nd
talks with an immense volubility concerning the species, genera, and
habits of these flies till one might take him for a professor of
entomology.

The long winter nights in this province enable the denizens of it to
become well posted in any subject which they may elect to pursue. This
was how the late Bishop Bompas, who lived here for over half a century,
became the first authority in the world on Syriac, so that the
_savants_ of Europe were wont to refer their mooted points to this
lonely old prelate for decision, waiting a year, or often longer, for
the answer which was carried by Indians for hundreds of miles down the
out trail to Edmonton. My new friend declares that, like Montaigne,
the bulldog fly has only one virtue and that this one got in by stealth.

"Yes?" say I, with a rising reflection which delicately hints at an
answer.

He does not seem to hear me, this cold-chilled, care-hardened
northerner, and goes on stuffing his pipe with exit-plug and searching
through pocket after pocket for a match as if my remark were of no
concernment. He is trying to pretend he has known me for a long time,
and that I was the one who took the initiative in this
acquaintanceship. This is why I became dumb, and why he repeats his
statement. Still I am wordless, whereupon he vouchsafes, with an
exasperating drawl, that the fly's one virtue lies in the fact that it
prefers picturesque food which is very eatable.

Our parliament should legislate against the cunning arts of these
designing northerners, against which no town-bred woman may hope to set
up an adequate defence, however perfect may be her poise, or fertile
and calculating her brain.

This person tells me that all a man needs to succeed in the North-West
Provinces is to keep his head hard and his pores open--a recipe, no
doubt, equally applicable in the more southerly regions, and one which
I am supposed to deduct he, himself, has proven with very happy success.

He has been south getting people to come to the Peace River Country,
the new and unpossessed empire where there are twenty-two hours of
daylight and which will, one day, be belted by a string of cities and
gridironed by a score of railways. It is good to listen to this fellow
talk, for, in his calculations lineal or intellectual, he can measure
nothing less than a mile. He is typical of the great and splendid body
of Canadian and English pioneers who have absolutely no truck with
pessimism. Th