Before leaving for Canada a word of advice was given to me by a Member of Parliament friend who had recently returned from a tour through the Dominion. “If you meet a Real Estate man,” he said, “and he wants to talk to you, get into the next street as soon as you can.” I bore the warning in mind, but the difficulty that presented itself in Canada was that there are not enough next streets in the whole Dominion in which to take refuge from the Real Estate man. He has his offices in every street of every town and almost in every village. His windows are decorated with maps and plans showing districts of new towns and suburban districts of the older towns ripe for development. Facts and figures about the unequalled opportunities are put before you in ways more enticing than are those of a London company promoter. You are told how the population has increased within five years from 5,000 to 17,000, and it is bound to increase in a sort of geometrical progression. You are advised to “get in early,” secure “snips,” and your fortune is made. You may be a shy fly and decide to keep out of the spider’s parlour, but that does not save you. In the entrance hall of your hotel, with its great windows like those of an hotel or boarding house front at Ostend, the Real Estate man, the picture of prosperity, evidently feeling that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, is smoking his Havana. In the affable manner which the Canadian shares with the Yankee he gets into conversation with you without introduction and without encouragement. How can you resist a man so stuffed with interesting information, so genial and so pleasant? He asks you if you have been in “our city” before, what you think about the city and the Province, how long you have been in Canada, when do you propose to return to the Old Country, are you on pleasure or on business bent, and if on business, what business? Having taken such a friendly interest in you, you naturally reciprocate the interest and inquire in what line your affable friend is. “Real Estate, sir,” he says, “and if you want to be put on to a good thing you have hit on the right man, sure.” He dives into his pocket or opens his dispatch case and out comes a plan of an estate showing hundreds of lots in a chequer a yard and a half or two yards square. He tells you that you have to be careful when you deal in Real Estate, for there are mighty cute men in Canada, and before you can say “snap” they have you. He, of course, as you have gathered from his conversation, does his business on purely philanthropic principles. So pleasant a man could not deceive you. He is soon pointing out the choicest bits on his map and telling you, as a friend rather than as a seller, that if you want half-a-dozen, or a dozen, or a score of lots he can let you have the cream of the bunch at a giving-away price. “They are real snips, sir, you can take it from me. I know what I am talking about.