hich is the old.--TENNYSON.

Have I told you about Edson and its prospects? No! ah, well, never
mind, I shall do so by and by, when I have talked to the citizens.

While biding my time for a seat at the lunch-counter, I will walk up
and down the station platform. Every minute men are arriving to await
the out-going train to the city. They come and come, apparently from
nowhere, till there are quite a hundred of them. Of course, they
really come from up the street (I should have said from the streets,
for there are two, or, perhaps, three streets), having recently arrived
from the grading camps somewhere up in the mountains. We are going
there to-morrow, or maybe the next day, and then we shall see the
habitat of these battling, brown-throated fellows who nose the stream
of flesh-pots and feed on hunks of brawn.

The men philander about, or sit on the platform planks, and loll lazily
against the sun-warmed wall. They count their money, smoke, and talk,
but on the whole they are quiet. Also they stare at me like they were
gargoyles and whisper the one to the other. This is not because of
rudeness--not at all! Even the white armoured Sir Galahad would find
it difficult to be knightly in the circumstances. For months they have
done naught save stake out and measure up, shovel gravel, dig ditches,
set transits, sweat and swear, for a railway, you may have heard, is
built with heavier implements than batons, pens, or golfsticks. No
woman has come near them except certain will-o'-the wisps whom the
Mounted Police did straightway turn back to town. Their lives have
been filled full of contest, hardship, and loneliness, so that every
mother's son desires, above all else, that some woman (she may be
either saint or sinner) put her hands upon him and tell him he is a
truly fine fellow and worthy to be greatly loved. This is why they
will give her all their money and not because they are of the earth
very earthy.

Do you waggle your head at me! Do you? Then I care not a straw. It
only means you do not comprehend the ways of men at our frontier posts.

Some men are here preparing to take the wagon trail to Grand Prairie in
the Peace River District. This trail, they tell me, is one hundred and
fifty miles long, and may be traversed in six days, a journey which
from other points formerly took as many weeks. Hitherto, it has seemed
the faraway edge of the world, a place for none save the adventurous
blooded and