidentals such as food and clothing, we find at theend of the lunar excursion that there is no balance to salt down on the right side of our ledger, and our little castle becomes submerged because it was built with its foundation on the shifting sands.
But for all that, if a man and his money could be left alone—if money were not such an envy-producer—if a man with money had not so many friends and admirers and strangers who love him at first sight—all might yet be well; and though he might not outclass some of the most corpulent magnates, he might in time acquire considerable moss in his own private, insignificant, Simple-Simon sort of way. But the laws of nature have willed otherwise, and the strongest of us know that it is needless to go into litigation with the laws of gravitation, or spontaneous combustion.
Among the workings of nature (which some people say are all for the best), there is a class of men who have, rather truthfully, been called "sharks" on account of their fishlike habit of pouncing upon suckers unawares and without the legal three days' grace being given, and of loading them into their stomachs—finances and all—before the person has time to draw and throw his harpoon. It all happens while you are taking a mouthful of tea, or while you are reading the locals in theAshcroft Journal, and when the spell leaves, you find that you have endorsed a proposition with a financial payment down, and the balance subject to call when you are very much financially embarrassed indeed.
Simple Simon was one of those men who move about this world unprotected and without having their wits about them. He was not a sawfish, or a swordfish. So one day when he was walking up Railway Avenue—it was just the day after he had told someone that he had five hundred dollars of scrapings salted down, which was earning three per cent, at the local bank—a very pretentious gentleman, spotlessly attired, accosted him:
"Pardon me. Are you Mr. Simon?"
"I have that asset," said Simple, wondering how the aristocratic stranger had known him.
"I thought so. I knew at a glance. The fact is, I have just been speaking with Mr. C. Quick." (This was a lie. Mr. C. Quick was one of the money magnates of Ashcroft, but had not hired out his name as an endorsement)—"and he recommended you to me as one of the leading men of the town." (This was a ruse, but it hit the bull's eye, and at the final count was one of the most telling shots.)
"I am pleased to meet you," said Simple. "And so am I," said the shark. "As a matter of fact, I only approach the better part of any community," he continued, pulling in on the line. "To tell you the truth, Mr. C. Quick said you were the only man in the town who had both foundation and substantial structure from your roots up," and he laughed a broad sort of "horse-laugh," and slapped Simon on the shoulder.
"You see, with a proposition such as I have there is little use going to any but men of the greatest intelligence—those are the ones who understand the magnitude and the security and the ultimate paying certainties of the proposition which I have to offer you. You may consider yourself fortunate. It is not everyone who has the opportunity to get in on the ground floor, as it were, on a sure thing money-accumulating business. By the way, where is your office?"
Simon led the shark to his private dug-out on Brink Street, and showed him into one of his cane-bottomed thrones, while he himself sat on the yet unlaundered bed.
"Of course you understand all about joint stock companies, trust fund companies, municipal bonds and debentures," said the magnate, unrolling a bundle of unintelligible papyrus showing assets which did not exist, and spreading them out on the bed in front of his victim. The whole system had been premeditated and had been systematically worked out. "Now," said the shark, pointing at long and encouraging figures, "those are assets and these are our liabilities; and besides we have a million dollar Government endorsement. Now, the fact of the matter is this. You have a few dollars. I have a few dollars; Tom, Dick and Harry have a few dollars, and so have Jessie and Josie. Now, those little private funds which we all cherish and fondle, and hug to our bosoms, and jingle in our pockets, are of no use to us. They are dead. Of course they are earning three per cent, at the B.N.A. or the Northern Crown—what bank do you deposit with?—of course, it doesnot matter; there is no competition among them; they pay you three per cent. and charge you ten per cent. Now, we are very much different. We give you all your money will make—if it is ten, twenty, thirty, fifty, or one hundred per cent. See?
