The Genius by Theodore Dreiser

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BOOK I
------
YOUTH

THE "GENIUS"

CHAPTER I

This story has its beginnings in the town of Alexandria, Illinois,
between 1884 and 1889, at the time when the place had a population of
somewhere near ten thousand. There was about it just enough of the air
of a city to relieve it of the sense of rural life. It had one
street-car line, a theatre,--or rather, an opera house, so-called (why
no one might say, for no opera was ever performed there)--two railroads,
with their stations, and a business district, composed of four brisk
sides to a public square. In the square were the county court-house and
four newspapers. These two morning and two evening papers made the
population fairly aware of the fact that life was full of issues, local
and national, and that there were many interesting and varied things to
do. On the edge of town, several lakes and a pretty stream--perhaps
Alexandria's most pleasant feature--gave it an atmosphere not unakin to
that of a moderate-priced summer resort. Architecturally the town was
not new. It was mostly built of wood, as all American towns were at this
time, but laid out prettily in some sections, with houses that sat back
in great yards, far from the streets, with flower beds, brick walks, and
green trees as concomitants of a comfortable home life. Alexandria was a
city of young Americans. Its spirit was young. Life was all before
almost everybody. It was really good to be alive.

In one part of this city there lived a family which in its character and
composition might well have been considered typically American and
middle western. It was not by any means poor--or, at least, did not
consider itself so; it was in no sense rich. Thomas Jefferson Witla, the
father, was a sewing machine agent with the general agency in that
county of one of the best known and best selling machines made. From
each twenty, thirty-five or sixty-dollar machine which he sold, he took
a profit of thirty-five per cent. The sale of machines was not great,
but it was enough to yield him nearly two thousand dollars a year; and
on that he had managed to buy a house and lot, to furnish it
comfortably, to send his children to school, and to maintain a local
store on the public square where the latest styles of machines were
displayed. He also took old machines of other makes in exchange,
allowing ten to fifteen dollars on the purchase price of a new machine.
He also repaired machines,--and with that peculiar energy of the
American mind, he tried to do a little insurance business in addition.
His first idea was that his son, Eugene Tennyson Witla, might take
charge of this latter work, once he became old enough and the insurance
trade had developed sufficiently. He did not know what his son might
turn out to be, but it was always well to have an anchor to windward.

He was a quick, wiry, active man of no great stature, sandy-haired, with
blue eyes with noticeable eye-brows, an eagle nose, and a rather radiant
and ingratiating smile. Service as a canvassing salesman, endeavoring to
persuade recalcitrant wives and indifferent or conservative husbands to
realize that they really needed a new machine in their home, had taught
him caution, tact, savoir faire. He knew how to approach people
pleasantly. His wife thought too much so.

Certainly he was honest, hard working, and thrifty. They had been
waiting a long time for the day when they could say they owned their own
home and had a little something laid away for emergencies. That day had
come, and life was not half bad. Their house was neat,--white with green
shutters, surrounded by a yard with well kept flower beds, a smooth
lawn, and some few shapely and broad spreading trees. There was a front
porch with rockers, a swing under one tree, a hammock under another, a
buggy and several canvassing wagons in a nearby stable. Witla liked
dogs, so there were two collies. Mrs. Witla liked live things, so there
were a canary bird, a cat, some chickens, and a bird house set aloft on
a pole where a few blue-birds made their home. It was a nice little
place, and Mr. and Mrs. Witla were rather proud of it.

Miriam Witla was a good wife to her husband. A daughter of a hay and
grain dealer in Wooster, a small town near Alexandria in McLean County,
she had never been farther out into the world than Springfield and
Chicago. She had gone to Springfield as a very young girl, to see
Lincoln buried, and once with her husband she had gone to the state fair
or exposition which was held annually in those days on the lake front in
Chicago. She was well preserved, good looking, poetic under a marked
outward reserve. It was she who had insisted upon naming her only son
Eugene Tennyson, a tribute at once to a brother Eugene, and to the
celebrated romanticist of verse, because she had been so impressed with
his "Idylls of the King."

Eugene Tennyson seemed rather strong to Witla pere, as the name of a
middle-western American boy, but he loved his wife and gave her her way
in most things. He rather liked the names of Sylvia and Myrtle with
which she had christened the two girls. All three of the children were
good looking,--Sylvia, a girl of twenty-one, with black hair, dark eyes,
full blown like a rose, healthy, active, smiling. Myrtle was of a less
vigorous constitution, small, pale, shy, but intensely sweet--like the
flower she was named after, her mother said. She was inclined to be
studious and reflective, to read verse and dream. The young bloods of
the high school were all crazy to talk to Myrtle and to walk with her,
but they could find no words. And she herself did not know what to say
to them.

Eugene Witla was the apple of his family's eye, younger than either of
his two sisters by two years. He had straight smooth black hair, dark
almond-shaped eyes, a straight nose, a shapely but not aggressive chin;
his teeth were even and white, showing with a curious delicacy when he
smiled, as if he were proud of them. He was not very strong to begin
with, moody, and to a notable extent artistic. Because of a weak stomach
and a semi-anaemic condition, he did not really appear as strong as he
was. He had emotion, fire, longings, that were concealed behind a wall
of reserve. He was shy, proud, sensitive, and very uncertain of himself.

When at home he lounged about the house, reading Dickens, Thackeray,
Scott and Poe. He browsed idly through one book after another, wondering
about life. The great cities appealed to him. He thought of travel as a
wonderful thing. In school he read Taine and Gibbon between recitation
hours, wondering at the luxury and beauty of the great courts of the
world. He cared nothing for grammar, nothing for mathematics, nothing
for botany or physics, except odd bits here and there. Curious facts
would strike him--the composition of clouds, the composition of water,
the chemical elements of the earth. He liked to lie in the hammock at
home, spring, summer or fall, and look at the blue sky showing through
the trees. A soaring buzzard poised in speculative flight held his
attention fixedly. The wonder of a snowy cloud, high piled like wool,
and drifting as an island, was like a song to him. He had wit, a keen
sense of humor, a sense of pathos. Sometimes he thought he would draw;
sometimes write. He had a little talent for both, he thought, but did
practically nothing with either. He would sketch now and then, but only
fragments--a small roof-top, with smoke curling from a chimney and birds
flying; a bit of water with a willow bending over it and perhaps a boat
anchored; a mill pond with ducks afloat, and a boy or woman on the bank.
He really had no great talent for interpretation at this time, only an
intense sense of beauty. The beauty of a bird in flight, a rose in
bloom, a tree swaying in the wind--these held him. He would walk the
streets of his native town at night, admiring the brightness of the
store windows, the sense of youth and enthusiasm that went with a crowd;
the sense of love and comfort and home that spoke through the glowing
windows of houses set back among trees.

