In the meantime Fred and Flossy were having "barrels" of amusement at the expense of the demented ones. Fred and Flossy were perhaps in the wrong in causing such an upheaval in a very model household. But they were young, and the mischief had taken root before they suspected that any such danger was in existence. When the awfulness of the situation dawned upon them they looked at each other one day in the interrogative and agreed that the poisonous weed should be uprooted. But since it had grown to such proportions it was difficult to arrive at a means by which the evil could be strangled. Now Fred and Flossy loved each other, and the lady was just waiting for the gentleman to put the motion, so that she would have an opportunity to second it.
The thirst-crazed husband and wife, however, were too blind to observe that anything unusual existed between their two friends, and they continued to float down that smooth but awful river to destruction.
"Why does she not die?" whispered the demon within the man.
"Why does he not fall into the Thompson and get drowned for accommodation?" questioned the evil one in the heart of the woman.
At last the eruption became "Vesuvian," and the ashes from the crater threatened to re-bury Pompeii—we mean Ashcroft. Thoughts of suicide as the only means of relief bubbled up at intervals.
"Give me love or give me death," they shouted when the fever was at its highest.
It is impossible to say just how this war would have ended if an unforeseen neutral incident had not brought an influence to bear which made a continuation of the conflict an impossible and aimless task.
One day the deaf, and dumb, and blind husband and wife were sitting by the neutral hearth as far apart as it was possible to be removed and yet be able to enjoy the friendly heat of the neutral air-tight heater. The neutral cat jumped up on the husband's knee, but in his belligerent mood he dashed it to the floor. The wife picked it up and stroked its sleek fur. The neutral children were out in the garden abusing the flowers and breaking pickets from the fence; and one had an old saw and was sawing at the trimmings of the cottage like a woodsman sawing down a cedar at the coast.
There was rustling of a lady's skirt, and the tramp of hurried feet on the garden path outside. The next moment the door was pushed open and Fred and Flossy dashed in, laughing like to split their sides.
"You tell them," said Fred.
"No, you," said Flossy, blushing deeply.
"No, you," said Fred, and he seized Flossy's hand.
"Well, you know, Fred has—" she began.
"To make a long story short," said Fred, "we are to be married, and the date has been fixed for June."
When Vesuvius buried up Pompeii the people could not have been more horrified than the belligerent husband and wife. They looked at each other for the first time in six months. The man pitied the woman, and cursed himself for crossing swords with her. The woman at once recognized her husband as a hero, and was ashamed of herself. They each waited for the other to make the first confession, but it was left to both. They sprang into each other's arms and became welded for life in one beautiful but awful squeeze.
The fright had cured them. It had opened their eyes to the realization of the ridiculousness of the situation, and revealed the criminality of their past behavior.
The volcano ceased to pour forth lava. The earth-tremblings became still. The sun peeped out from behind the clouds. Manfred got back his job on the railway. The water and light arrears were paid up. The fence was repaired, and the garden irrigated. The children were called in from the woods and curried down. Kisses and smiles took the place of scowls and curses. The sideboard was replenished, and the hens were persuaded to work for their own family. Even the willows ceased to weep; and, oh, my! but it was a beautiful resurrection. And thus Paradise was gained again.
Once upon a time in Ashcroft two ladies were thrown into the same society; because in Ashcroft there is only one class. When any function took place the glad hand was extended to one and all. For every dollar possessed by one of the ladies' husbands the other husband had five. Mrs. Fivedollars was very extravagant in her dress and domestic department, and Mrs. Onedollar was very envious and ambitious. The husband of the one dollar variety was more or less of a henpeck because he could not multiply his income by five and produce a concrete result.
It was a very predominating mania with Mrs. Onedollar to shine in society with as great a number of amperes as her rival; and this ambition gave rise to one of the greatest domestic civil wars that Ashcroft has even seen. Mrs. Fivedollars had no envy. There was no corner in the remote recesses of her heart rented by this mischievous goddess. She made no effort to "outfashion" fashion or to outshine her neighbors. What she displayed in dress did not extend beyond the natural female instincts for attire. Of course she had no cause to be envious, being by far the best dressed lady in town without undue effort. Mrs. Onedollar viewed the situation from a social apex, and the more she studied the situation the more she realized that the world was discriminating against her. From being the best of friends, they developed into the most deadly of enemies.
Now, it came to pass that the husbands of those two ladies were the best of friends. They met frequently in the "Best" and "Next Best" hotels and drank healths in the most harmless and jolly manner. They often met at their places of business and exchanged ideas. They had business relations with each other which terminated to the advantage of both. To quarrel with each other, to them, was much the same as to quarrel with their bread and butter. They had absolutely no ambitions with regard to their personal appearance. They had a suit of clothes each; when that was old or shabby they got another one. But, in this respect, man is very different from woman. All man wants is covering; a woman must have ornament, and she must equal, if not outshine, her neighbor. The tension between the two ladies became greater until it was almost at the breaking point. Several attempts had been made by the distracted husbands to unscrew the strings which they knew were about to snap, but the result was nil.
"The vixen," said the one. "The hussy," said the other; and when two ladies develop the habit of calling each other such queer pet names, a reconciliation seems very remote indeed.
The climax came at the annual Clinton ball. This was one of those historic functions to which everyone is extended a hearty invitation, and it is one of the great events of the season. The entire Lillooet, Yale and Cariboo districts participate—it is a regular meeting of the clans. And that year was no exception. All our friends were there, including our heroes and heroines. The music was throwing its waves of delightful chords through the hall and over the heads of the throng of dancers. Something happened! No one knew just what it was, but in the middle of the floor two ladies were seen tearing each other's hair and draperies. Heavens! it was our two heroines. The tension had reached the limit—the strings were broken. In a moment our two heroes were on the scene, and each one seized his bundle of property and rushed with it to safety. The two ladies were bundled into their autos and hurried home to Ashcroft in the middle of the night.
The next day a council of war was held by the two husbands and it was unanimously agreed that something must be done.
