(Some of which appeared in the Ashcroft Journal)

   Author of "Songs of a Sick Tum Tum," and some others

   Copyright, Canada, 1915,

   by R.D. Cumming

   It is more difficult to sell a good book by a new author than it is to sell a poor one by a popular author, because the good book by the new author must make its way against great odds. It must assert itself personally, and succeed by its own efforts. The book by the popular author flies without wings, as it were. The one by the well-known author has a valuable asset in its creator; the one by the new author has no asset but its own merits.

   I am not contending by the above that this is a good book; far from it. Some books, however, having very little literary recommendation, may be interesting in other ways.

   There are several things instrumental in making for the success of a book: first, the fame of the author; second, the originality of the theme or style; third, the extent of the advertising scheme, and fourth, the proximity of the subject matter to the heart and home of the reader; and this last is the reason for the "Skookum Chuck Fables."

   If the following stories are not literature, they are spiced with familiar local sounds and sights, and they come very close to every family fireside in British Columbia. For this reason I hope to see a copy in every home in the province.

    The Author

   .

   Once upon a time in a small village in Bruce County, Province of Ontario, Dominion of Canada, there lived a man who was destined to establish a precedent. He was to prove to the world that a rolling stone is capable at times of gathering as much moss as a stationary one, and how it is possible for the rock with St. Vitus dance to become more coated than the one that is confined to perpetual isolation. Like most iconoclasts he was of humble birth, and had no foundation upon which to rest the cornerstone of his castle, which was becoming too heavy for his brain to support much longer.

   His strong suit was his itinerate susceptibility; but his main anchorage was his better five-fifths. One of his most monotonous arguments was to the effect that the strenuousness of life could only be equalled by the monotony of it, and that it was a pity we had to do so much in this 

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