HIS WORDS OF WISDOM.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Issue 18, 24 September 1898, Page 1

HIS WORDS OF WISDOM.

"Well, now, Lemuel," begin the JKohack Philosopher, addressing his callow nephew, who was afflicted with an acute attack of gold fever, " I am not going to iorbid .your starting, but I'll just give .you a few of cry-ideas on the subject and make you a proposition, and see if we can't strike a compromise. ; " I have been reading the newspapers a good deal of late, and it strikes me, looking at the matter from an unbiassed standpoint, that this Klondike business is being- »lightly overdone, to say the least about it. Nothing personal is meant, Lemuel, but it does seem to me that, in all of the good many years during which I have been sitting up and taking notice of events »s they, passed in review before me on their way adown th« corridor of time, as it were, I have never before seen the truth of the old saying that fools rush, in where angels fear to tread so strongly exemplified as at present. "The idea seems to prevail that in Klondike, if a man wants gold, all he has to do- is to go out and pick it up ; but don't lose sight of the fact, Lemuel, that picks are quoted at twenty-five dollars apiece there- I s'pose it is true that a certain young couple went to Klondike on their wedding tour, but I believe, as a rule, the trip doesn't resemble a honeymoon journey to any noticeable extent. It may be an excursion, but it is emphatically no picnic. Neither is life there one long-continued prayer meeting, nor anything like sucking cider through a straw. " During the winter the mercury falls to sixty and seventy degrees below zero, and sticks there for about nine months of ihe year, so that almost everything, h> eluding " the milk of human kindness, freezes as solid as the Bock of-What's-its-

name. The stories we hear are chiefly those of the few successful men who have found fortunes, and we forget the ninety-■and-nine unlucky wights who are toilingand suffering there for much less money than they could make here at home seeking gold between the plough-handles. " Now, I'll tell you what I'll do, Lemuel. Wait till winter has fairty set 'in, and .give me about as much money as your Klondike outfit would cost you. Then you may rig up a wigwam of boughs and horseblankets on the north side of the coldest hill in the pasture — it won't be half as cold as your Klondike mansion ; but perhaps you can make it do. You can wear under-garments made of sacking and a look of grim determination, and swing your pick among the rocks every sleetstorm that comes up, and subsist on jerked rubber-boot meat every day, and cold boiled dog for Sundays. You can get just as homesick and as wretched as you please, and I'll guarantee that nobody shall disturb you and dispel the illusion that you are away up in Klondike. «' And then when spring opens you can <some creeping home discouraged and busted, and with as many of your ears and fingers frozen oft as you choose, and I'll see that you are coddled and cured, and give you every penny of your money back. And then you can go over and fix it all up with the little red-cheeked girl who has been waiting for you for quite a spell, and settle down to a. life of comfort and contentment. It won't be Klondike, but I guess you can bear it. Think it over, Lemuel, and see if you don't decide that your uncle is just about right, after all." — Harper's Bazaar.

An Irish boy writing to his father : Dear Father, I take up my pen because I have nothing to do, and I put it down because I have nothing to lay. -Your affectionate son, P«.t