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.