Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished: A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure

One more old friend we have to mention, namely, Reggie North, who has become a colporteur, and wanders far and near over the beautiful face of Canada, scattering the seed of Life with more vigour and greater success than her sons scatter the golden grain. His periodical visits to the settlement are always hailed with delight, because North has a genial way of relating his adventures and describing his travels, which renders it necessary for him to hold forth as a public lecturer at times in the little chapel, for the benefit of the entire community. On these occasions North never fails, you may be quite sure, to advance his Master’s cause.

Besides those whom we have mentioned, there are sundry persons of both sexes who go by such names as Dick Swiller, Blobby, Robin, Lilly Snow, Robbie Dell, and Little Mouse, all of whom are grown men and women, and are said to have originally been London waifs and strays. But any one looking at them in their backwoods prosperity would pooh-pooh the idea as being utterly preposterous!

However this may be, it is quite certain that they are curiously well acquainted with the slums of London and with low life in that great city. These people sometimes mention the name of Giles Scott, and always with regret that that stalwart policeman and his not less stalwart sons are unable to see their way to emigrate, but if they did, as Bobby Frog the second asks, “what would become of London?”

“They’d make such splendid backwoodsmen,” says one.

“And the daughters would make such splendid wives for backwoodsmen,” says another.

Mr Merryboy thinks that Canada can produce splendid men of its own without importing them from England, and Mrs Merryboy holds that the same may be said in regard to the women of Canada, and old granny, who is still alive, with a face like a shrivelled-up potato, blinks with undimmed eyes, and nods her snow-white head, and beams her brightest smile in thorough approval of these sentiments.

Ah, reader! Brandon Settlement is a wonderful place, but we may not linger over it now. The shadows of our tale have lengthened out, and the sun is about to set. Before it goes quite down let us remind you that the Diamonds which you have seen dug out, cut, and polished, are only a few of the precious gems that lie hidden in the dust of the great cities of our land; that the harvest might be very great, and that the labourers at the present time are comparatively few.

The End