carpet. "It was a special
service; I was in the middle of the anthem, sir, and didn't like to
leave the House of God." "Couldn't you show some respect?" roared the
local officer. Man was near in Athabasca Landing and God far away. Down
in the big office at Winnipeg is a Doomsday Book where the life-record
of every servant of The Company is kept, for no man who has ever served
The Company is lost sight of. When there is a good fur-winter, every
employe of The Company is handed an envelope which contains a
bonus-cheque,--ten per cent of his yearly salary.

[Illustration: C.C. Chipman, Commissioner of the H.B. Co.]

The Commissioner of the Hudson's Bay Company and the head of one of
Canada's big department stores were dining together at a Toronto Club.
"After six o'clock I don't want to see or hear of an employe--he doesn't
exist for me until eight o'clock next morning," said the head of the
department store. "Well, I'm more curious than you," smiled the
Commissioner of the H.B. Co., "I want to be reasonably assured of what
every man-Jack of my people is doing all the time. I want to know what
he reads, and if he treats his wife well, and how his last baby is
getting along--you see, he's a working-partner of mine."

There came out of Northern British Columbia last year the Indian wife
and half-breed daughters of an H.B. Co. Factor. They were bound for
Montreal and it was their first trip "outside." The Commissioner at
Winnipeg contradicts the old saw, and surely has "a soul above a
beaver-skin"; like Mulvaney, too, he "has bowels." Quickly went forward
a letter to a tactful woman in the border-town through which the
visiting ladies must pass--"Meet them, and see that they get the proper
things to wear in society circles in Montreal. I don't want them to feel
ill at ease when they get there." Stories like these give us glimpses of
the kind of paternalism exercised by the Ancient Company, the one trust
that has never ground the faces of the poor, and in whose people to-day
appears the "constant service of the Old World."

The big books of The Company a year or two ago in unmistakable
round-hand declared that one Running Rabbit, lawful widow of Blueskin,
was entitled to draw from the coffers clear-side bacon and a modicum of
flour. But one quarterly paysheet, returned to Winnipeg from Fort
Churchill, showed that Running Rabbit in addition to her food allowance
had been handed out forty cents' worth of cotton. Stern enquiry