as
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 hav