"Now, the fact of the matter is this: as I said before, those small individual fortunes are of no use to us individually; they have no earning power; they will not buy anything. But, put them all together—ah! the result is magical. You see, it is the aggregate that counts. Now with this theory in view, our company gets to work and canvasses the country and it gathers together thousands of little, useless, insignificant, unproductive funds like yours and mine and joins them together into one vast, giant aggregate which we call a trust fund. I see it is appealing to you. It could not be otherwise. Now, with this aggregate, you, and I, and everyone can own vast estates, buy forty-year debentures, lend money on approved security, buy real estate, the unearned increment of which will net in some cases two or three hundred per cent. interest, besides an increased valuation on the original sum invested."
Perhaps every living man in the Dominion of Canada and the United States who betrays the least pretensions to having any money in his possession has heard a harangue of this kind many times in his life, and it is just as certain that the first time he heard it he was stung. Now, Simon was no exception to the rule, which proves that we are not all swordfish. He felt himself being hypnotized, magnetized,charmed. He pictured himself as personal owner of lots, houses, acres—a joint owner of vast tracts of land along the G.T.P. or C.N.R.; and the shark showed him a facsimile of the certificates that would be issued to him when his shares were paid up in full. They were very neat and legal-like, and a man should be proud to own one of them.
"You see," said the magnate, as he realized that he had the victim falling into his trap, "we do not require to sell any more shares; we are doing well enough now, and some say we should leave well enough alone. But, a corporation of the nature of ours cannot rest on its oars; we must reach out for greater and better things, and to accomplish this we must have more capital. The fact is, a proposition has just been put to us, the nature of which I am not just now at liberty to divulge, but it is a sure winner. But it takes capital, as I said before, and we are compelled to sell some more stock. And, after all, it will be you and I who will benefit, and a hundred or more favored ones who have small savings which are netting them nothing at present, and the principal of which is rusting in the bank at three per cent.
"Now, to come down to business. Will you join us? Now, I am not going to press you. There are hundreds too willing; but remember, you will regret it if you lose this chance of a lifetime. Opportunity is knocking at your door; seize it by the fore-lock.
"The proposition I have to put before you is this:We are selling shares at one hundred dollars each, but if you have not the cash now, we will allow you six, twelve and eighteen months on the balance with a payment of five hundred dollars down if you buy twenty shares. The reason we are able to make such liberal offers is that we receive the same terms in buying up debentures."
Simon was completely victimized. His tormentor might just as well have addressed him in Latin, for he knew so little about debentures, joint stock funds and the intricacies of high finance that he could not follow the promoter and was completely dazzled with the obscurity and eloquence of the language. And then the magnate spoke so rapidly that only lightning could keep up with him. The result was that Simon fell into the trap and was pinched. He not only gave away all his rainy day money, but he burdened himself with a debt, which, to a working man, was a mountain, and more than he could carry. He sold his house to meet the next two payments, and just as the third payment came due the company went into liquidation, and it consumed all their available assets to discover that there was nothing left for the shareholders. And Simple Simon began life over again.
Away up in the great northland, even further north than the northern boundary of British Columbia, there lives a race of people who form, and have formed, no part of the great human civilization of the world which has been, and is going on in the more moderately climatic regions of the earth. For centuries they have lived apart, and have taken no notice of the big world which has been, and is living itself to death far from them down in the indolent south, where the sun could shine every day in the year—where it did shine every day that it was not cloudy, and where there was no long, dreary, dark midnight of at least four months' duration; where the sun did not dip beneath the horizon at about the beginning of October, and disappear, not to be seen again until the end of March; where, in some parts, there was no snow, while in others only for a few weeks during the year. No snow! no ice! Can you imagine such a condition? And up there it is almost the Eskimo's only commodity. He eats it, drinks it, lives in it, sleeps on it, and his castle is built of it. And he endures it year after year, from his babyhood to his gray days, and there appears no hope for him. Bare ground is a curiosity to the Eskimo; and there are no spring freshets. Their bridges across their streams are formed of ice; the very salt sea is covered with it;and they venture out on those great floors of ice in search of the polar bear and the right whale which form almost their only food, and supply them with their only source of clothing, heat and light. In the midst of his narrow and cramped circumstances the Eskimo can laugh at times as heartily as any other human, and he has grown extremely low in stature to accommodate himself to the small opening which gives access to his igloo (house). The average man or woman does not exceed much over four feet. No other explanation seems to have been offered by science for the extreme dwarfishness in stature of this curious race of people.