"I have it!" exclaimed Mr. Fivedollars. "Now, listen. I will take you in as a partner in business. I will give you twenty years to pay your share, and we will dress our wives exactly alike." The plan was adopted, and the result was phenomenal. Mr. Onedollar had at last multiplied his insignificant unit by five and had a concrete accumulation. The two ladies dressed themselves alike extravagantly, and all rivalry ceased. They became great friends again and lived happily ever after. And all this disturbance and discord of human hearts was over a miserable bundle of inanimate drapery.
Once upon a time in Ashcroft there lived a lady who had the wool pulled over her husband's eyes to such an extent that he had optical illusions favorable to the "darling" who deceived him. His most alluring illusion was a booby idea that his "pet" was an invalid, and she kept pouring oil on the joke to keep it burning, and pulled the wool down further and further so that hubby could not see the combustible fluid she was pouring into the flames. Her illness was one of those "to be continued" story kinds—better to-day, worse to-morrow—and she "took" to the blankets at the most annoying and inopportune moments; and every time she "took" an indisposition she expected hubby to pull down the window curtains and go into mourning. But he, the hardhearted man, would continue to eat and smoke and sleep as though no volcanic lava were threatening to submerge the old homestead. His sympathy was not enough; he should stop eating, stop sleeping, and stop smoking—he should be in direct communication with the undertaker and negotiating about the price of caskets.
His wife had the misleading conviction that when she was ill her case was more serious than that of anyone else. In fact, no one else had ever suffered as she suffered; their ailments were summer excursions to the antipodes compared with hers, and when hubby argued that all flesh was subject to ills and disorders, that almost every unit of the human species had toothaches and rheumatics, the argument was voted down unanimously by the suffragette majority as illegitimate argument.
Gradually hubby became convinced that his wife was an invalid, and he went into mourning as much as a man could mourn the loss of a joy that he had grasped for, and just missed in the grasping. He enjoyed the situation as much as a man could who had discovered that he had amalgamated himself with an hospital which was mortgaged for all it was worth to the family physician. Out of his salary of seventy-five dollars per month sixty-five was devoted towards the financing of the doctor's time payments on his automobile; the balance paid for food, clothing, water, light, and fuel, and supplied the wolf with sufficient allowance to keep him from entering the parlor in the concrete. But the philosopher, as all men must ultimately become, concluded to make the best of his bad real estate investment. He resigned himself to a life of perpetual, unaffected martyrdom. After all, it was his personal diplomacy that was at fault—he should not have bought a pig in an Ashcroft potato sack.
During the first year of their matrimonial failure they had rooms at the "Best" Hotel, and the girls carried breakfast to the bride's room seven mornings of every week at about 10.30, where the "invalid" devoured it with such greed and relish that they became suspicious and talked "up their sleeves" about her. Three days each week she had all meals carried up to her, and the girls wondered how she could distribute so much proteid about her system with so little exercise. The extreme healthfulness of her constitution was the only thing that saved this woman from dying of surfeit. The only occasions on which she would rise from her lethargy was to attend a dance or social of some kind given at Walhachin or Savona—she did not avoid one of them, and on those occasions she would be the liveliest cricket on the hearth, the biggest toad in the puddle, while the husband was pre-negotiating with the physician for some more evaporated stock in the auto. How she ever got home was a mystery, for she would be more disabled than ever for weeks to come. Of course she had just overdone her constitutional possibility—she said so herself, and she should know.
Whispers went abroad that she was lazy, and they became so loud that hubby heard them over the wireless telephone. He became exasperated. "My wife a hypocrite? Never! The people have hearts of stone—brains of feathers—they do not understand."
One day—it had never occurred to him before—he suggested that they consult a specialist in somnolence. But she would not hear of it; there was nothing wrong with her; all she wanted was to be left alone. In a short time hubby began to consider her in the light of a "white man's burden," and had distorted visions of himself laboring through life with an over-loaded back action.
One day the hotel proprietor advised him of a contemplated raise in his assessment to re-imburse the business for extras in connection with elevating so much food upstairs, which was not part and parcel of the rules and regulations of the house in committee. Besides, the accommodation was needless.
"Needless!" exclaimed hubby. "Would you degenerate a lady and gentleman wilfully. I will leave your fire-trap at once and cast anchor at the 'Next Best.'" The proprietor argued that his competitor was welcome to such pickings, so he made no comment on the debate.
The "Next Best" was "full up," as it always is, so they carried the living corpse out on a stretcher, and hubby went batching with his burden in a three-roomed house on Bancroft Street. When it became hubby's duty to cook the meals and carry half of them to bed for his better half every morning before breakfast he began to taste silly and smell sort of henpeck like. He persisted humbly, lovingly, self-sacrificingly, henpeckedly, however, until one morning his sun rose brighter than it had ever done before and he saw a faint glimmer of light through the wool that was hanging in front of him.
"Perhaps there is such a commodity as superfluous personal sacrifice to one's matrimonial obligations," he soliloquized. "Perhaps this spouse of mine with the pre-historic constitution can be cured by an abstract treatment. Is she ill, or is she playing a wild, deceitful part? Is she sitting on me with all her weight?" He was willing to allow her the usual proportion of female indisposition, but a continued story of such nightmare proportions was beginning to unstring his physical telephone system. So, to we who have no wool over our eyes, this was one of the most pitiful and criminal cases of selfish indolence, perhaps coupled with a belief that a husband, through his sympathy, will love a woman the more because of her suffering. No supposition, of course, could be farther from the concrete—a husband wants, requires, admires, loves, a healthy, active working-partner. Failing this the husband as a husband is down and out.
When hubby began to realize this an individual reformation was at the dawning. The very next morning no breakfast arrived by private parcel post.
"Harry," she exclaimed, "bring me my porridge and hot cakes; I am starving."
"If you are starving get up and eat in your stall at the table," said Harry, sarcastically, although it pained him.
"Harry!" she shouted, "you selfish beast!"
For diplomatic reasons Harry was silent.
Harry made an abrupt exit without waiting for adjournment, and went up town. A new life seemed to be dawning upon him. It was the emancipation from slavery. He went into the drug store, into the hardware store, into the hotels and all the other stores—he talked and laughed as he had never done before.
It was 3 a.m. the following morning when he found himself searching for the door-knob in the vicinity of the front window. Having gained an entrance, he was accosted by his wife, who exclaimed: "Harry, you drunk?"