He admired girls,--was mad about them,--but only about those who were
truly beautiful. There were two or three in his school who reminded him
of poetic phrases he had come across--"beauty like a tightened bow,"
"thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face," "a dancing shape, an image
gay"--but he could not talk to them with ease. They were beautiful but
so distant. He invested them with more beauty than they had; the beauty
was in his own soul. But he did not know that. One girl whose yellow
hair lay upon her neck in great yellow braids like ripe corn, was
constantly in his thoughts. He worshiped her from afar but she never
knew. She never knew what solemn black eyes burned at her when she was
not looking. She left Alexandria, her family moving to another town, and
in time he recovered, for there is much of beauty. But the color of her
hair and the wonder of her neck stayed with him always.

There was some plan on the part of Witla to send these children to
college, but none of them showed any great desire for education. They
were perhaps wiser than books, for they were living in the realm of
imagination and feeling. Sylvia longed to be a mother, and was married
at twenty-one to Henry Burgess, the son of Benjamin C. Burgess, editor
of the _Morning Appeal_. There was a baby the first year. Myrtle was
dreaming through algebra and trigonometry, wondering whether she would
teach or get married, for the moderate prosperity of the family demanded
that she do something. Eugene mooned through his studies, learning
nothing practical. He wrote a little, but his efforts at sixteen were
puerile. He drew, but there was no one to tell him whether there was any
merit in the things he did or not. Practical matters were generally
without significance to him. But he was overawed by the fact that the
world demanded practical service--buying and selling like his father,
clerking in stores, running big business. It was a confusing maze, and
he wondered, even at this age, what was to become of him. He did not
object to the kind of work his father was doing, but it did not interest
him. For himself he knew it would be a pointless, dreary way of making a
living, and as for insurance, that was equally bad. He could hardly
bring himself to read through the long rigamarole of specifications
which each insurance paper itemized. There were times--evenings and
Saturdays--when he clerked in his father's store, but it was painful
work. His mind was not in it.

As early as his twelfth year his father had begun to see that Eugene was
not cut out for business, and by the time he was sixteen he was
convinced of it. From the trend of his reading and his percentage marks
at school, he was equally convinced that the boy was not interested in
his studies. Myrtle, who was two classes ahead of him but sometimes in
the same room, reported that he dreamed too much. He was always looking
out of the window.

Eugene's experience with girls had not been very wide. There were those
very minor things that occur in early youth--girls whom we furtively
kiss, or who furtively kiss us--the latter had been the case with
Eugene. He had no particular interest in any one girl. At fourteen he
had been picked by a little girl at a party as an affinity, for the
evening at least, and in a game of "post-office" had enjoyed the wonder
of a girl's arms around him in a dark room and a girl's lips against
his; but since then there had been no re-encounter of any kind. He had
dreamed of love, with this one experience as a basis, but always in a
shy, distant way. He was afraid of girls, and they, to tell the truth,
were afraid of him. They could not make him out.

But in the fall of his seventeenth year Eugene came into contact with
one girl who made a profound impression on him. Stella Appleton was a
notably beautiful creature. She was very fair, Eugene's own age, with
very blue eyes and a slender sylph-like body. She was gay and debonair
in an enticing way, without really realizing how dangerous she was to
the average, susceptible male heart. She liked to flirt with the boys
because it amused her, and not because she cared for anyone in
particular. There was no petty meanness about it, however, for she
thought they were all rather nice, the less clever appealing to her
almost more than the sophisticated. She may have liked Eugene originally
because of his shyness.

He saw her first at the beginning of his last school year when she came
to the city and entered the second high school class. Her father had
come from Moline, Illinois, to take a position as manager of a new
pulley manufactory which was just starting. She had quickly become
friends with his sister Myrtle, being perhaps attracted by her quiet
ways, as Myrtle was by Stella's gaiety.

One afternoon, as Myrtle and Stella were on Main Street, walking home
from the post office, they met Eugene, who was on his way to visit a boy
friend. He was really bashful; and when he saw them approaching he
wanted to escape, but there was no way. They saw him, and Stella
approached confidently enough. Myrtle was anxious to intercept him,
because she had her pretty companion with her.

"You haven't been home, have you?" she asked, stopping. This was her
chance to introduce Stella; Eugene couldn't escape. "Miss Appleton, this
is my brother Eugene."

Stella gave him a sunny encouraging smile, and her hand, which he took
gingerly. He was plainly nervous.

"I'm not very clean," he said apologetically. "I've been helping father
fix a buggy."

"Oh, we don't mind," said Myrtle. "Where are you going?"

"Over to Harry Morris's," he explained.

"What for?"

"We're going for hickory nuts."

"Oh, I wish I had some," said Stella.

"I'll bring you some," he volunteered gallantly.

She smiled again. "I wish you would."

She almost proposed that they should be taken along, but inexperience
hindered her.

Eugene was struck with all her charm at once. She seemed like one of
those unattainable creatures who had swum into his ken a little earlier
and disappeared. There was something of the girl with the corn-
hair about her, only she had been more human, less like a dream. This
girl was fine, delicate, pink, like porcelain. She was fragile and yet
virile. He caught his breath, but he was more or less afraid of her. He
did not know what she might be thinking of him.

"Well, we're going on to the house," said Myrtle.

"I'd go along if I hadn't promised Harry I'd come over."

"Oh, that's all right," replied Myrtle. "We don't mind."

He withdrew, feeling that he had made a very poor impression. Stella's
eyes had been on him in a very inquiring way. She looked after him when
he had gone.

"Isn't he nice?" she said to Myrtle frankly.

"I think so," replied Myrtle; "kind o'. He's too moody, though."

"What makes him?"

"He isn't very strong."

"I think he has a nice smile."

"I'll tell him!"

"No, please don't! You won't, will you?"

"No."

"But he _has_ a nice smile."

"I'll ask you round to the house some evening and you can meet him
again."

"I'd like to," said Stella. "It would be a lot of fun."

"Come out Saturday evening and stay all night. He's home then."

"I will," said Stella. "Won't that be fine!"

"I believe you like him!" laughed Myrtle.

"I think he's awfully nice," said Stella, simply.