Like the polar bear—almost their only associate in those northern and frozen wilds—the idea never occurred to this people to migrate south where the earth is bare and warm, and is clothed in a green mantle; where the sun shines every day; where the land is flowing with milk and honey; where peaches and water melons grow, and where it is not necessary to go through a hole in the ice to take a bath. No, this strange people, whose food is ice, whose bed is ice, whose home is ice, and whose grave is ice, are part and parcel of the snowy north; and they live on, apparently happy and contented with their hard life and uncongenial environment. Where the white man begins to be uncomfortable, the Eskimo begins to be at home. Where the white man leaves off the Eskimo begins, and his haunts penetrate away into the far north—into theland of perpetual ice and snow. Where we go only to explore he builds his permanent abode.
But this is not a history of the geographical distribution of men; it is to be the story of an Eskimo who went astray according to the moral ideals of his immediate tribesmen.
Once upon a time there lived in this northland of which we have been speaking a young native who had mysteriously arrived at the conclusion that the life of an Eskimo was a very narrow and fruitless existence indeed, and that the conditions under which they lived were totally inadequate to supply the demands of a twentieth century human being. In the midst of the other members of the family he assumed an attitude of weariness and contempt for his associates and environs. "One may as well associate with a polar bear," he soliloquized. "Man was made to accomplish things; the Eskimo is no further advanced in the scale of living, organic beings, to all intent and purpose, than the polar bear, or the walrus. He is born, lives, eats, sleeps, hunts, kills, dies, and is buried in the cold frozen earth, if he does not fall through a hole in the ice into the bottomless sea. To the south of us is a great healthy world where men live; where they have discovered all that the world has to give, and where they enjoy those things to the utmost; where they read and write and take records of their doings. Me for the south!" he shouted, and he made up his mind to migrate at the first opportunity and be in the swim with men. "I must learnto read and write and think, even if I have to forget my own language," he declared.
Now, it came to pass that as he was soliloquizing as above one morning, a girl appeared before him. She was so muffled up in furs that only an Eskimo could distinguish whether the bundle was male or female. She sat down beside him and placed her short, stubby, muffled arm as far around his neck as it would go, and in this attitude she coaxed, and begged, and prayed, and argued with him, thinking that she might resurrect him to himself again. But when she found that his mania was for the south, she wept as only woman can weep the whole world over, even in the far north where the tears are in danger of freezing to her cheeks. But he, in his brutish, advanced-thought sort of way, pushed her from him.
"If you love me you will help me to go," he said. "If you love me you will stay," she responded.
He rose and moved towards his igloo; she followed. He crawled like a bear through the thirty feet or more of narrow tunnel which led into the hut proper. She did likewise. In the igloo he threw himself down on the ice floor among the squalor and quantities of bear meat in various stages of decomposition. The smell from the whale-oil lamp almost choked him. The girl sat down and continued to cling to him.
"Let me go to the south and I will make a lady of you," he said. "I will give you gold and silver and feather beds. These environs are not fit for a bear to hibernate in. Just think of our branch of the human family existing and suffering up here amongthe ice and snow for thousands of years and not having advanced one step from the hovel in which we were first produced? Is the Eskimo destined to everlasting failure—perpetual degeneration? Must you and I be satisfied and consent to endure this animal existence to the end of our days because it is our only heritage from our ancestors? No! I say, a thousand times no. I am ashamed of myself, my ancestors and my entire race," he shouted, and the girl almost trembled in fear of him. He must surely be demented. But she still clung to him, thinking that her enchanting presence might cure him. Thus love can be a very warm thing even up among the cold ice and snow. Their cold, half frozen cheeks came together and she kissed him. "Stay," she murmured, coaxingly, as only a woman can.