"Well, y'see, it was the pioneer shupper," said Harry, and he tumbled into bed.
This was Harry's first ruse. His next move was an affinity. He would cease to pose as a piece of household furniture—a dumb waiter sort of thing.
At that time there was a vision waiting table at the "Best" who had most of the fellows on a string. Harry threw his grappling irons around her and took her in tow. This went on for some time without suspicion being aroused on the part of the "invalid," but the wireless telegraphy of gossip whispered the truth to her one day when she was wondering what demon had taken possession of her protector. She dropped her artificial gown in an instant and rushed up Railway Avenue like a militant suffragette. Just about the local emporium Harry was sailing along under a fair and favorable wind, hand in hand with his new dream, when he saw his legal prerogative approaching near the "Next Best" hotel. He dislodged his grappling-hooks in an instant, stepped slightly in advance, and feigned that he had been running along on his own steam. But she saw him and defined his movements. They met like two express engines in collision, and what followed had better be left buried underneath the sidewalk of the local emporium. There were dead and dying left on the field, and they reached home later by two rival routes of railway.
The stringency endured some days, which time she huffed and he read Charles Darwin. At the end of that period the ice broke, as it always does; the clouds rolled away, and the sun began to shine, and they began to negotiate for peace. They had a long sitting of parliament, and it was moved and seconded, and unanimously carried, that each give the other a reprieve. It meant the amalgamation of two hearts that became so intertwined with roots that nothing earthly could pull them asunder. It was the founding of one of the happiest homes in Ashcroft. He left his affinity—she left her bed. They became active working partners. Long years after he told her of his ruse. She laughed.
"You saved me," she said.
He endorsed the note, and they had one long, sweet embrace which still lingers in their memory.
Once upon a time it was Christmas eve in Vancouver, B.C., and the snow was falling in large, soft flakes. The electric light plants were beating their lives out in laborious heart-throbs, giving forth such power that the streets and shop windows had the appearance of the phantom scene of a fairy stage-play rather than a grim reality; they were lighter than day. There was magic illumination from the sidewalk to the very apex of the tallest sky-scraper. Being Christmas eve, the streets were thronged with pleasure seekers, and eager, procrastinating, Christmas gift maniacs. They were all happy, but they were temporarily insane in the eagerness of their pursuit. They all had money, plenty of it; and this was the time of year when it was quite in order to squander it lavishly, carelessly, insanely—for, is it not more blessed to give than to receive?
The habiliments of the hurrying throng were exuberant, extravagant and ostentatious in the extreme. Everyone seemed to vie with every other, with an envy akin to insanity, for the laurels in the fashion world, and they were talking and laughing gaily, and some of them were singing Christmas carols. They did not even seem to regret the soft wet snow that was falling on their costly apparel and soaking them—they seemed rather to enjoy it. Besides, they could go home at any time and change and dry themselves—and, was it not Christmas, the one time of the year when the whole world was happy and lavish? The persons of the ladies were bathed in perfume, and the clothing of the gentlemen was spotless, save where the large, white snowflakes clung for a moment before vanishing into fairyland. Vancouver was certainly a city of luxury, a city of ease, a city of wealth, and it was all on exhibition at this time of approaching festival. Everyone was rich, and money was no obstacle in the way of enjoyment.
But we have seen one side of the picture only. We have been looking in the sunlight; let us peer into the shadows. There was a reverse side. A girl of about thirteen years of age was standing at the corner of Hastings and Granville offering matches for sale to the stony world. She was bareheaded, thinly clad, shivering. Her clothing was tattered and torn. Her shoes were several sizes too large, and were some person's cast-off ones. It was Christmas, and no one was seeking for matches. They were all in search of gold and silverware, furs and fancies, to give away to people who did not require them.
"Matches, sir?" The solicitous question was addressed to a medium-sized, moderately dressed man who was gliding around the corner and whistling some impromptu Christmas carol; and she touched the hem of his garment. This unit of the big world paused, took the matches, and began to explore his hemisphere for five cents. In the meantime he surveyed the little girl from head to foot, and then he glanced at the big world rushing by in two great streams.
"Give me them all!" he said with an impulse that surprised him, and he handed her one dollar. "Now, go home and dry yourself and go to bed," he continued. He did not stop to consider that she might not have a home and a bed, but continued on his way with his superfluity of matches. His home was bright, and warm, and cheery when he arrived there, and his wife welcomed him. "I have brought you a Christmas present," he said, and he handed her the matches. When she opened the package he found it necessary to explain.
It was Christmas, and the snow was still falling in large, soft flakes. It was about ten inches deep out on the hills, among the trees out along Capilano and Lynn Creeks, but it had been churned into slush on the streets and pavements of Vancouver. The church bells were ringing, and our gaily clad and happy acquaintances of the evening before were again thronging the streets; but to-day they were on their way to church to praise the One whose birthday they were observing. Our friend of the large heart was also there, and so was his wife—two tiny drops in that great bucketful of humanity. The match vendor was also there—another very tiny drop in that great bucketful. "What! Selling matches on Christmas day?" remarked a passer-by. "You should be taken in charge by the Inquisition."
"Matches, sir?" said the tiny voice, and she again touched the hem of our hero's garment. The big-hearted man looked at his tender-hearted wife, and the tender-hearted wife looked at her big-hearted man. "Yes, give me them all," he said again, and he handed her another dollar. He was evidently trying to buy up all the available matches so that he could have a corner on the commodity. "Here," he continued, "take this dollar also. Buy yourself something good for Christmas, and go home and enjoy yourself."
"I have no home, and the shops are all closed," she said, brushing the wet snow from her hair.
"No home!" exclaimed the lady, incredulously, "and the world is overflowing with wealth and has homes innumerable. Is it possible that the world's goods are so unevenly divided?"
The girl began to cry.
"Come and have your Christmas dinner with us," said the lady.
The girl, still weeping, followed in her utter innocence and helplessness.
Ding-dong, went the merry bells. Tramp, tramp, went the feet of the big, voluptuous world. Honk, honk, went the horns of the automobiles; for it was Christmas, and all went merry as a marriage bell.