The second meeting happened on Saturday evening as arranged, when he
came home from his odd day at his father's insurance office. Stella had
come to supper. Eugene saw her through the open sitting room door, as he
bounded upstairs to change his clothes, for he had a fire of youth which
no sickness of stomach or weakness of lungs could overcome at this age.
A thrill of anticipation ran over his body. He took especial pains with
his toilet, adjusting a red tie to a nicety, and parting his hair
carefully in the middle. He came down after a while, conscious that he
had to say something smart, worthy of himself, or she would not see how
attractive he was; and yet he was fearful as to the result. When he
entered the sitting room she was sitting with his sister before an open
fire-place, the glow of a lamp with a red-flowered shade warmly
illuminating the room. It was a commonplace room, with its blue
cloth-covered center table, its chairs of stereotyped factory design,
and its bookcase of novels and histories, but it was homey, and the
sense of hominess was strong.

Mrs. Witla was in and out occasionally, looking for things which
appertained to her functions as house-mother. The father was not home
yet; he would get there by supper-time, having been to some outlying
town of the county trying to sell a machine. Eugene was indifferent to
his presence or absence. Mr. Witla had a fund of humor which extended to
joking with his son and daughters, when he was feeling good, to noting
their budding interest in the opposite sex; to predicting some
commonplace climax to their one grand passion when it should come. He
was fond of telling Myrtle that she would one day marry a horse-doctor.
As for Eugene, he predicted a certain Elsa Brown, who, his wife said,
had greasy curls. This did not irritate either Myrtle or Eugene. It even
brought a wry smile to Eugene's face for he was fond of a jest; but he
saw his father pretty clearly even at this age. He saw the smallness of
his business, the ridiculousness of any such profession having any claim
on him. He never wanted to say anything, but there was in him a burning
opposition to the commonplace, a molten pit in a crater of reserve,
which smoked ominously now and then for anyone who could have read.
Neither his father nor his mother understood him. To them he was a
peculiar boy, dreamy, sickly, unwitting, as yet, of what he really
wanted.

"Oh, here you are!" said Myrtle, when he came in. "Come and sit down."

Stella gave him an enticing smile.

He walked to the mantel-piece and stood there, posing. He wanted to
impress this girl, and he did not quite know how. He was almost lost for
anything to say.

"You can't guess what we've been doing!" his sister chirped helpfully.

"Well--what?" he replied blankly.

"You ought to guess. Can't you be nice and guess?"

"One guess, anyhow," put in Stella.

"Toasting pop-corn," he ventured with a half smile.

"You're warm." It was Myrtle speaking.

Stella looked at him with round blue eyes. "One more guess," she
suggested.

"Chestnuts!" he guessed.

She nodded her head gaily. "What hair!" he thought. Then--"Where are
they?"

"Here's one," laughed his new acquaintance, holding out a tiny hand.

Under her laughing encouragement he was finding his voice. "Stingy!" he
said.

"Now isn't that mean," she exclaimed. "I gave him the only one I had.
Don't you give him any of yours, Myrtle."

"I take it back," he pleaded. "I didn't know."

"I won't!" exclaimed Myrtle. "Here, Stella," and she held out the few
nuts she had left, "take these, and don't you give him any!" She put
them in Stella's eager hands.

He saw her meaning. It was an invitation to a contest. She wanted him to
try to make her give him some. He fell in with her plan.

"Here!" He stretched out his palm. "That's not right!"

She shook her head.

"One, anyhow," he insisted.

Her head moved negatively from side to side slowly.

"One," he pleaded, drawing near.

Again the golden negative. But her hand was at the side nearest him,
where he could seize it. She started to pass its contents behind her to
the other hand but he jumped and caught it.

"Myrtle! Quick!" she called.

Myrtle came. It was a three-handed struggle. In the midst of the contest
Stella twisted and rose to her feet. Her hair brushed his face. He held
her tiny hand firmly. For a moment he looked into her eyes. What was it?
He could not say. Only he half let go and gave her the victory.

"There," she smiled. "Now I'll give you one."

He took it, laughing. What he wanted was to take her in his arms.

A little while before supper his father came in and sat down, but
presently took a Chicago paper and went into the dining room to read.
Then his mother called them to the table, and he sat by Stella. He was
intensely interested in what she did and said. If her lips moved he
noted just how. When her teeth showed he thought they were lovely. A
little ringlet on her forehead beckoned him like a golden finger. He
felt the wonder of the poetic phrase, "the shining strands of her hair."

After dinner he and Myrtle and Stella went back to the sitting room. His
father stayed behind to read, his mother to wash dishes. Myrtle left the
room after a bit to help her mother, and then these two were left alone.
He hadn't much to say, now that they were together--he couldn't talk.
Something about her beauty kept him silent.

"Do you like school?" she asked after a time. She felt as if they must
talk.

"Only fairly well," he replied. "I'm not much interested. I think I'll
quit one of these days and go to work."

"What do you expect to do?"

"I don't know yet--I'd like to be an artist." He confessed his ambition
for the first time in his life--why, he could not have said.

Stella took no note of it.

"I was afraid they wouldn't let me enter second year high school, but
they did," she remarked. "The superintendent at Moline had to write the
superintendent here."

"They're mean about those things," he cogitated.

She got up and went to the bookcase to look at the books. He followed
after a little.

"Do you like Dickens?" she asked.

He nodded his head solemnly in approval. "Pretty much," he said.

"I can't like him. He's too long drawn out. I like Scott better."

"I like Scott," he said.

"I'll tell you a lovely book that I like." She paused, her lips parted
trying to remember the name. She lifted her hand as though to pick the
title out of the air. "The Fair God," she exclaimed at last.

"Yes--it's fine," he approved. "I thought the scene in the old Aztec
temple where they were going to sacrifice Ahwahee was so wonderful!"

"Oh, yes, I liked that," she added. She pulled out "Ben Hur" and turned
its leaves idly. "And this was so good."

"Wonderful!"

They paused and she went to the window, standing under the cheap lace
curtains. It was a moonlight night. The rows of trees that lined the
street on either side were leafless; the grass brown and dead. Through
the thin, interlaced twigs that were like silver filigree they could see
the lamps of other houses shining through half-drawn blinds. A man went
by, a black shadow in the half-light.

"Isn't it lovely?" she said.

Eugene came near. "It's fine," he answered.

"I wish it were cold enough to skate. Do you skate?" She turned to him.

"Yes, indeed," he replied.

"My, it's so nice on a moonlit night. I used to skate a lot at Moline."

"We skate a lot here. There're two lakes, you know."

He thought of the clear crystal nights when the ice of Green Lake had
split every so often with a great resounding rumble. He thought of the
crowds of boys and girls shouting, the distant shadows, the stars. Up to
now he had never found any girl to skate with successfully. He had never
felt just easy with anyone. He had tried it, but once he had fallen with
a girl, and it had almost cured him of skating forever. He felt as
though he could skate with Stella. He felt that she might like to skate
with him.

"When it gets colder we might go," he ventured. "Myrtle skates."

"Oh, that'll be fine!" she applauded.