"I will take passage south," he continued unheedingly, "and will plunge myself into the midst of the big, busy, warm world, and will gain with one bound that social condition which it has taken the white man thousands of years to attain."
Now, after all, was this man not right, and is the Eskimo not to be pitied?
The girl, seeing that her whole world was about to vanish from her, left the igloo weeping, and again crawled like a bear through the narrow tunnel to the colder world outside.
One day when the sun was just about to make its appearance above the horizon, and the long night was nearly at an end, two half starved and partially frozen white men burrowed their way into our hero'sigloo and asked for food and shelter. The night had been long, dreary, dark and cold, and the approaching return of the sun was welcomed like a prodigal. Is it a wonder then that the Eskimo worships the sun? It seems his only hope, his only comfort; and it would seem to him, more than to any other, the source of all life, his only friend in his dire need. The Eskimo offered the two strangers some meat, which they devoured greedily; and then they told a long, pitiful story. They were explorers. Their ship had been crushed hopelessly between masses of ice. Fifty had started on the long journey south. Provisions gave out. Men had dropped off daily. The trail was one long line of frozen corpses stretched out in the dark and silent night. They two alone had survived, so far as the strangers were able to tell. It was the usual tale of woe which befalls the Arctic or Antarctic explorers. Beginning happily, hopefully, buoyantly; ending in misery, sorrow and death. The strangers wanted a guide to lead them to the south—to civilization and warmth. They had not known what it was to be comfortable for two years; and they had not seen one square inch of bare ground during that period.
"Oh, for a sight of mother earth!" they shouted. "We would gladly eat the soil, and chew the bark from the trees." Thus one does not appreciate the most trivial and simple but indispensable things until one is deprived of them for a period of more or less duration.
Our hero agreed to guide them so far as his knowledge extended—even to the very gateway betweenthe north and south lands—if they would guarantee to guide him from that point into their own big, beautiful world further on; they taking the helm when his usefulness as a guide would be exhausted; and he explained his ambition to them.
So, one morning when summer was approaching, and the sun, for the first time in the year was sending her streamers above the horizon, and when his sweetheart Lola stood with arms outstretched over the cold snow and ice towards him, pleading and sending forth her last appeal to his stony heart, he walked out across the white table-land towards the south, and was soon a small black speck in the far horizon.
When the strange expedition reached Dawson they discarded their hibernating costumes and substituted more modern ones, not so much because they were out of fashion, but because they rendered them somewhat uncomfortable. At this point the white men grasped the helm and the Eskimo followed. At Fort Fraser our hero discarded more of his clothing, and at Quesnel he became determined to strip himself. "I cannot stand this heat," he said; "why, it will kill me."