The fire was burning brightly. The room was warm and cozy. The house was clean, tidy, and cheery. It was a dazzling scene to one who had been accustomed to the cold, bare, concrete pavements only.
"My!" exclaimed the girl as they entered. It was a perfect fairyland to her. It was a story. It was a dream.
"Now, we are going to have the realest, cutest, Christmas dinner you ever saw," said the lady, producing a steaming turkey from the warming oven. The girl danced in her glee and anticipation. "But first you must dress for dinner. We will go and see Santa Claus," smiled the foster-mother. She retired with a waif, and returned with a fairy, and they sat down to a fairy dinner.
"What a spotless tablecloth! What clean cups and saucers, and plates and dishes! What shining knives and forks! What kind friends!" thought the orphan. "I had no idea such things existed outside of Heaven," she exclaimed aloud in her rapture.
"It is all very commonplace, I assure you," said the man, "but it takes money to buy them."
"And yet," philosophized the lady, "if we are dissatisfied in our prosperity, what must a life be that contains nothing?"
Ding-dong, went the bells. Tramp, tramp, went the feet of the big world outside. Honk, honk, went the horn of the automobile; but the happiest heart of them all was the little waif who had been, until now, so lonely, so cold, so hungry, so neglected. They were the happiest moments in her whole life. Her time began from that day. But that is many years ago. The orphan is a lady now in Vancouver; and every Christmas she gives a dinner to some poor people in honor of those who adopted her and saved her from the slums.
Once upon a time four Ashcroft Napoleons, known locally as "Father," "Deacon," "Cyclone," and "Skookum," invaded Vancouver to demonstrate at an inter-provincial curling bonspiel that was arranged to take place at that city. Their object was to bring home as many prizes and trophies as they could conveniently carry without having to pay "excess baggage," and donate the balance to charity. It was decided later not to take any of the prizes, as it was more blessed to give than to receive, and they did not only give away all the trophies, but they gave away all the games as well—games they had a legitimate mortgage on—and they were glad to see the other fellows happy.
As a man often gets into trouble trying to keep out of it, so the Ashcroft chaps lost by trying to win; and here it is consoling to know that all a man does or says in this world sinks and lies motionless in the silent past, for in this case it will only be a matter of time when people will cease to remember. But to leave all joking aside, we beg to advise that the adventurers were dumped unceremoniously into Moscow by the C.P.R. officials at about three good morning and had not where to lay their heads. You could not see the city for buildings; but even at that embryo hour of the morning the streets were not entirely deserted. Some people seem to toil day and night, for there were dozens of forms moving hither and thither like phantoms in the powerful glare of the electric illuminations. Being Ashcroft people our heroes were accustomed to city life, and the embarrassment of the situation soon evaporated. They bundled themselves into a nocturnal automobile which was no sooner loaded than it "hit" the streets of Vancouver like Halley's comet. It went up and down, out and in, hither and thither. It tried to leap from under the invaders, but they kept up with it. It went north forty chains, east forty chains, south forty chains, and thence west forty chains to point of commencement. It went here, then there, and ultimately arranged to stop on Richards Street (named after our John), at the foot of the elevator of the Hotel Canadian. This was the end of steel for the auto, the rest of the journey had to be made on foot via the elevator. It is a very pleasant sensation to have the floor rise and carry you with it to the third landing, and it only takes three seconds to make a sixty second journey. At the third floor, after having been shown their stalls for the night, the bandits went out on an exploring expedition while the stable man let down some hay.
They located the fire escape, as it is always better to come in by the front door like a millionaire and leave by the fire escape in the dead of the night when the stableman is asleep at his post.
Early next morning, at about ten o'clock, they invaded the dining-room as hungry as hyenas, and had a lovely breakfast of porridge and cream, ham and eggs, toast and butter, tea or coffee. To encourage the coffee somewhat the Deacon "dug" his front foot into the lump-sugar bowl and extracted a couple of aces; and the other mimics followed suit with two, three, and four spots. The breaking of this fast cost forty-five cents for the meal, and fifty-five for the waiter just to make the "eat" come to even money, and they were too large socially to take away small change economically. Every meal they put into their waste baskets necessarily extracted one day from the other end of their excursion via the fire escape, and that is one reason why they returned so soonly. Cyclone, having drawn on his personal account at a Vancouver branch of the Ashcroft bank for enough to pay his next meal and car fare, and Skookum having jotted down the usual morning poetic inspiration on the sublimity of the situation, the army, led by Father, marched full breast upon the curling rink building. There were no knights at the gate to defend the castle, nor did the band meet them at the portal—neither did the Vancouver curling club. Their arrival, strange to say, created no commotion; they did not seem to have been anticipated. Things went along as though nothing extraordinary had taken place.
The appearances at the rink, however, were intoxicating, which largely made up for the invisibility of the receiving committee. The rink was somewhat larger than the town hall at Ashcroft, and the great, high, arched, glass ceiling was studded with electric lights like stars in the heavens. Extensive rows of seats for spectators encircled the entire room, and in the centre, the arena was one clear, smooth sheet of hard, white ice. Several games were in progress, and they saw their old friend "Tam" playing with his usual Scotch luck and winning for all he was worth.
Ashcroft selected the ice upon which the first blood was to be sprinkled. The battle began on schedule time, and as they had anticipated, they won without a single casualty. As a result of this "clean up," a private conference was held that night by the Vancouver and other clubs behind closed doors, at which it was moved, and seconded, and adopted, that Ashcroft was a dangerous element in their midst, and that drastic measures must be set in motion at once to arrest such phenomenal accomplishments or the bonspiel would be lost. All unconscious of the conspiracy against them, Ashcroft spent the afternoon riding up and down the moving stairs at Spencer's, led by the "Deak," who had had previous practice at this amusement. Curling to them was as easy as this stairway, and as simple as eating a meal if you cut out the tipping of the waiter. That night they took in a show which was a "hum dinger," and should have endured a life-time. What a sweet life it was; nothing to do but live, and laugh, and curl, and win; if it would only continue indefinitely without having to worry about the financing of it! Napoleon "had nothing" on Father, and he felt that he could even "put it over" on the local star. But something happened the next day. Whether it was the private conference, or the moving stairs, or the Pantages, or whether it was that Ashcroft became more careless with success, and Vancouver more careful with defeat, will never be known. They pierced no more bull's eyes—and sometimes they missed the entire target. They had every qualification essential to the successful curler but talent. They had the rocks, the brooms, the ribbons, the sweaters—they even had the will. It is strange with all those requisites that they could not win.