Still she looked out into the street.

After a bit she came back to the fire and stood before him, pensively
looking down.

"Do you think your father will stay here?" he asked.

"He says so. He likes it very much."

"Do you?"

"Yes--now."

"Why _now_?"

"Oh, I didn't like it at first."

"Why?"

"Oh, I guess it was because I didn't know anybody. I like it though,
now." She lifted her eyes.

He drew a little nearer.

"It's a nice place," he said, "but there isn't much for me here. I think
I'll leave next year."

"Where do you think you'll go?"

"To Chicago. I don't want to stay here."

She turned her body toward the fire and he moved to a chair behind her,
leaning on its back. She felt him there rather close, but did not move.
He was surprising himself.

"Aren't you ever coming back?" she asked.

"Maybe. It all depends. I suppose so."

"I shouldn't think you'd want to leave yet."

"Why?"

"You say it's so nice."

He made no answer and she looked over her shoulder. He was leaning very
much toward her.

"Will you skate with me this winter?" he asked meaningly.

She nodded her head.

Myrtle came in.

"What are you two talking about?" she asked.

"The fine skating we have here," he said.

"I love to skate," she exclaimed.

"So do I," added Stella. "It's heavenly."

CHAPTER II

Some of the incidents of this courtship that followed, ephemeral as it
was, left a profound impression on Eugene's mind. They met to skate not
long after, for the snow came and the ice and there was wonderful
skating on Green Lake. The frost was so prolonged that men with horses
and ice-saws were cutting blocks a foot thick over at Miller's Point,
where the ice houses were. Almost every day after Thanksgiving there
were crowds of boys and girls from the schools scooting about like water
skippers. Eugene could not always go on week evenings and Saturdays
because he had to assist his father at the store. But at regular
intervals he could ask Myrtle to get Stella and let them all go together
at night. And at other times he would ask her to go alone. Not
infrequently she did.

On one particular occasion they were below a group of houses which crept
near the lake on high ground. The moon was up, its wooing rays reflected
in the polished surfaces of the ice. Through the black masses of trees
that lined the shore could be seen the glow of windows, yellow and
homey. Eugene and Stella had slowed up to turn about, having left the
crowd of skaters some distance back. Stella's golden curls were covered,
except for a few ringlets, with a French cap; her body, to below the
hips, encased in a white wool Jersey, close-fitting and shapely. The
skirt below was a grey mixture of thick wool and the stockings were
covered by white woolen leggings. She looked tempting and knew it.

Suddenly, as they turned, one of her skates came loose and she hobbled
and exclaimed about it. "Wait," said Eugene, "I'll fix it."

She stood before him and he fell to his knees, undoing the twisted
strap. When he had the skate off and ready for her foot he looked up,
and she looked down on him, smiling. He dropped the skate and flung his
arms around her hips, laying his head against her waist.

"You're a bad boy," she said.

For a few minutes she kept silent, for as the center of this lovely
scene she was divine. While he held her she pulled off his wool cap and
laid her hand on his hair. It almost brought tears to his eyes, he was
so happy. At the same time it awakened a tremendous passion. He clutched
her significantly.

"Fix my skate, now," she said wisely.

He got up to hug her but she would not let him.

"No, no," she protested. "You mustn't do like that. I won't come with
you if you do."

"Oh, Stella!" he pleaded.

"I mean it," she insisted. "You mustn't do like that."

He subsided, hurt, half angry. But he feared her will. She was really
not as ready for caresses as he had thought.

Another time a sleighing party was given by some school girls, and
Stella, Eugene and Myrtle were invited. It was a night of snow and
stars, not too cold but bracing. A great box-wagon had been dismantled
of its body and the latter put on runners and filled with straw and warm
robes. Eugene and Myrtle, like the others, had been picked up at their
door after the sleigh had gone the rounds of some ten peaceful little
homes. Stella was not in yet, but in a little while her house was
reached.

"Get in here," called Myrtle, though she was half the length of the box
away from Eugene. Her request made him angry. "Sit by me," he called,
fearful that she would not. She climbed in by Myrtle but finding the
space not to her liking moved farther down. Eugene made a special effort
to have room by him, and she came there as though by accident. He drew a
buffalo robe around her and thrilled to think that she was really there.
The sleigh went jingling around the town for others, and finally struck
out into the country. It passed great patches of dark woods silent in
the snow, little white frame farmhouses snuggled close to the ground,
and with windows that gleamed in a vague romantic way. The stars were
countless and keen. The whole scene made a tremendous impression on him,
for he was in love, and here beside him, in the shadow, her face palely
outlined, was this girl. He could make out the sweetness of her cheek,
her eyes, the softness of her hair.

There was a good deal of chatter and singing, and in the midst of these
distractions he managed to slip an arm about her waist, to get her hand
in his, to look close into her eyes, trying to divine their expression.
She was always coy with him, not wholly yielding. Three or four times he
kissed her cheek furtively and once her mouth. In a dark place he pulled
her vigorously to him, putting a long, sensuous kiss on her lips that
frightened her.

"No," she protested, nervously. "You mustn't."

He ceased for a time, feeling that he had pressed his advantage too
closely. But the night in all its beauty, and she in hers made a lasting
impression.

******

"I think we ought to get Eugene into newspaper work or something like
that," Witla senior suggested to his wife.

"It looks as though that's all he would be good for, at least now,"
replied Mrs. Witla, who was satisfied that her boy had not yet found
himself. "I think he'll do something better later on. His health isn't
very good, you know."

Witla half suspected that his boy was naturally lazy, but he wasn't
sure. He suggested that Benjamin C. Burgess, the prospective
father-in-law of Sylvia and the editor and proprietor of the _Morning
Appeal_, might give him a place as a reporter or type-setter in order
that he might learn the business from the ground up. The _Appeal_
carried few employees, but Mr. Burgess might have no objections to
starting Eugene as a reporter if he could write, or as a student of
type-setting, or both. He appealed to Burgess one day on the street.

"Say, Burgess," he said, "you wouldn't have a place over in your shop
for that boy of mine, would you? He likes to scribble a little, I
notice. I think he pretends to draw a little, too, though I guess it
doesn't amount to much. He ought to get into something. He isn't doing
anything at school. Maybe he could learn type-setting. It wouldn't hurt
him to begin at the bottom if he's going to follow that line. It
wouldn't matter what you paid him to begin with."

Burgess thought. He had seen Eugene around town, knew no harm of him
except that he was lackadaisical and rather moody.

"Send him in to see me some day," he replied noncommittally. "I might do
something for him."

"I'd certainly be much obliged to you if you would," said Witla. "He is
not doing much good as it is now," and the two men parted.

