... Pippa, the little maid who sang for the world's hurt, came out of the woods, as likewise the Nazarene who died for it.
Upland growths are the pines as befitteth the gods of the arboreal world. They are northern trees, "the chief things of the ancient mountains, the precious things of the lasting hills." Their history is writ far back in the black strata of the carboniferous age, and that they will be the last trees to disappear off the earth, who can gainsay? As for me I shall not be persuaded otherwise though a man rise from the dead to tell me.
And now we have come to Jasper, where we have two hours to rest off and talk to the men of a construction camp who have struck work for the day in order to see the train come in. Of course, it does not take all their day for this, but there were the preliminary toilet preparations to make and the walk in and out. Such newly shaven chins; such freshly brushed clothes; such irreproachable boots! Who could have expected it!
Like the ascetics who of old-time went into the wilderness and found themselves dreaming of scarlet lips and white arms, so these fine fellows are ever fancying a comely woman gliding across their trail; a distressed damsel who needs to be fed and carried for long, long distances and sheltered in a low-built house of logs that is well-warmed and well-provisioned, with no other bachelor nearer than a hundred miles.
The bachelors will doubtless deny this sweet dalliance with a vehement fervour, but it has the matter of fact virtue of being true, and is no whimsey of mine. A year ago it was, in a prize competition, I was called upon to read over a hundred short stories, or more properly speaking, human nature studies. An amazingly large proportion of these came from northern camps, and in nearly every case the afore-mentioned situation was the theme. The variation from this concerned a young Englishman of education who is notified that he has inherited wealth at home but prefers to stay with his woodland wife—a beautiful Indian girl—rather than return to the granitic conventions of the old world, and to the busy idleness that goes by the name of society.
And why deny that their hearts are a-brim with dreams, for these are beautiful reveries and worthy the most chivalrous of knights. Since it was given me to look into the recesses of their minds I have liked them better than ever and am many times heartily glad. Any woman who is a gentleman would.
And here Opportunity has spilled a whole trainload of women before them—old and young, wise and otherwise. It would be tempting the patience of Providence if they didn't meet the train, these bachelors who would gladly lose a rib.
"Such a waste of excellent material," says a poetess who looks over the bachelors with an appraising eye. "How big they are! Someway or other, they make me think of steel girders."
"Ragingly handsome, I call them," says a petite miss who edits a page on a big eastern daily. "Do you think it possible, Lady Jane, that they—could—have—holes—in—their—socks?"
"Not only possible, My Dear, but highly probable," I reply.