The retreat from Moscow took place three days later, and they went straggling over the Alps in one long string. As though the mortification of defeat was not enough, a huge joke was prepared for them by the reception committee of the local curling club, and lemons have been at a premium in Ashcroft ever since.
The Okanagan Valley, in the Province of British Columbia, is bounded on the north by the mosquitoes at Sicamous, and on the south by the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude, which is the United States; and to one who is accustomed to the sand and the sage, the general aspect throughout gives a most pleasing rest to the eye. A trip to the Okanagan is like one sweet dream to the inhabitants of the dry belt—a dream that is broken only once by a dreadful nightmare—the mosquito conquest at Sicamous; but you forgive and forget this the moment after you awake. The mosquitoes at Sicamous are as great a menace to that town as the Germans are to Europe.
The train for the valley, when on time, leaves Sicamous, on the main line of the C.P.R., at about ten, good morning, but sometimes she waits for the delayed eastern train. This happens very frequently on Sundays—for who or what was ever on time on a Sunday? Sunday is the lazy man's day—the lazy day of the world—the day on which we creep along out of tune with things.
Now, when you get side-tracked at a C.P.R. station in the Rocky Mountains waiting for a delayed eastern train, you may as well throw all your plans into the lake, because they will be out of fashion when you have an opportunity to use them again, and you will require new ones—the train may come to-day and she may not come till to-morrow. But, if that station chances to be Sicamous, and it is Sunday—and it must be raining heavily, for when it is raining there are no mosquitoes—you will not regret the delay, and you will be very much interested if you have an eye for the unique, or if you have the slightest inclination to be eccentric you will be reminded that—
Here people—strangers and friends—meet and nod, smile, talk and depart ten or twelve times every day. You will wonder how people can talk so much, and what they get to talk about—people who meet accidentally here, only for a moment, and will never meet again, perhaps. Almost hourly, night and day, cosmopolitan little throngs jump from trains, chat a few moments among themselves, or with others who have been waiting, and then allow themselves to be picked up by the next train and rushed off into eternity—that is, so far as you are concerned, for you will never see them again—and some of them were becoming so familiar. They are voices and faces flitting across your past; they are always new, always strange, always interesting; they are laughing, chatting, smiling, scowling, worrying. There are fair faces and dark faces, pleasant faces and angry faces, careless faces and anxious faces, and faces that are thin, fat, long and short. The voices are as varied as the faces. There is the sharp, clear voice and the dull voice, the angry one and the pleasant one. There are young and old, beautiful and ugly, scowls and smiles, the timid and the fearless—the black, the white, and the yellow; and there are faces that look so much like ones you know at home that you are just on the point of asking them how the boys and girls have been since you left. If they had known that they were the actors on a stage, and you were the audience, conditions might have been improved—artificially; they might have acted better, with more "class," but the interest would have been injured; you would have been robbed of a genuine entertainment. Those people went north, south, east and west; they went to the four corners of the earth. The sound of their voices and laughs go up into the tree-tops, up into the hills and down into the lake, and they are echoed back to us; and that is the only record that is ever taken, of this interesting drama; and then the voices fade away east—fade away west.
But you hear the elaborate puffing and snorting of a locomotive as though laboring under its great load of humanity; there is a loud whistle from somewhere, and then another; two engines are speaking to each other; then the bell rings, the engine sweeps by, and the whole earth trembles—it is the delayed eastern train. There is a great scramble for entrance. Chance acquaintances are forgotten in the individual excitement. The steps to one car are blocked by one man who has enough baggage for ten, and one worried-looking young lady with a baby is afraid she will lose her train. The train pulls out with a "swish, swish" of escaping steam under great pressure from the engine, and the station is robbed of half its population. The familiar faces have disappeared, but a new throng has been cast into your midst—new faces, new smiles, new voices, new scowls; and the chatter is renewed with vigor when we have found ourselves, and are located in several little isolated bunches. But the Okanagan local is here waiting for our scalps. There is another scramble of men, women, children, bag and baggage, for seats, and we are off. The little station platform is deserted and silent but for the clatter of the wheels of the baggage truck. The tree tops sigh, the lake murmurs, but they cannot hold us, we must hurry to the great beyond—the whole world depends upon our individual movements.
Once upon a time I had a very curious experience which had a very curious ending.
I walked into a strange person's house, uninvited, for some mysterious reason perfectly unknown to myself.
Sitting promiscuously around an old-fashioned fire-place, in which blazed a cheery fire, were a man and woman and four small children; and on a lounge, partly hid under the eiderdown quilt, lay a pure white cat, half asleep and half awake, and at intervals casting sly glances at some of the children. The cat seemed to all intent and purpose one of that human family.
Now, although the cat can be abused like a toy doll by the children without losing his temper, yet he has the most curiously composed disposition of all the domestic animals. Although extravagantly domesticated, and although he shares our beds and tables with impunity, yet he is, to the mouse, as cruel and treacherous as a man-eating tiger.
However, we did not take up our pen to discuss cat psychology. Upon entering the strange person's house so unceremoniously, I sat me down upon a vacant chair, also uninvited, and began to make myself at home.
The strange persons did not seem to take any exception to my strange behavior, but, kept on talking as though nothing extraordinary had taken place in the human social regulations. I was more interested in the cat than I was in the people, and I could not keep my eye from him, he was so much like our "Teddy" at home.
At last I convinced myself that it was Teddy.
"Where did you get that cat?" I asked.
"Why, we have always had him. We raised him. He sleeps with the children every night, and gets up with them in the morning—when he is here," said the mother.
Our Teddy had the same weakness, and I was so positive that this was he that I called him by name.
In a moment he came to me and was on my knee—it was indeed Teddy.
Now, here was one of the most unique situations on record.
"This is my cat," I said demandingly.
"It is ours," said the chorus of children's voices.
It suddenly occurred to me that Teddy was in the habit of leaving home and would be absent for several days at a time. Could it be possible he had two homes? Did this cat actually accept the affections and hospitality of two distinct families, at the same time, without once breathing the truth or giving himself away?
I went home puzzled to my wife and said:
"Do you know, Teddy is not all ours?"
"What do you mean?"
I was just about to tell my strange story when I awoke, and, behold, it was a dream.
The people who inhabited this globe during the year 1725 undoubtedly obtained a different view of things terrestrial than we do who claim the world's real estate in 1915, because they had no telegraph, no telephone, no electric light, no automobile, and no aeroplane. How they managed to live at all is a mystery to the twentieth century biped. Fancy having to cross the street to your neighbor's house when you wanted to ask him if he was going to the pioneer supper, and just think of having no "hello girl" to flirt with. The condition seems appalling. But what they lacked in knowledge and in indolent conveniences we beg to announce that they made up in foolhardiness which they called bravery. Well, if it can be called brave to make a needless target of oneself to a bunch of savage Indians, why then they had the proper derivation of the term.
From one of Francis Parkman's admirable works we have seized upon the scene of our story, which was acted out at the beginning of the eighteenth century, namely, 1725. The Indians seem to have been very hostile in those early days in the immediate vicinity of the early New England provinces; and we are convinced some of the white men were very hostile as well. Of course we, in our day, cannot blame them—they had no telephones, autos, electricity, "hello girls"—they had to be something, so they were hostile towards the Indians.
Dunstable was a town on the firing line of Massachusetts, and was attacked by Indians in the autumn of 1724, and two men were carried off. Ten others went in pursuit, but fell into an ambush, and nearly all were killed. But now we will follow the words of Francis Parkman, who has a delightful way of relating his stories.
"A company of thirty was soon raised." They were to receive two shillings and sixpence per day each, "out of which he was to maintain himself";—very little to risk one's life for; but in those days it was no concern with a man whether he was killed or not. Besides, it was worth something to get killed and have Francis Parkman write about you more than a century later. Perhaps they anticipated this perpetuation of their names and deeds.
However, "Lovewell was chosen captain; Farwell lieutenant, and Robbins, ensign. They set out towards the end of November, and reappeared at Dunstable early in January, bringing one prisoner and one scalp." It does not seem to us to have paid the interest on the investment of two shillings and sixpence per day, "out of which he was to maintain himself," and, for anything we know to the contrary, perhaps the captain was getting more than this—it has not been recorded. "Towards the end of the month Lovewell set out again, this time with eighty-seven men. They ascended the frozen Merrimac, passed Lake Winnepesaukee, pushed nearly to the White Mountains, and encamped on a branch of the upper Saco. Here they killed a moose—a timely piece of luck, for they were in danger of starvation, and Lovewell had been compelled by want of food to send back a good number of his men. The rest held their way, filing on snowshoes through the deathlike solitude that gave no sign of life except the light track of some squirrel on the snow, and the brisk note of the hardy little chickadee, or black-capped titmouse, so familiar in the winter woods."
Now here is where the foolhardiness of the expedition begins to appeal to us. Supposing just here they had met five hundred crazy Indians with five hundred crazy bows and arrows? And they must have expected it. They were searching for Indians. Perhaps they were seeking martyrdom? But the New Englander of the frontier was nothing if not foolhardy. They mistook it for bravery, and there must have been some bravery amalgamated with it, because a man must have a certain quantity of that rarity before he can lend himself out as a target at two shillings and sixpence a day, "out of which he was to maintain himself."
Now, if you have patience to follow you will learn that they ultimately met the very thing which you expect—which they must have expected.
"Thus far the scouts had seen no human footprints; but on the twentieth of February they found a lately abandoned wigwam, and following the snowshoe tracks that led from it—" Right into the lion's jaw, as it were. Perhaps they were anxious to be shot to get out of their misery—"at length saw smoke rising at a distance out of the gray forest." They saw their finish, and their hearts were filled with joy. "The party lay close till two o'clock in the morning; then, cautiously approaching, found one or more wigwams, surrounded them, and killed all the inmates, ten in number." They were to pay dear for this, as anyone could have told them. "They brought home the scalps in triumph, ... and Lovewell began at once to gather men for another hunt.... At the middle of April he had raised a band of forty-six." One of the number was Seth Wyman, ... a youth of twenty-one, graduated at Harvard College, in 1723, and now a student of theology. Chaplain though he was, he carried a gun, knife and hatchet like the others, and not one of the party was more prompt to use them.... They began their march on April 15th." After leaving several of their number by the way for various causes, we find thirty-seven of them on the night of May 7th near Fryeburg lying in the woods near the northeast end of Lovewell's pond.
"At daybreak the next morning, as they stood bareheaded, listening to a prayer from the young chaplain, they heard the report of a gun, and soon after an Indian.... Lovewell ordered his men to lay down their packs and advance with extreme caution." Why this caution? "They met an Indian coming towards them through the dense trees and bushes. He no sooner saw them than he fired at the leading men." Naturally. We should have said "leading targets." "His gun was charged with beaver shot and he severely wounded Lovewell and young Whiting; on which Seth Wyman shot him dead, and the chaplain and another man scalped him." As yet they had only entered the lion's den. "And now follows one of the most obstinate and deadly bush-fights in the annals of New England.... The Indians howled like wolves, yelled like enraged cougars, and made the forest ring with their whoops.... The slaughter became terrible. Men fell like wheat before the scythe. At one time the Indians ceased firing; ... they seemed to be holding a 'pow-wow'; but the keen and fearless Wyman crept up among the bushes, shot the chief conjurer, and broke up the meeting. About the middle of the afternoon young Fry received a mortal wound. Unable to fight longer, he lay in his blood, praying from time to time for his comrades in a faint but audible voice." One, Keys, received two wounds, "but fought on till a third shot struck him." He declared the Indians would not get his scalp. Creeping along the sandy edge of the pond, he chanced to find a stranded canoe, pushed it afloat, rolled himself into it, and drifted away before the wind. Soon after sunset the Indians drew off.... The surviving white men explored the scene of the fight.... Of the thirty-four men, nine had escaped without serious injury, eleven were badly wounded, and the rest were dead or dying.... Robbins, as he lay helpless, asked one of them to load his gun, saying, 'The Indians will come in the morning to scalp me, and I'll kill another of them if I can.' They loaded the gun and left him." The expected had occurred. Most of them had been killed. Anyone could have told them this before they set out—they could have made the same prophecy for themselves. And after all they had accomplished nothing but their own deaths. The story of their return rivals that of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. Of the whole number eleven ultimately reached home. We leave it to the reader to determine whether this was an exhibition of bravery or foolhardiness, or a mixture of both.