"Heat? Kill you?" exclaimed his two companions. "Why, the thermometer is scarcely above the freezing point. If this moderate climate makes you uncomfortable, what will be your condition in California? Why, you will melt away like a candle beside a red-hot stove." And thus they joked with him, not taking him seriously. So they sailed along and in due time reached Ashcroft. The Eskimo perspired tosuch an extent that his condition threatened to become dangerous. The slightest covering of clothing became a burden to him, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that his companions could prevent him from stripping himself naked. They persuaded him that he should return before it was too late, but he would not hear of it. "I have made my nest; I will sit in it to the bitter end," he said. They boarded the midnight train, and in a few moments he was fleeing to the sunny south a great deal faster than ever dog team or sledge had taken him across the frozen plateau. And the farther south he went the more he suffered from the heat, until he was in great danger of melting away. And then the truth dawned upon him; it had never occurred to him before. He was a fish trying to live out of water. He discovered that what his mind had pictured, and his heart had longed for, his constitution could not endure. He was doomed to live and die in the frozen north. Oh, those savage, unprogressive, half-animal ancestors! And for the first time he thought of his igloo, his dog teams, the polar bear, and the little woman who had pleaded with him to remain; and he saw her standing as he had left her with outstretched arms, while her very heart tissue was being torn asunder. "Oh, for the ice and snow and the long, dark night," he exclaimed; "anything but this awful heat." When they reached San Francisco he was almost insane, and his condition became critical; and, as if to punish him for his folly, the heat became intense for a few days. They rushed him to thesea shore and he plunged into the water, and refused to come out again. Those were the most congenial surroundings he had found since he left the frozen north. He was in such misery that he did not have time to enjoy the wonders of civilization which he had risked so much to see. Thus does distance lend enchantment to the view. This was an instance of how a man had grown up with his environment—had inherited qualities or weaknesses applicable to his surroundings, had breathed the air of one planet so long that the atmosphere of another was poison to him. He had envied others a lot which it was constitutionally impossible for him to emulate. And he wept for his hereditary infirmities and failings. Could a man be blamed for regretting his ancestors and cursing the fate, or the necessity which drove them into those northern fastnesses at the early stages of their existence? Here again the white man was to blame, for he, in his eagerness and greed, had seized upon the cream of the earth for himself and had driven all inferior or weaker peoples to all the four corners of the globe. And of all the unfortunate, subordinate races, the Eskimo was the most unfortunate, and their condition savored of discrimination on the part of the powers that governed or ordained things.
As our hero had only one ambition while in the north—an insane notion to go south—he had only one ambition while in California—an overpowering ambition to go north.
"Oh, for a mantle of snow, and a canopy of ice!" he shouted. "And, oh, for one touch on mine of my Lola's cold, sweet cheek. Oh, for the frozen, hopeless northland, even if its condition means the perpetual doom and obliteration of the whole Eskimo race!"
They shipped him north as fast as steam could carry him, and from Dawson he went on foot, becoming day by day more and more his natural self. When he neared his igloo he found his Lola standing with outstretched arms to welcome him even as she had mourned his departure, and he realized for the first time that the love and companionship of one woman is worth more than all the riches and wonders of the world put together. They embraced each other with the grip of a vice, in the awful power of their natures, and their affection was as genuine as the most civilized variety. And there he threw himself on the earth and hugged the snow of his dear northland.
Once upon a time in Ashcroft a very foolish young man married a very foolish young lady. They were foolish in so far as they had entered a matrimonial partnership without the preliminary requisite of love. He married because he wanted a wife, as all good men do; she married because she wanted a home, as all good women do. But, as we have said, they married too hastily in their eagerness for those mere mundane pleasures. Each had been known to lie awake many nights before their marriage summing up the situation, and putting two and two together; but, as they were both liberal in their political views, and had no conservative opposition, the two and two always made four without a decimal remainder, and the house voted for marriage with an overwhelming majority. So they became legally united before they were morally mature for love, and before they had formal introduction to the great things of the world. After the solemnization of their marriage they adjourned to a beautiful little home which had been made to order; and it was guarded by a beautiful garden of Eden.
For a short time everything went merry as the Ashcroft curlers' ball. Her happiness was all he lived for, and his comfort was the only excuse she could find for living. Nothing was too good for hisMaud; no man was like her Manfred. They each congratulated themselves that they had hooked the best fish from the Thompson. There was nothing in the world outside of their own sweet lives. How others could live outside oftheirsphere was a mystery to them; and the hugs and kisses which they did not treat themselves to daily would be of no commercial value as a love asset.
For the first few weeks they spent their evenings with their tentacles wound around each other so tightly that they would have passed for one animal; but they had not been welded by that permanent binding quality which is essential to perpetual happiness. Their natures seemed to blend, but it was only a case of superfluous friendship between them. They had no reason to fall out, no excuse to quarrel. They had one mind, one ambition, and they had agreed, mutually, to salt down a few "plunks" each payday for their anticipated gray days. In fact, they seemed better "cut out" for each other than many who marry loving desperately and savagely.
