I believe The World for Sale shows as plainly as anything can show the
vexed and conglomerate life of a Western town. It shows how racial
characteristics may clash, disturb, and destroy, and yet how wisdom,
tact, and lucky incident may overcome almost impossible situations. The
antagonisms between Lebanon and Manitou were unwillingly and unjustly
deepened by the very man who had set out to bring them together, as one
of the ideals of his life, and as one of the factors of his success.
Ingolby, who had everything to gain by careful going, almost wrecked his
own life, and he injured the life of the two towns by impulsive acts.
The descriptions of life in the two towns are true, and the chief
characters in the book are lifted out of the life as one has seen it. Men
like Osterhaut and Jowett, Indians like Tekewani, doctors like Rockwell,
priests like Monseigneur Fabre, ministers like Mr. Tripple, and
ne'er-do-weels like Marchand may be found in many a town of the West and
North. Naturally the book must lack in something of that magnetic
picturesqueness and atmosphere which belongs to the people in the
Province of Quebec. Western and Northern life has little of the settled
charm which belongs to the old civilization of the French province.
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