It Is A Great Thing To Be A Man

( Originally Published 1908 )

Vance of Edmonton

AT Winnipeg a man came down from Edmonton to attend my lecture. Edmonton is eight hundred miles from Winnipeg. It takes two days and a night to come, and the same to go back.

The man's name is Vance. He said he didn't want to miss the chance when I was so close.

He was an Irishman. "Doubtless," I hear the merry chorus chime, "the Irish are such a fond, foolish and impulsive people!"

Vance arrived the day before the lecture so to make sure to secure a ticket and get accommodations at the hotel.

He had no trouble in getting his ticket, and was accommodated all right at the hotel.

An hour before the lecture was set to begin, Vance was there holding down a front seat.

The church seats twelve hundred—only eight hundred were at the lecture.Many people in Winnipeg did not go.

Vance was amazed at sight of empty pews. He thought it stood for Winnipeg empty heads. I tried to tell him that Winnipeg people in point of intelligence were far above the average—that people interested in advanced thought were very few—and that if one's virtue consisted in outstripping popularity, it was quite absurd to expect to be popular.

He could not quite see it. Vance came eight hundred miles to see me, and some day I 'll go eight hundred miles to see him.

But no matter how far Vance travels, he 'll never find a man any finer than he sees when he looks into a mirror.

He is a type that is peculiar, unique, strange, but well defined—an honest, simple and direct man. Vance is six feet tall and weighs over two hundred pounds. All of his forty odd and strange years have been spent in lumber camps, rafting on rivers, on the plains, far from so-called centers of civilization. All the seamy side of life to him is familiar, yet his soul has never been seared with pitch. He is so truthful, unaffected and sincere, that he commands the earnest respect of every one he meets. It never occurs to him to lie.

The size of the man may help a little, not to mention his big, homely Irish mug. Vance has had time to read and time to think.

Not only has he read books, but he has committed them to memory. Give him the first line of any of Byron's poems, and if you don't look out, he will give you the rest. He knows his Shakespeare; has read Browning enough to dislike him; dotes on Reedy; loves Tom Moore; revels in Stevenson; takes a shy at Burton; reverences the Mosher books. He talks to you solemnly of the "Big Five "—Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, Spencer and Alfred Russel Wallace.

"Travels in Malay" by Wallace is to him a textbook. Ingersoll he regards as a trifle flippant he has lived so much within himself he does not joke. Thomas Paine he admires, as he does Hume, Buckle, Haeckel and Lecky.

When Vance talks it is in a slow, measured monotone. He weighs his words; speaks with precision, but with great courtesy and deference. He is a good listener, yet when you take his measure, you prefer to hear him. With Vance was a Scotchman, by the name of MacDonald, (of course), well turned seventy, who had spent thirty years as agent for the Hudson Bay Company in the North.

These men had met on a literary basis—they both loved Robert Louis and read Little Journeys. Each had worked out in his own mind a clear-cut scheme of philosophy, a well-defined idea of right and wrong.

The thirty years with the aborigines had not deprived MacDonald of his burr, which was as ripe and choice a specimen as you can hear in Glasgow. But he, too, had grown silent by nature, and had taken on a good deal of the Indian reserve. Between many lightings of his pipe and long pauses MacDonald told us this story, as we sat in my room after the lecture. I have too much respect for Vance's old friend to try to imitate his dialect. That is his own. But this is the story. Said the old man after a long, thoughtful pause : No, Indians are not bad people if you treat them about half right. They may be savages, but they are not as savage as white men. I never had a gun argument with an Indian. He is a child by nature, and responds to kindness. It pays to tell the truth to children, and I may be wrong, but I believe in keeping faith with Indians. This was always my policy, and Indians for hundreds of miles around were my friends. They even told me their troubles, which is an unusual thing for an Indian to do.

The last few winters have been very severe, and my Indian friends have suffered greatly. Two squaws came into the Post last spring, just when the leaves had begun to come out. One had a papoose on her back, and with her was an eightyear-old girl. I remembered the year before when she came, her husband was with her, also a grown-up boy and several children beside.

The squaws sat around all day and said nothing.I guessed they wanted to tell me something.

At night they disappeared, but in the morning they came back and told me a tale of hardship that really melted my stony heart, used as I am to suffering.

Winter had set in early and the snows fell. This woman, with the grown-up boy who had just killed his first deer and therefore was a man, had laid in quite a stock of frozen rabbits, but a wandering band of trappers coming along and needing food, she had given them all the rabbits. She was sure that her husband and boy could get more.

But the snows kept falling, and the winds blew and drifted the snow so that it was unsafe to leave the teepee. They had eaten the dogs, all save one old favorite.

The food was all gone, and after waiting two days the man and boy started forth to hunt.

Not a track could be found, for the snow was falling and drifting beside.

They did not return, and during the night the dog came back alone. The mother left the children and went forth following the dog to find her husband and boy. They had been famished for food and were overcome by the cold before they had gone a mile. The boy was dead, but the man was still alive. The woman carried and dragged him home.

Something must be done—she placed the man upon a toboggan, strapped the five-year-old child on top of him, and carrying the papoose on her back, and with the eight-year-old girl helping to pull the toboggan, she started for her nearest neighbor's, ten miles away. All day she moved steadily forward. She arrived and entered the teepee of her friend. One glance told all—her neighbor was in even greater distress than herself, for all of her household were dead and the woman was alone, just ready to let the fire go out and lie down and sleep the long sleep. The woman who had just arrived killed the dog, and this kept them alive for a few days. But the man and the five-year-old child died, and the women, the papoose and the eight-year-old girl were alone. The snow ceased to fall, and they caught rabbits and ate bark for food.

At last spring arrived, and when the ice melted they came to the Post to tell me of their loss.