The town has been built with great rapidity, but the wooden houses first thrown up are fast giving place to substantial buildings of brick and stone. All the improvements of modern civilization have been introduced; business and agriculture flourish; mining and the fisheries are engaging more and more capital, and the foundations of a great and beautiful seaport have been laid.
Thus the Canadian Pacific Railway is, in fact, a new way round the world!
[2] “Mountaineering in British Columbia.” A lecture delivered before the American Geographical Society, in Chickering Hall, January, 1886.
A CRITICAL SITUATION.
BY S. SMITH.
AS I was walking through one of the principal London streets the other day, on my way to fulfil a business engagement, my attention was attracted by one of those huge posters which plentifully besprinkle the walls of the city. In resounding tones of red, blue and bright vermilion, it called the attention of the public to the fact that the stirring sensational melodrama, of deep domestic interest, entitled “For Life or Death; or, the Grave’s Witness,” was then being performed to overflowing audiences at the Royal Lorne Theatre. Just above the printed announcement was a picture representing one gentleman apparently in the act of boring a hole in the floor with another gentleman’s head, and which I took to bear reference to the printed notification below.
My momentary curiosity satisfied, I turned to proceed on my way, when my eyes encountered those of a man standing by my side—a man whom I had not noticed before, and who might have been the very ghost of a sandwich man instead of a sandwich man in the flesh, so suddenly and quickly had he come upon me. Yet, there he unmistakably was, his tattered old frock-coat, once the pink of fashion, frayed at the edges, worn to shreds at the seams, and bulging at the elbows; the trousers darned and patched in a dozen different places, but now gone far beyond the last stage of repair; the patent-leather boots broken and down at heel, and almost soleless; the battered white hat, with black band round it, and the brim all but gone; the bulbous red nose, the trembling mouth and the bleary eyes that told their own tale. I stood for a moment staring at this sudden appearance without any particular reason, and he, in his turn, staring at me. The pause, awkward enough in all conscience, was of that character in which one of the parties feels impelled to make an observation of some kind in order to get decently away. Before I could open my lips, however, my companion anticipated me.
“Striking sort of picture, that,” he said, in a dry, husky voice, and with an apologetic kind of sniff.
“If coloring has anything to do with it, I should certainly say it was striking enough,” I replied.
“Ah!” he returned, “you seemed interested in it; but I’ll warrant you’re not half so interested in it as I am. There’s not a soul in all this city that understands that picture as I do. The worst of it is, when I once start looking I’m unable to leave it for thinking of what this play once did for me. Then the police have to move me on, and that gets me into trouble. Even if I would forget the past, I may not, for—look here!”—he pointed to the two boards slung over his shoulders as he spoke, and showed me the inscription, “For Life or Death,” in lightning zigzag letters.