We congratulate ourselves that we did not live on the frontier of New England in the year 1725.
Lycurgus reigned over a place called Lacedæmon, which is a part of Greece, about the year 820 B.C. Now, this is a great many years ago, and is further back into the archives of history than most of us can remember. There is no doubt, however, that this great ruler, Lycurgus, was crazy, or he was one of those persons whose brains cease to develop after they have left their teens. He certainly secures the first prize as a "whim" strategist. In spite of his insane eccentricities, he was allowed the full exercise of his freedom. Had he flourished in 1915 A.D. instead of 820 "B.C." (which does not mean British Columbia), the asylum for the insane at New Westminster would not have been strong enough to retain him. Lycurgus did one redeeming thing—he founded a Senate; "which, sharing,"—we are following Plutarch—"as Plato says, in the power of the kings, too imperious and unrestrained before, and having equal authority with them, was the means of keeping them within bounds of moderation, and highly contributed to the preservation of the State. The establishment of a Senate, an intermediate body, like ballast, kept it in just equilibrium, and put it in a safe posture: the twenty-eight senators adhering to the kings whenever they saw the people too encroaching, and on the other hand, supporting the people, when the kings attempted to make themselves absolute."
Now, what in the world possessed this despotic imbecile to form a senate? His action in this can only be accounted for in the light that it was one of those unpremeditated whims of a narrow-minded faddist. One naturally wonders what the newly created senators were doing while the king was imposing his insane laws. This body was formed for the "preservation of the state." The wonder is that there was any state left, for the king paralyzed commerce, smothered ambition, choked art to death, and placed a ban on modesty. Further than having been "formed," the "Senate" never again appears on the pages of the "Lycurgus" book.
Plutarch, who lived in Greece about the year 100 A.D., nine hundred years after the subject of his biography, relates the forming and imposing of those laws with the utmost faith, and the most implicit innocence; which goes to prove that the Grecian idea of government, with all its knowledge, had not advanced much, at least up to the time of Plutarch.
And now for the laws.
"A second and bolder political enterprise of Lycurgus was a new division of the lands. For he found a prodigious inequality; the city overcharged with many indigent persons, who had no land; and the wealth centred in the hands of the few. Determined, therefore, to root out the evils of insolence, envy, avarice, and luxury, and those distempers of a state still more inveterate than fatal—I mean poverty and riches—he persuaded them to cancel all former divisions of land and to make new ones, in such a manner as they might be perfectly equal in their possessions and way of living.
His proposal was put in practice.
"After this he attempted to divide also the movables, in order to take away all appearance of inequality; but he soon perceived that they could not bear to have their goods taken directly from them, and therefore took another method, counterworking their avarice by a stratagem."
Now, this seems to be the only law to which they made objection; and this proves that the love of personal "icties" has very deep roots. Perhaps the influence of the "senate" sustained them in this, for qualifications for a senator, even in those days, must have called for men of some means, and they, when the shoe began to pinch their own feet, would not care to divide up their sugar and flour with the rank and file. It does not appear, however, that they had any say in the matter, and, beyond the statement that they were formed for a purpose, they seem to have taken no part in the affairs of state; if they had, Lycurgus and his laws would never have been made part of history.
"First he stopped the currency of the gold and silver coin"—thus he paralyzed industry—"and ordered that they should make use of iron money only; then to a great quantity and weight of this he assigned but a small value.... In the next place he excluded unprofitable and superfluous arts.... Their iron coin would not pass in the rest of Greece, but was ridiculed and despised, so that the Spartans had no means of purchasing any foreign or curious wares, nor did any merchant ship unlade in their harbor." Even Plutarch sees nothing suicidal in all this voluntary isolating of themselves from the main arteries of commerce.
"Desirous to complete the conquest of luxury and exterminate the love of riches, he introduced a third institution, which was wisely enough and ingeniously contrived. This was the use of public tables, where all were to eat in common of the same meat, and such kinds of it as were appointed by law. At the same time they were forbidden to eat at home, or on expensive couches and tables.... Another ordinance levelled against magnificence and expense, directed that the ceilings of houses should be wrought with no tool but the axe, and the doors with nothing but the saw. Indeed, no man could be so absurd as to bring into a dwelling so homely and simple, bedsteads with silver feet, purple coverlets, or golden cups." Thus he smothered art and personal ambition, two of the most requisite essentials to a people on their onward and upward trend to civilization and success. "A third ordinance of Lycurgus was, that they should not often make war against the same enemy, lest, by being frequently put upon defending themselves, they too should become able warriors in their turn."
And thus he made them defenceless against their enemies.
"For the same reason he would not permit all that desired to go abroad and see other countries, lest they should contract foreign manners, gain traces of a life of little discipline, and of a different form of government. He forbade strangers, too, to resort to Sparta who could not assign a good reason for their coming!"
Improvement with Lycurgus means retrogression with us. He wished, perhaps ignorantly, to arrest the progress of civilization and substitute a slovenly ideal of his own. His purpose was to cancel the civilization which the race had gained during thousands of years of effort, and bring it back to a semi-savagery. But the world was too big for him. It had things in view which were too great for his small, hampered mind to have any suspicion of. No doubt he was sincere in his little, infinitesimal way; but it is a blessing for the world that his influence was confined to a very small corner of the then civilized world, and that others of broader views succeeded him to manage the affairs of states and nations. With all deference to old Plutarch, the biographer of Lycurgus, we wish to say that however grand the laws of this man may have been as ideals, they were utter failures when brought into practice.
