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 Sure Man'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.
Of the Unloved Man
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 that _he_ was 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 want _him_, 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 an itinerant.
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
modern society 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.
Of the Chief who was Bigger than He Looked
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 his love 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 to shoot 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 of punishment 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 so that 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.
Of Simple Simon Up To Date
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 the end 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 the
_Ashcroft 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 does not 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.