He went home and told Eugene. "Burgess says he might give you a position
as a type-setter or a reporter on the _Appeal_ if you'd come in and see
him some day," he explained, looking over to where his son was reading
by the lamp.

"Does he?" replied Eugene calmly. "Well, I can't write. I might set
type. Did you ask him?"

"Yes," said Witla. "You'd better go to him some day."

Eugene bit his lip. He realized this was a commentary on his loafing
propensities. He wasn't doing very well, that was certain. Still
type-setting was no bright field for a person of his temperament. "I
will," he concluded, "when school's over."

"Better speak before school ends. Some of the other fellows might ask
for it around that time. It wouldn't hurt you to try your hand at it."

"I will," said Eugene obediently.

He stopped in one sunny April afternoon at Mr. Burgess' office. It was
on the ground floor of the three-story _Appeal_ building in the public
square. Mr. Burgess, a fat man, slightly bald, looked at him quizzically
over his steel rimmed spectacles. What little hair he had was gray.

"So you think you would like to go into the newspaper business, do you?"
queried Burgess.

"I'd like to try my hand at it," replied the boy. "I'd like to see
whether I like it."

"I can tell you right now there's very little in it. Your father says
you like to write."

"I'd like to well enough, but I don't think I can. I wouldn't mind
learning type-setting. If I ever could write I'd be perfectly willing
to."

"When do you think you'd like to start?"

"At the end of school, if it's all the same to you."

"It doesn't make much difference. I'm not really in need of anybody, but
I could use you. Would you be satisfied with five a week?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, come in when you are ready. I'll see what I can do."

He waved the prospective type-setter away with a movement of his fat
hand, and turned to his black walnut desk, dingy, covered with
newspapers, and lit by a green shaded electric light. Eugene went out,
the smell of fresh printing ink in his nose, and the equally aggressive
smell of damp newspapers. It was going to be an interesting experience,
he thought, but perhaps a waste of time. He did not think so much of
Alexandria. Some time he was going to get out of it.

The office of the _Appeal_ was not different from that of any other
country newspaper office within the confines of our two hemispheres. On
the ground floor in front was the business office, and in the rear the
one large flat bed press and the job presses. On the second floor was
the composing room with its rows of type cases on their high racks--for
this newspaper was, like most other country newspapers, still set by
hand; and in front was the one dingy office of the so-called editor, or
managing editor, or city editor--for all three were the same person, a
Mr. Caleb Williams whom Burgess had picked up in times past from heaven
knows where. Williams was a small, lean, wiry man, with a black pointed
beard and a glass eye which fixed you oddly with its black pupil. He

Question: Summarize the above passage in exactly 500 words and give a brief outlook on it.


The Magnetic North by Elizabeth Robins

[System] You are a helpful assistant. You will be given a passage from a book. Read it carefully, then summarize it in exactly 500 words and give a brief outlook on it.

[User]
Context:

CHAPTER I

WINTER CAMP ON THE YUKON

"To labour and to be content with that a man hath is a sweet life; but
he that findeth a treasure is above them both."--_Ecclesiasticus_.

Of course they were bound for the Klondyke. Every creature in the
North-west was bound for the Klondyke. Men from the South too, and men
from the East, had left their ploughs and their pens, their factories,
pulpits, and easy-chairs, each man like a magnetic needle suddenly set
free and turning sharply to the North; all set pointing the self-same
way since that July day in '97, when the _Excelsior_ sailed into San
Francisco harbour, bringing from the uttermost regions at the top of
the map close upon a million dollars in nuggets and in gold-dust.

Some distance this side of the Arctic Circle, on the right bank of the
Yukon, a little detachment of that great army pressing northward, had
been wrecked early in the month of September.

They had realised, on leaving the ocean-going ship that landed them at
St. Michael's Island (near the mouth of the great river), that they
could not hope to reach Dawson that year. But instead of "getting cold
feet," as the phrase for discouragement ran, and turning back as
thousands did, or putting in the winter on the coast, they determined,
with an eye to the spring rush, to cover as many as possible of the
seventeen hundred miles of waterway before navigation closed.

They knew, in a vague way, that winter would come early, but they had
not counted on the big September storm that dashed their heavy-laden
boats against the floe-ice, ultimately drove them ashore, and nearly
cost the little party their lives. On that last day of the long
struggle up the stream, a stiff north-easter was cutting the middle
reach of the mighty river, two miles wide here, into a choppy and
dangerous sea.

Day by day, five men in the two little boats, had kept serious eyes on
the shore. Then came the morning when, out of the monotonous cold and
snow-flurries, something new appeared, a narrow white rim forming on
the river margin--the first ice!

"Winter beginning to show his teeth," said one man, with an effort at
jocosity.

Day by day, nearer came the menace; narrower and swifter still ran the
deep black water strip between the encroaching ice-lines. But the
thought that each day's sailing or rowing meant many days nearer the
Klondyke, seemed to inspire a superhuman energy. Day by day each man
had felt, and no man yet had said, "We must camp to-night for eight
months." They had looked landward, shivered, and held on their way.

But on this particular morning, when they took in sail, they realised
it was to be that abomination of desolation on the shore or death. And
one or other speedily.

Nearer the white teeth gleamed, fiercer the gale, swifter the current,
sweeping back the boats. The _Mary C._ was left behind, fighting for
life, while it seemed as if no human power could keep the _Tulare_ from
being hurled against the western shore. Twice, in spite of all they
could do, she was driven within a few feet of what looked like certain
death. With a huge effort, that last time, her little crew had just got
her well in mid-stream, when a heavy roller breaking on the starboard
side drenched the men and half filled the cockpit. Each rower, still
pulling for dear life with one hand, bailed the boat with the other;
but for all their promptness a certain amount of the water froze solid
before they could get it out.

"Great luck, if we're going to take in water like this," said the
cheerful Kentuckian, shipping his oar and knocking off the ice--"great
luck that all the stores are so well protected."

"Protected!" snapped out an anxious, cast-iron-looking man at the
rudder.

"Yes, protected. How's water to get through the ice-coat that's over
everything?"

The cast-iron steersman set his jaw grimly. They seemed to be
comparatively safe now, with half a mile of open water between them and
the western shore.

But they sat as before, stiff, alert, each man in his ice jacket that
cracked and crunched as he bent to his oar. Now right, now left, again
they eyed the shore.

Would it be--could it be there they would have to land? And if they
did...?

Lord, how it blew!

"Hard a-port!" called out the steersman. There, just ahead, was a great
white-capped "roller" coming--coming, the biggest wave they had
encountered since leaving open sea.

