the
North. "Naked and I clothe them; thirsty and I give them----"

"No, it doesn't," says our chauffeur. "You can't get anything to drink
beyond the Landing. The North is strictly a prohibition country."

"Dear me!" whines a person in the back seat, "and we are dreadfully out
of tea."

At five o'clock, we stop at Eggie's for supper. Eggie broke land here
fourteen years ago, and ever since has kept a stopping place for
travellers. There is no need of his transporting eggs, butter, meat,
grain, and vegetables to market, for the market comes to him. He makes
hay when the sun shines, and also in the dark. As a result, he has
accumulated sixty thousand dollars in money and gear. So far as I
know, there is no eating-house with a record in any way comparable.

Eggie Jr. is a telegraph operator. His instrument is back of the cook
stove over against a window. When he is away from home his young
sister works the code. She picked it up while tending the stove. You
can never tell what is up the sleeve of these pioneering women. I told
her she was the sixth wise virgin. "The other five?" she queried with
a glint of laughter in her eyes. There are other folk having supper at
Eggie's. The man with the long slouchy stride is a land surveyor.
They grow on every bush here.

That crisp-mannered youth with the honey-coloured hair is going down
north to cap a gas well. In what better task can a youth engage than
to conserve power, heat, and light for humanity? Dear young man!

Their driver quotes Cicero, and swears in Cree. He is a living example
of what whisky can do for a Bachelor of Arts who entirely devotes
himself to it.

By six o'clock we are again on the road, and passing through a rolling
park-like country dotted with clumps of cottonwood, birch, poplar, and
spruce. Sometimes, we pass lush meadow upon which graze full-fleshed
cattle and comfortably rotund sheep. On one farm, a man is burning
dead brushwood. There is no keener pleasure than, here and there, to
thrust a core of fire into long grass or brushwood, and to watch the
red tongues of flame as they greedily lap it up. As yet, no farmer has
written about it, but this is only because farmers are afraid of
literary critics. It is a pity the workers are so frequently
inarticulate, thus leaving their joys and sorrows to be imperfectly
sensed by onlookers. But, Hear, Oh Men! and rejoice with me for at
this game I am not a mere onlooker, having once