In a few sweet years they had a few sweet children, and life was one sweet dream. But they did not love each other, and without oxygen the lights ultimately became extinguished. But this was only because the ironies of fate had discovered that they were too happy, and that something must be done to damage their heavenliness.
The honeymoon might, otherwise, have lasted all their long lives without interruption. But fate decreed that the clouds should gather from the north,south, east and west to obliterate their sun. It happened in the shape of two monsters in the form of Flossy and Freddy. Flossy and Freddy were float rocks. They had been picked up by Maud and Manfred on their face value and welcomed to the family circle. They had been assayed at the provincial assay office and found to contain a valuable percentage of real collateral; so our hero and heroine could not be reproached for taking them into their arms and allowing them the freedom of their home pastures. But, ah! this is where the evil one sneaked on to the happy hearth-rug—they took the strangers into their arms. They were all young; and, moreover, human. What could they do when the failings of their ancestors of a million years took them in an iron grip and led them in a hypnotic spell toward the brink of ruin? They were as helpless as the Liberals in B.C. politics in the year 1912. We have often quoted that every one must love one of the opposite sex at least once in a lifetime, and our hero and heroine were not immune from this stern gravitation law, because they were only human after all. What was the consequence? Maud fell hopelessly in love with Fred, and Manfred lost his conscience, his manhood, his heart, his soul, his brains, his job and his salary over the Flossy vision. They had fallen foul of a strong Conservative party, and civil war broke out. The former happy couple looked upon each other as intruders, as disturbers of the peace. While before they could not get close enough, now they could not get far enough apart. Manfred would enjoy hisevenings at the ball or opera with Flossy, while Fred would entertain Maud, much to her pleasure, at home. The wife hated to see her husband come home at all, but she went into hysterics when Fred arrived. When Fred and Flossy were away, or absent, goodness knows where, the once happy home was like a lunatic asylum, in which the mania with the inmates was a total disregard of each other, and where language was unknown. The husband and wife drifted further and further apart. They ceased to smile, ceased to know each other, ceased to see each other. They were like a lion and a tiger in the same cage.
As time went on the once happy home became a horrid prison. The children became detestable brats who were stumbling-blocks to their ambitions.
Manfred cooked his own meals, or ate at the "French" Café. Maud had to purchase food and clothing from the local emporium with money she had saved up before marriage while waiting table at the "Best" Hotel. Finance became frenzied, for Manfred spent both principal, interest and sinking fund on his affinity. Starvation and the cold world were staring them in the face, for the wolf and the collection man were howling at the door. The city cut off their light and water supply for non-payment of dues, and were about to seize the property for arrears; so they were on the water wagon and in darkness, but still they would not regain consciousness.
The usual course of events did not apply in this strange case. There was no jealousy floating on the surface on the part of the husband and wife. Maudignored Manfred's insane attitude towards Flossy because she had the same love-blind sickness and could see no one but Fred. Far from being jealous, Manfred viewed his wife in the light of a white man's burden which he could not shake off. Christian's burden was fiction beside it. Flossy was the only star in his firmament—the only toad in his puddle.
The children were neglected, and ran wild in the bush. It was as though some great Belgian calamity had overtaken the household and had riven it asunder. The garden lost its lustre, irrigation was discontinued, the fruit trees lost their leaves prematurely; the very willows wept. The pickets fell from the fence unheeded; the stovepipe smoked, and the chickens laid away in the neighbor's yard. The house assumed the appearance of a deserted sty. Divorce was suggested inwardly—that modern refuge to which the weak-minded flee in seeking a drastic cure for a temporary ailment; and all this disruption in two hearts which had tripped along together so smoothly and pleasantly. Surely love, misapplied, is a curse. It is surely sometimes a severe form of insanity. If so, those two were insane, just waiting for the pressure to be removed from the brain. And, theirs was a pitiful and unfruitful case indeed. They were—