But MacCann, the steersman, swung the boat straight into the crested
roller, and the _Tulare_ took it gamely, "bow on." All was going well
when, just in the boiling middle of what they had thought was foaming
"white-cap," the boat struck something solid, shivered, and went
shooting down, half under water; recovered, up again, and seemed to
pause in a second's doubt on the very top of the great wave. In that
second that seemed an eternity one man's courage snapped.

Potts threw down his oar and swore by----and by----he wouldn't pull
another----stroke on the----Yukon.

While he was pouring out the words, the steersman sprang from the
tiller, and seized Potts' oar just in time to save the boat from
capsizing. Then he and the big Kentuckian both turned on the distracted
Potts.

"You infernal quitter!" shouted the steersman, and choked with fury.
But even under the insult of that "meanest word in the language," Potts
sat glaring defiantly, with his half-frozen hands in his pockets.

"It ain't a river, anyhow, this ain't," he said. "It's plain, simple
Hell and water."

The others had no time to realise that Potts was clean out of his
senses for the moment, and the Kentuckian, still pulling like mad,
faced the "quitter" with a determination born of terror.

"If you can't row, take the rudder! Damnation! Take that rudder! Quick,
_or we'll kill you_!" And he half rose up, never dropping his oar.

Blindly, Potts obeyed.

The _Tulare_ was free now from the clinging mass at the bow, but they
knew they had struck their first floe.

Farther on they could see other white-caps bringing other ice masses
down. But there was no time for terrors ahead. The gale was steadily
driving them in shore again. Boat and oars alike were growing unwieldy
with their coating of ever-increasing ice, and human strength was no
match for the storm that was sweeping down from the Pole.

Lord, how it blew!

"There's a cove!" called out the Kentuckian. "Throw her in!" he shouted
to Potts. Sullenly the new steersman obeyed.

Rolling in on a great surge, the boat suddenly turned in a boiling
eddy, and the first thing anybody knew was that the _Tulare_ was on her
side and her crew in the water. Potts was hanging on to the gunwale and
damning the others for not helping him to save the boat.

She wasn't much of a boat when finally they got her into quiet water;
but the main thing was they had escaped with their lives and rescued a
good proportion of their winter provisions. All the while they were
doing this last, the Kentuckian kept turning to look anxiously for any
sign of the others, in his heart bitterly blaming himself for having
agreed to Potts' coming into the _Tulare_ that day in place of the
Kentuckian's own "pardner." When they had piled the rescued provisions
up on the bank, and just as they were covering the heap of bacon,
flour, and bean-bags, boxes, tools, and utensils with a tarpaulin, up
went a shout, and the two missing men appeared tramping along the
ice-encrusted shore.

Where was the _Mary C._? Well, she was at the bottom of the Yukon, and
her crew would like some supper.

They set up a tent, and went to bed that first night extremely well
pleased at being alive on any terms.

But people get over being glad about almost anything, unless misfortune
again puts an edge on the circumstance. The next day, not being in any
immediate danger, the boon of mere life seemed less satisfying.

In detachments they went up the river several miles, and down about as
far. They looked in vain for any sign of the _Mary C._. They prospected
the hills. From the heights behind the camp they got a pretty fair idea
of the surrounding country. It was not reassuring.

"As to products, there seems to be plenty of undersized timber, plenty
of snow and plenty of river, and, as far as I can see, just nothing
else."

"Well, there's oodles o' blueberries," said the Boy, his inky-looking
mouth bearing witness to veracity; "and there are black and red
currants in the snow, and rose-apples--"

"Oh, yes," returned the other, "it's a sort of garden of Eden!"

A little below here it was four miles from bank to bank of the main
channel, but at this point the river was only about two miles wide, and
white already with floating masses of floe-ice going on a swift current
down towards the sea, four hundred miles away.

The right bank presented to the mighty river a low chain of hills,
fringed at the base with a scattered growth of scrubby spruce, birch,
willow, and cotton-wood. Timber line was only two hundred feet above
the river brink; beyond that height, rocks and moss covered with
new-fallen snow.

But if their side seemed cheerless, what of the land on the left bank?
A swamp stretching endlessly on either hand, and back from the icy
flood as far as eye could see, broken only by sloughs and an occasional
ice-rimmed tarn.

"We've been travelling just eight weeks to arrive at this," said the
Kentuckian, looking at the desolate scene with a homesick eye.

"We're not only pretty far from home," grumbled another, "we're still
thirteen hundred miles away from the Klondyke."

These unenlivening calculations were catching.

"We're just about twenty-five hundred miles from the nearest railroad
or telegraph, and, now that winter's down on us, exactly eight months
from anywhere in the civilised world."

They had seen no sign of even savage life, no white trader, nothing to
show that any human foot had ever passed that way before.

In that stillness that was like the stillness of death, they went up
the hillside, with footsteps muffled in the clinging snow; and sixty
feet above the great river, in a part of the wood where the timber was
least unpromising, they marked out a site for their winter quarters.

Then this queer little company--a Denver bank-clerk, an ex-schoolmaster
from Nova Scotia, an Irish-American lawyer from San Francisco, a
Kentucky "Colonel" who had never smelt powder, and "the Boy" (who was
no boy at all, but a man of twenty-two)--these five set to work felling
trees, clearing away the snow, and digging foundations for a couple of
log-cabins--one for the Trio, as they called themselves, the other for
the Colonel and the Boy.

These two had chummed from the hour they met on the steamer that
carried them through the Golden Gate of the Pacific till--well, till
the end of my story.

The Colonel was a big tanned fellow, nearly forty--eldest of the
party--whom the others used to guy discreetly, because you couldn't
mention a place anywhere on the known globe, except the far north,
which he had not personally inspected. But for this foible, as the
untravelled considered it, he was well liked and a little
feared--except by the Boy, who liked him "first-rate," and feared him
not at all. They had promptly adopted each other before they discovered
that it was necessary to have one or more "pardners." It seemed, from
all accounts, to be true, that up there at the top of the world a man
alone is a man lost, and ultimately the party was added to as
aforesaid.

Only two of them knew anything about roughing it. Jimmie O'Flynn of
'Frisco, the Irish-American lawyer, had seen something of frontier
life, and fled it, and MacCann, the Nova Scotian schoolmaster, had
spent a month in one of the Caribou camps, and on the strength of that,
proudly accepted the nickname of "the Miner."

