You want to know such matters as these to be quite sure that you have got the real snips.” The Real Estate man has certainly nothing to learn in the art of pushing his wares and prevailing on customers anxious to get rich quick. Every self-respecting Real Estate man has his automobile in which “to run” inquirers “round.” It is a very good automobile, has probably cost him $2,000 or $3,000. It runs as smoothly as an automobile can on such roads as they have in and around the new growing cities and the new suburbs of the older cities. As you are being run to the estate where the most attractive snips are to be shown you the Real Estate man tells you marvellous stories of profits made out of lots purchased on an estate just this side of the one you are going to. “Only three years ago, sir, that estate was laid out. Lots were sold at $13 a foot, and to-day the men who have got them would not take $50 a foot for them. There is no reason whatever why our estate should not do as well and even better, for the C.P.R. is putting down a station right in the middle of it, and already the municipality has determined to run its street car track right through the estate to such and such a bit of lake-side or river or wood that is the favourite summer outing place for the citizens.” You are so interested and the car runs so smoothly that you seem to be on the estate in no time. You see the lots. It is impressed upon you that if you miss this opportunity you will regret it all your life, and unless you are amongst the “once bitten twice shy” you are almost persuaded. The Real Estate man completes the persuasion by telling you “We are only seven minutes here from the Town Hall.” You think seven minutes is almost next door to the Town Hall. You decide to buy and are driven back to the Real Estate man’s office with mind full of happy anticipation of the profit you will make when selling time comes next spring. It is only afterwards, when you meet a citizen of the town, a commercial traveller or some other frequent visitor who knows the distances, that you learn the Real Estate man was quite right when he told you the estate was only seven minutes from the Town Hall, but he forgot to tell you that it was also seven miles which the automobile had covered in the seven minutes. During my time in Canada I was offered a good score of “snips,” and was tempted to regret that I was not moneyed man enough to take advantage of them. Perhaps, if I had had the money and had secured possession of the lots, I should by now have reaped 50 per cent. on the investments—perhaps I should have had the lots still on my hands and been cudgelling my brains to find the means of keeping up the payment of the instalments.