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SKOOKUM CHUCK
FABLES

BITS OF HISTORY,
THROUGH THE MICROSCOPE

(Some of which appeared in the Ashcroft Journal)

BY

SKOOKUM CHUCK

Author of "Songs of a Sick Tum Tum,"
and some others





Copyright, Canada, 1915, by R.D. Cumming





Preface


It is more difficult to sell a good book by a new author than it is to
sell a poor one by a popular author, because the good book by the new
author must make its way against great odds. It must assert itself
personally, and succeed by its own efforts. The book by the popular
author flies without wings, as it were. The one by the well-known author
has a valuable asset in its creator; the one by the new author has no
asset but its own merits.

I am not contending by the above that this is a good book; far from it.
Some books, however, having very little literary recommendation, may be
interesting in other ways.

There are several things instrumental in making for the success of a
book: first, the fame of the author; second, the originality of the
theme or style; third, the extent of the advertising scheme, and fourth,
the proximity of the subject matter to the heart and home of the reader;
and this last is the reason for the "Skookum Chuck Fables."

If the following stories are not literature, they are spiced with
familiar local sounds and sights, and they come very close to every
family fireside in British Columbia. For this reason I hope to see a
copy in every home in the province.

                                                          THE AUTHOR.






Contents


SKOOKUM CHUCK FABLES:                            PAGE

  OF THE ROLLING STONE                              9

  OF CULTUS JOHNNY                                 17

  OF THE BOOBY MAN                                 24

  OF HARD TIMES HANCE                              35

  OF THE TOO SURE MAN                              55

  OF THE UNLOVED MAN                               60

  OF THE CHIEF WHO WAS BIGGER THAN HE LOOKED       66

  OF SIMPLE SIMON UP TO DATE                       72

  OF THE HIGH CLASS ESKIMO                         79

  OF THE SWEET YOUNG THINGS                        89

  OF THE TWO LADIES IN CONTRAST                    97

  OF THE RUSE THAT FAILED                         100

  OF THE REAL SANTA CLAUS                         107

  OF THE RETREAT FROM MOSCOW                      113

  OF SICAMOUS                                     118

  OF THE UBIQUITOUS CAT                           122


BITS OF HISTORY:

  OF THE FOOLHARDY EXPEDITION                     127

  OF THE LAWS OF LYCURGUS                         133

  OF JOAN OF ARC                                  138

  OF VOICES LONG DEAD                             144

  OF THE WHITE WOMAN WHO BECAME AN INDIAN SQUAW   151


THROUGH THE MICROSCOPE                            157




Of the Rolling Stone


Once upon a time in a small village in Bruce County, Province of
Ontario, Dominion of Canada, there lived a man who was destined to
establish a precedent. He was to prove to the world that a rolling stone
is capable at times of gathering as much moss as a stationary one, and
how it is possible for the rock with St. Vitus dance to become more
coated than the one that is confined to perpetual isolation. Like most
iconoclasts he was of humble birth, and had no foundation upon which to
rest the cornerstone of his castle, which was becoming too heavy for his
brain to support much longer.

His strong suit was his itinerate susceptibility; but his main anchorage
was his better five-fifths. One of his most monotonous arguments was to
the effect that the strenuousness of life could only be equalled by the
monotony of it, and that it was a pity we had to do so much in this
world to get so little out of it.

"Why should a man be anchored to one spot of the geographical
distribution like a barnacle to a ship during the whole of his mortal
belligerency?" he one day asked his wife. "We hear nothing, see nothing,
become nothing, and our system becomes fossilized, antediluvian. Why not
see everything, know everything? Life is hardly worth while, but since
we are here we may as well feed from the choicest fruits, and try for
the first prizes."

Now, his wife was one of those happy, contented, sweet,
make-the-best-of-it-cheerily persons who never complained even under the
most trying circumstances. It is much to the detriment of society that
the variety is not more numerous, but we are not here to criticise the
laws that govern the human nature of the ladies. This lady was as far
remote from her husband in temperament as Venus is from Neptune. He was
darkness, she was daylight; and the patience with which she tolerated
him in his dark moods was beautiful though tragic. It was plain that she
loved him, for what else in a woman could overlook such darkness in a
man?

"You see," he would say, "it is like this. Here I am slaving away for
about seventy-five dollars per month, year in and year out. All I get is
my food and clothing--and yours, of course, which is as much necessary,
but is more or less of a white man's burden. No sooner do I get a dollar
in my hand than it has to be passed along to the butcher, baker, grocer,
dressmaker, milliner. Are our efforts worth while when we have no
immediate prospects of improvement? And then the monotony of the game:
eat, sleep, work; eat, sleep, work. And the environs are as monotonous
as the occupations. I think man was made for something more, although a
very small percentage