Colonel George Warren and Morris Burnet, the Boy, had the best outfits;
but this fact was held to be more than counter-balanced by the value of
the schoolmaster's experience at Caribou, and by the extraordinary
handiness of Potts, the Denver clerk, who had helped to build the
shelter on deck for the disabled sick on the voyage up. This young man
with the big mouth and lazy air had been in the office of a bank ever
since he left school, and yet, under pressure, he discovered a natural
neat-handedness and a manual dexterity justly envied by some of his
fellow-pioneers. His outfit was not more conspicuously meagre than
O'Flynn's, yet the Irishman was held to be the moneyed man of his
party. Just why was never fully developed, but it was always said,
"O'Flynn represents capital"; and O'Flynn, whether on that account, or
for a subtler and more efficient reason, always got the best of
everything that was going without money and without price.

On board ship O'Flynn, with his ready tongue and his golden
background--"representing capital"--was a leading spirit. Potts the
handy-man was a talker, too, and a good second. But, once in camp, Mac
the Miner was cock of the walk, in those first days, quoted "Caribou,"
and ordered everybody about to everybody's satisfaction.

In a situation like this, the strongest lean on the man who has ever
seen "anything like it" before. It was a comfort that anybody even
_thought_ he knew what to do under such new conditions. So the others
looked on with admiration and a pleasant confidence, while Mac boldly
cut a hole in the brand-new tent, and instructed Potts how to make a
flange out of a tin plate, with which to protect the canvas from the
heat of the stove-pipe. No more cooking now in the bitter open.
Everyone admired Mac's foresight when he said:

"We must build rock fireplaces in our cabins, or we'll find our one
little Yukon stove burnt out before the winter is over--before we have
a chance to use it out prospecting." And when Mac said they must pool
their stores, the Colonel and the Boy agreed as readily as O'Flynn,
whose stores consisted of a little bacon, some navy beans, and a
demijohn of whisky. O'Flynn, however, urged that probably every man had
a little "mite o' somethin'" that he had brought specially for
himself--somethin' his friends had given him, for instance. There was
Potts, now. They all knew how the future Mrs. Potts had brought a
plum-cake down to the steamer, when she came to say good-bye, and made
Potts promise he wouldn't unseal the packet till Christmas. It wouldn't
do to pool Potts' cake--never! There was the Colonel, the only man that
had a sack of coffee. He wouldn't listen when they had told him tea was
the stuff up here, and--well, perhaps other fellows didn't miss coffee
as much as a Kentuckian, though he _had_ heard--Never mind; they
wouldn't pool the coffee. The Boy had some preserved fruit that he
seemed inclined to be a hog about--

"Oh, look here. I haven't touched it!" "Just what I'm sayin'. You're
hoardin' that fruit."

It was known that Mac had a very dacint little medicine-chest. Of
course, if any fellow was ill, Mac wasn't the man to refuse him a
little cold pizen; but he must be allowed to keep his own medicine
chest--and that little pot o' Dundee marmalade. As for O'Flynn, he
would look after the "dimmi-john."

But Mac was dead against the whisky clause. Alcohol had been the curse
of Caribou, and in _this_ camp spirits were to be for medicinal
purposes only. Whereon a cloud descended on Mr. O'Flynn, and his health
began to suffer; but the precious demi-john was put away "in stock"
along with the single bottles belonging to the others. Mac had taken an
inventory, and no one in those early days dared touch anything without
his permission.

They had cut into the mountain-side for a level foundation, and were
hard at it now hauling logs.

"I wonder," said the Boy, stopping a moment in his work, and looking at
the bleak prospect round him--"I wonder if we're going to see anybody
all winter."

"Oh, sure to," Mac thought; "Indians, anyhow."

"Well, I begin to wish they'd mosy along," said Potts; and the sociable
O'Flynn backed him up.

It was towards noon on the sixth day after landing (they had come to
speak of this now as a voluntary affair), when they were electrified by
hearing strange voices; looked up from their work, and saw two white
men seated on a big cake of ice going down the river with the current.
When they recovered sufficiently from their astonishment at the
spectacle, they ran down the hillside, and proposed to help the
"castaways" to land. Not a bit of it.

"_Land_ in that place! What you take us for? Not much! We're going to
St. Michael's."

They had a small boat drawn up by them on the ice, and one man was
dressed in magnificent furs, a long sable overcoat and cap, and wearing
quite the air of a North Pole Nabob.

"Got any grub?" Mac called out.

"Yes; want some?"

"Oh no; I thought you--"

"You're not going to try to live through the winter _there?_"

"Yes."

"Lord! you _are_ in a fix!"

"That's we thought about you."

But the travellers on the ice-raft went by laughing and joking at the
men safe on shore with their tents and provisions. It made some of them
visibly uneasy. _Would_ they win through? Were they crazy to try it?
They had looked forward eagerly to the first encounter with their kind,
but this vision floating by on the treacherous ice, of men who rather
dared the current and the crash of contending floes than land where
_they_ were, seemed of evil augury. The little incident left a
curiously sinister impression on the camp.

Even Mac was found agreeing with the others of his Trio that, since
they had a grand, tough time in front of them, it was advisable to get
through the black months ahead with as little wear and tear as
possible. In spite of the Trio's superior talents, they built a small
ramshackle cabin with a tumble-down fireplace, which served them so ill
that they ultimately spent all their waking hours in the more
comfortable quarters of the Colonel and the Boy. It had been agreed
that these two, with the help, or, at all events, the advice, of the
others, should build the bigger, better cabin, where the stores should
be kept and the whole party should mess--a cabin with a solid outside
chimney of stone and an open fireplace, generous of proportion and
ancient of design, "just like down South."

The weather was growing steadily colder; the ice was solid now many
feet out from each bank of the river. In the middle of the flood the
clotted current still ran with floe-ice, but it was plain the river was
settling down for its long sleep.

Not silently, not without stress and thunder. The handful of dwellers
on the shore would be waked in the night by the shock and crash of
colliding floes, the sound of the great winds rushing by, and--"Hush!
What's that?" Tired men would start up out of sleep and sit straight to
listen. Down below, among the ice-packs, the noise as of an old-time
battle going on--tumult and crashing and a boom! boom! like
cannonading.

Then one morning they woke to find all still, the conflict over, the
Yukon frozen from bank to bank. No sound from that day on; no more
running water for a good seven months.

Winter had come.

While the work went forward they often spoke of the only two people
they had thus far seen. Both Potts and O'Flynn had been heard to envy
them.

Mac had happened to say that he believed the fellow in furs was an
Englishman--a Canadian, at the very least. The Americans chaffed him,
and said, "That accounts for it," in a tone not intended to flatter.
Mac hadn't thought of it before, but he was prepared to swear now that
if an Englishman--they were the hardiest pioneers on earth--or a
Canadian was in favour of lighting out, "it must be for some good
reason."

"Oh yes; we all know that reason."

The Americans laughed, and Mac, growing hot, was goaded into vaunting
the Britisher and running down the Yankee.

