“I would consider it a crime to leave this beauty spot,” said his wife, “and it is a sin against heaven to decry it.”

“Then I am a sinner and a criminal,” said the hereditary crank, “because I hate it and am going to leave.  I will take fifty dollars and go, and if I do not return with fifty thousand I will eat myself.  I have said all there is to say.  Those dull, uninteresting faces give me the nighthorse.  I am going to-morrow.  Of course you remain, because it is more expensive to travel double than single,” he snorted, “and I have not the plunks.”

He embarked into the big world a few days later with his wife’s warm kiss burning his lips—­faithful even in his unfaithfulness.  She was cheerful for some time, thinking that he would return, but the magnetism which attracted him to the woman whom he had picked from among the swarming millions was of very inferior voltage.

He wandered about Canada and the United States for about two years.  He had many ups and downs.  On the average he made enough to induce his soul to remain in his body in anticipation of something better.  To do him justice he remitted all odd coin to his wife in Bruce county, and he wrote saying he was perfectly happy in his new life.  He awoke one morning and found himself in the “Best” Hotel, Ashcroft, British Columbia, Dominion of Canada, and the first thing he saw was the sand-hill.  He thought Ashcroft was the most desolate looking spot he had ever seen.  It looked like a town that had been located in a hurry and had been planted by mistake on the wrong site.

He fell in with a Bruce county fellow there who was running a general store, and they became very friendly.  He secured employment from this friend, who proved to be a philanthropist.

“I have a proposition to make to you,” the friend said one day.

“What is it?” asked the iconoclast.

“Buy me out,” said the philanthropist.  “I have all the money I can carry.  When the rainy day comes I will be well in out of the drip, and my tombstone will be ‘next best’ in the cemetery.”

“But I have no bank balance,” said the aspirant eagerly.  “I have no debentures of any kind; I have not even pin money.”

“Bonds are unnecessary,” said the friend.  “Besides, when I sell you this stock and building you will have an asset in the property.  I will sell outright, take a mortgage for the balance, which you will disburse at the rate of five hundred dollars per year.  You can do it and make money at the same time.  You will kill two birds with half a stone.  Why, in twenty years’ time Rockefeller will be asking you to endorse his notes.”

The sale was made and the hero jumped into a store on Railway Avenue without a seed or cell, and in a short time the moss began to grow so thick upon him that he had all the sharks in B.C. asking him for a coating.  And then he wrote for his wife, whom he missed for the first time.  The letter ran thus: