Ralph and his friend being well-to-do, their statements and recommendations were implicitly accepted; and, indeed, the statements in themselves were not untruthful; it was in the counter-balancing facts, which were left unstated, that those who afterwards considered themselves their dupes, found the limitation and disillusion of their hopes, which teach men in the end that Fortune is as likely to find them out while labouring at home, as to be found by them without exertion and experience, in distant places. But that was the buyers' concern--knowledge which came to them later and by degrees, Ralph and his friend had completed their share of the transaction and pocketed their commission when the sale was made; what followed had for them no interest.
They made many such sales, pocketing large commissions--the larger, indeed, the worse the property they disposed of--vast tracts in some cases, containing untold wealth in minerals and forests, where the buyers sunk fortunes in endeavouring to bring the riches within reach; and at length, having exhausted their resources, had to subside into the ranks of the ruined people around them, and wait patiently for a generation, till the march of time should bring within reach of their children the sums they had placed out of reach for themselves. There were smaller farms, too, where sturdy yeomen with their blooming children went to make rich more quickly; but somehow few appeared to thrive in those distant migrations. Their livestock was apt to die; too little rain, or too much, would destroy their crops, and their own health would fail; and in a year or two they would find their way back to Canada, with an enlarged experience but a shrunken purse; while of the children, some would be left behind in the foreign churchyard, and the rest, yellow and gaunt, bore small resemblance to the bright-eyed youngsters they had been before.
In a few years the trade in southern homesteads died out, Canadian enterprise laid down her telescope and interested herself with things nearer home. Science, ransacking her own soil, had come on hid treasure of many kinds, gold, copper, iron, phosphates, and plumbago, and showed where, instead of sending her savings abroad, she might sink them at home--her own savings and those of many a sanguine stranger. On every side Ralph saw opportunities of money-making, and he was ready to use them; but now his operations, he found, must be on another footing than before. Hitherto he had been a financier; now, his neighbours recognized him as a capitalist. The change of standing was gratifying, but it had its dangers and its drawbacks.
