Theodore Seixas Solomons

“ Near a summer resort, in the big timber of the Cascades, he found Bruce Waring burying his mother and shipping his young sister to an aunt, to go to school. Beyond a meager education, all the fellow possessed of tangible assets was a worthless homestead and a strong back. But he had ambition and a slow, steady, implacable sort of purpose to be something, if he could be it in his own way—which was a way that Frederick Ticely was one day to learn was not his way, till life, aided by Bruce Waring, ground him into something like the shape of that way. ”

“ A big fire, plus general stagnation in the West, had held the energies of that city in leash, for some years, when the great gold strike in the Yukon flashed upon the world. Men who, a few years later, would never have dreamed of a raw life in the outlands, disgusted with the torpor of the times, converted their assets into flour and bacon and took, therefore, a bill of lading on any crazy craft that could be patched up for a run up the Inside Passage.
Ticely, then a young and unmarried hardware salesman, was one of the argonauts. ”

“ Every week since midsummer, he had come in to Kusko City from the distant, barren, swale where he was prospecting, for a pack of grub for himself and his Indian helper. Last night, though tired as usual, he could not sleep. ”