y 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 w