Some people say the world is getting no better, but if we take a dip into history and consider the conditions which prevailed there from the earliest times up to only a few hundred years ago, we will find a race of human beings which in no wise resemble the present output except in form and stature. And our own forefathers—the people of the British Isles, the Anglo-Saxons who are to-day leading in the social world—were not one iota better throughout those pages than many of the smallest and most unpretentious of obscure tribes living here and there in ignorant, local isolation. One of the strongest points in our argument is the fact that history, as we have it, is composed of the clang of battles and the private lives of kings and despots. The ordinary, everyday life of the peasant people—the working classes—the backbone of the nation, so to speak—was beneath the consideration of the historian throughout all times. The only virtue, in his estimation, was a strong arm—a large army to murder and destroy property. And the life of the historian must needs reflect that of the people. There is no doubt that in a great majority they were of a cruel, murderous nature. We get rare glimpses, however (at intervals of sometimes hundreds of years), of the doings, manners, and customs, likes and dislikes of the common people, that we can rely upon as authentic; the rest is poetry and legend, and, although typical, are relations of incidents that did not really occur.
There is no doubt that, although it has been withheld, there was a great deal of virtue, which blushed and bloomed unseen, amid all this blood and war.
As though by accident the historian who immortalized Joan of Arc has let slip a few words in connection with this heroine's early life that are more valuable to us than page upon page of some of our so-called history. "Jeanne d'Arc was the child of a laborer of Domremy, a little village on the borders of Lorraine and Champagne. Just without the cottage where she was born began the great woods of the Vosges, where the children of Domremy drank in poetry and legend from fairy ring and haunted well, hung their flower garlands on the sacred trees and sang songs to the good people who might not drink of the fountain because of their sins. Jeanne loved the forest; its birds and beasts came lovingly to her at her childish call. But at home men saw nothing in her but 'a good girl,' simple and pleasant in her way, spinning and sewing by her mother's side while the other girls went to the fields—tender to the poor and sick."
This is a little domestic scene of the year A.D. 1425, and how homelike and real and familiar it all is. What a sweet peace spot, among all the bloodshed and horror that was going on throughout France at that time.
Joan of Arc is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable characters in all history. She was born at Domremy, France, in 1412, and was executed in 1431. Before she had reached twenty this girl had practically freed France from the English, or at least put the country upon such a footing that a few years accomplished its freedom.
The superstitions of the times are no doubt responsible to a great extent for the success which was attained by this Maid of Orleans. "The English believed in her supernatural mission as firmly as the French did, but they thought her a sorceress who had come to overthrow them by her enchantments," and so on. The fact remains that this innocent peasant girl of eighteen years of age freed France from the English and accomplished things which no man of France at that time was able to do. Either the French generalship of the times was very incompetent or the army was very much demoralized—at all events they had been awaiting the advent of a leader who was both determined and fearless, for skill does not seem to have been a requisite—and this appeared in the person of Joan of Arc.
It is difficult to believe that an entirely inexperienced person of this kind could take charge of an army of ten thousand men and lead them to victory when the best trained generals of the time could do nothing and suffered defeat at every turn.
With the coronation of the King the Maid felt that her errand was over. "Oh, gentle king, the pleasure of God is done," she cried, as she flung herself at the feet of Charles, and asked leave to go home. "Would it were His good will," she pleaded with the archbishop, as he forced her to remain, "that I might go and keep sheep once more with my sisters and my brothers; they would be glad to see me again."
But the policy of the French court detained her. France was depending on one of its peasant girls for its very national existence. The humiliation of the thing should make all good Frenchmen blush with shame. So she fought on with the conviction that she was superfluous in the army, and a slave to the French court. It does not appear that she was even placed upon the payroll, or that she received reward of any kind for her services—and there were no "Victoria crosses" in those days. She fought on without pay; rendered all her services for nothing—perhaps for the love of the thing. During the defence of Compiegne in May, 1430, she fell into the hands of one Vendome, who sold her to the Duke of Burgundy. Burgundy sold her to the English—her remuneration for her self-sacrificing, voluntarily-given services.
And now comes the tragic part of a most pathetic story enacted out at a time when the name civilization, applied to the French and English, is a mockery. "In December she was carried to Rouen, the headquarters of the English, heavily fettered, and flung into a gloomy prison, and at length, arraigned before the spiritual tribunal of the Bishop of Beauvais, a wretched creature of the English, as a sorceress and a heretic, while the dastard she had crowned king left her to die." She was not even granted a legal, judicial trial.
Some say that her sentence was at one time commuted to perpetual imprisonment, which proves that there was a glimmer of humanity hid away in some corner of the world, knocking hysterically in its imprisonment for admission. "But the English found a pretext to treat her as a criminal and condemned her to be burned." And at this juncture it may be well to say that we have good reason to be proud of ourselves to-day, and ashamed of our ancestors.
"She was brought to the stake on May 30th, 1431. The woman's tears dried upon her cheeks, and she faced her doom with the triumphant courage of the martyr." During her last awful moments, as she left this world with the torture of the flames slowly consuming her body, what were the last impressions of this girl of nineteen who left home and happiness to free a people who allowed her to be thus tormented to death? "A court was constituted by Pope Calixtus III., in 1455, which declared her innocent and pronounced her trial unjust. And through the whole civilized world her memory is fittingly commemorated in statuary and literature." But this is poor consolation and does not undo the mischief. So far as Joan of Arc is concerned, she is still burning, scorching, suffering at that stake, and the world and the English are her torturers, still tormenting her, while the man she made king stands looking on indifferently, heartlessly. All the honor and statuary that ever had creation on this green earth cannot atone for this crime of "civilization" on the innocent. But it is only one blot of many with which the world moves on, branded indelibly to its unknown end; and beneath a pleasant exterior we know, but try to hide, those blots, with apologies for our ancestors. And yet some say the world is getting no better. Out of this chaos of blood, crime and heathendom we sprang with all our pride and greatness, and with such a record it behooves us to be rather humble than high-minded, for crime and disgrace are lying at our very door-step.
"The story of Joan has been a rich motive in the world of art, and painter and sculptor have spent their genius on the theme without as yet adequately realizing its simple grandeur."