THE POOR RICH 3 



i native against the strong contrast of frontier 

 manhood ; somewhat unworthy even trivial. 

 Each holding dearly to business, to the guiling 

 dress of the shop counter, and the much frayed 

 ribbons of a gaudy, doubtful society. 



These are the interlopers, the people from the 

 South ; the harbingers of civilisation, who have 

 come, with their dollars and their trash, to dis- 

 turb the beauty and peace of virgin nature. 

 And those are the people who speak, with pride, 

 of the Town-site ; who proclaim the magnificence 

 of a meagre street or two, of meretricious frame- 

 built houses in narrow land plots ; and who 

 point to the importance of a lumber mill and a 

 gaunt, top-heavy Boarding House as if, on that 

 guarantee, the future of Big River were assured, 

 and their fortunes. 



They forget too easily, in their vanity, that it 

 is not to those things that they owe their pros- 

 perity, but to the wonderful richness of the nature 

 around them. And theirs is a circumstance that 

 always fills me with a certain amount of sadness. 

 They may be rich in a worldly way, but how 

 poor they are of intellectual enthusiasm at their 

 feet lies the broad, beautiful world, yet must 

 they trample it under with eyes only for the god 

 of Gold, and Power, and Pleasure. ... Ah ! well 

 it is their life ; small perhaps, perhaps somewhat 

 narrow, but they know no other. They are 

 part of the great scheme of things ; impelled by 

 heritage and circumstance to follow a well- 

 trodden channel, and counselled by a strong 

 commercial instinct to launch out into activity 

 and endeavour, though, in life's short pilgrimage, 



