Theodore Seixas Solomons

“ CHANCE VALUES OF GREEK MYTHS. “Well, well, well!” greeted Ticely, as he jerked off his clumsy trail mitten, and they clasped and shook each other's hand.
“You—you yourself!” sputtered Waring. “Gee, I'm glad!” He was still wringing the hand of his best friend on earth, when there came a sudden thought that drove the gleeful, boyish cordiality from his face. “Unless—say, Mr. Ticely——”
“It's Fred, now.” ”

“ The other way is a polite evasion, or a polite lie which, if obviously a lie, becomes a polite evasion. And this way it is etiquette to use, when, as in the case of Ticely, the questioner could not be supposed to know that the matter is a delicate one. Ticely's answer meant: “My dear fellow, I do not care to make you my confidant.”
It was one of those lies so conventional, in mining-camp life, as to leave no stigma upon the teller. Otherwise, he would not have told it, for Frederick Ticely was, in a literal sense, a particularly truthful man! ”

“ And he knew that this little-known Shungnak gold, which he had bought, was quite unlike the gold of Candle, which was a well-known dust in Nome:
The questioner exchanged significant glances with his friends, which Ticely did not appear to notice.
It is customary in a mining camp to ask men where their dust comes from. The excuse for so personal a question is the general interest which attaches to the subject of gold dust, and the often striking, and always minute, differences in the product of each creek. ”