few people ever marry the one they do really love, that some are never sought after by one of the opposite sex during their whole life, only in a business-like way; that modern society was too busy to entertain such a silly superstition as love—­that Cupid was a dead issue.  He had been waiting until he fell in love or till someone fell in love with him, and thus opportunity had been knocking at his door all those years in vain.  When he had joined the iconoclast society, and had shattered this pet idol of his, he began to look around for a wife in the same manner as he would for a car of Ashcroft potatoes—­and he soon “landed” one branded with the “big A.”  And the amusing part of it is they lived happily—­all of which goes to prove our contention that those who love before marriage are not always the happier after their nuptials; and sometimes it is a mere matter of making the best of a bad bargain, and you will be perfectly happy though married, even if your stock in trade of the love commodity is very much impoverished.

Of the Chief who was Bigger than He Looked

Once upon a time in the Thompson valley there lived a mighty warrior kookpi (chief) called Netaskit.  He was chief of all the Shuswaps.  His name had become a household word the entire length and breadth of the Pacific coast, and the tribes along the Fraser river and the Pemberton Meadows had knowledge, through many sad experiences, of his bravery and daring.  Among his own people his word was law, and to show the white feather in the face of an enemy meant certain court martial and death at his hands.  Although his subjects feared him, they respected him beyond belief; and to serve him was considered a great honor.  It is not our purpose to convey the impression that this kookpi was cruel, treacherous, cold-blooded and selfish only, and a man who had no other ambition than war and the spoils of war.  No, if he was a fiend on the battlefield, he was a lamb at home.  He had a soft side that battled with the concrete in him at times.  His weakness was his insane love for woman, and in his own kikwilly house (home) he was as timid as the smumtum (rabbit).  His respect for Cupid had as much avoirdupois as his respect for Mars.  His love for his wife was an insane love—­it far outdid his love for his chiefdom.  And he had a wife who was worthy of him and as faithful to him as he was to her—­she adored the very skins he wore across his shoulders.  Being happily united himself, and having such a respect for Cupid and the fair sex, he passed a law that no man or woman should take unto themselves a partner for life until thoroughly satisfied and convinced that the love flames between them would be of everlasting duration, and were genuine.

“Woman,” he said, “was made to be loved, and not enslaved.  My consideration for the welfare of our women exceeds that for our men, because man is so constituted as to be more able to take care of himself.”  So much was this old prehistoric chief away ahead of his dark, heathen times.  But this masculine weakness of his was nearly his undoing with his warriors, as we shall see.