"Yankee!" echoed the Kentuckian. "And up in Nova Scotia they let this
man teach school! Doesn't know the difference yet between the little
corner they call New England and all the rest of America."

"All the rest of America!" shouted Mac. "The cheeky way you people of
the States have of gobbling the Continent (in _talk_), just as though
the British part of it wasn't the bigger half!"

"Yes; but when you think _which_ half, you ought to be obliged to any
fellow for forgetting it." And then they referred to effete monarchical
institutions, and by the time they reached the question of the kind of
king the Prince of Wales would make, Mac was hardly a safe man to argue
with.

There was one bond between him and the Kentucky Colonel: they were both
religious men; and although Mac was blue Presbyterian and an inveterate
theologian, somehow, out here in the wilderness, it was more possible
to forgive a man for illusions about the Apostolic Succession and
mistaken views upon Church government. The Colonel, at all events, was
not so lax but what he was ready to back up the Calvinist in an
endeavour to keep the Sabbath (with a careful compromise between church
and chapel) and help him to conduct a Saturday-night Bible-class.

But if the Boy attended the Bible-class with fervour and aired his
heresies with uncommon gusto, if he took with equal geniality Colonel
Warren's staid remonstrance and Mac's fiery objurgation, Sunday morning
invariably found him more "agnostic" than ever, stoutly declining to
recognise the necessity for "service." For this was an occasion when
you couldn't argue or floor anybody, or hope to make Mac "hoppin' mad,"
or have the smallest kind of a shindy. The Colonel read the lessons,
Mac prayed, and they all sang, particularly O'Flynn. Now, the Boy
couldn't sing a note, so there was no fair division of entertainment,
wherefore he would go off into the woods with his gun for company, and
the Catholic O'Flynn, and even Potts, were in better odour than he
"down in camp" on Sundays. So far you may travel, and yet not escape
the tyranny of the "outworn creeds."

The Boy came back a full hour before service on the second Sunday with
a couple of grouse and a beaming countenance. Mac, who was cook that
week, was the only man left in the tent. He looked agreeably surprised
at the apparition.

"Hello!" says he more pleasantly than his Sunday gloom usually
permitted. "Back in time for service?"

"I've found a native," says the Boy, speaking as proudly as any
Columbus. "He's hurt his foot, and he's only got one eye, but he's
splendid. Told me no end of things. He's coming here as fast as his
foot will let him--he and three other Indians--Esquimaux, I mean. They
haven't had anything to eat but berries and roots for seven days."

The Boy was feverishly overhauling the provisions behind the stove.

"Look here," says Mac, "hold on there. I don't know that we've come all
this way to feed a lot o' dirty savages."

"But they're starving." Then, seeing that that fact did not produce the
desired impression: "My savage is an awfully good fellow. He--he's a
converted savage, seems to be quite a Christian." Then, hastily
following up his advantage: "He's been taught English by the Jesuits at
the mission forty miles above us, on the river. He can give us a whole
heap o' tips."

Mac was slowly bringing out a small panful of cold boiled beans.

"There are four of them," said the Boy--"big fellows, almost as big as
our Colonel, and _awful_ hungry."

Mac looked at the handful of beans and then at the small sheet-iron
stove.

"There are more cooking," says he not over-cordially.

"The one that talks good English is the son of the chief. You can see
he's different from the others. Knows a frightful lot. He's taught me
some of his language already. The men with him said 'Kaiomi' to
everything I asked, and that means 'No savvy.' Says he'll teach
me--he'll teach all of us--how to snow-shoe."

"We know how to snow-shoe."

"Oh, I mean on those long narrow snow-shoes that make you go so fast
you always trip up! He'll show us how to steer with a pole, and how to
make fish-traps and--and everything."

Mac began measuring out some tea.

"He's got a team of Esquimaux dogs--calls 'em Mahlemeuts, and he's got
a birch-bark canoe, and a skin kyak from the coast." Then with an
inspiration: "His people are the sort of Royal Family down there,"
added the Boy, thinking to appeal to the Britisher's monarchical
instincts.

Mac had meditatively laid his hand on a side of bacon, the Boy's eyes
following.

"He's asked us--_all_ of us, and we're five--up to visit him at Pymeut,
the first village above us here." Mac took up a knife to cut the bacon.
"And--good gracious! why, I forgot the grouse; they can have the
grouse!"

"No, they can't," said Mac firmly; "they're lucky to get bacon."

The Boy's face darkened ominously. When he looked like that the elder
men found it was "healthiest to give him his head." But the young face
cleared as quickly as it had clouded. After all, the point wasn't worth
fighting for, since grouse would take time to cook, and--here were the
natives coming painfully along the shore.

The Boy ran out and shouted and waved his cap. The other men of the
camp, who had gone in the opposite direction, across the river ice to
look at an air-hole, came hurrying back and reached camp about the same
time as the visitors.

"Thought you said they were big fellows!" commented Mac, who had come
to the door for a glimpse of the Indians as they toiled up the <DW72>.

"Well, so they are!"

"Why, the Colonel would make two of any one of them."

"The Colonel! Oh well, you can't expect anybody else to be quite as big
as that. I was in a hurry, but I suppose what I meant was, they could
eat as much as the Colonel."

"How do you know?"

"Well, just look how broad they are. It doesn't matter to your stomach
whether you're big up and down, or big to and fro."

"It's their furs make 'em look like that. They're the most awful little
runts I ever saw!"

"Well, I reckon _you'd_ think they were big, too--big as Nova
Scotia--if _you'd_ found 'em--come on 'em suddenly like that in the
woods--"

"Which is the...?"

"Oh, the son of the chief is in the middle, the one who is taking off
his civilised fur-coat. He says his father's got a heap of pelts (you
could get things for your collection, Mac), and he's got two
reindeer-skin shirts with hoods--'parkis,' you know, like the others
are wearing--"

They were quite near now.

"How do," said the foremost native affably.

"How do." The Boy came forward and shook hands as though he hadn't seen
him for a month. "This," says he, turning first to Mac and then to the
other white men, "this is Prince Nicholas of Pymeut. Walk right in, all
of you, and have something to eat."

The visitors sat on the ground round the stove, as close as they could
get without scorching, and the atmosphere was quickly heavy with their
presence. When they slipped back their hoods it was seen that two of
the men wore the "tartar tonsure," after the fashion of the coast.

"Where do you come from?" inquired the Colonel of the man nearest him,
who simply blinked and was dumb.

"This is the one that talks English," said the Boy, indicating Nicholas,
"and he lives at Pymeut, and he's been converted."

"How far is Pymeut?"

"We sleep Pymeut to-night," says Nicholas.

"Which way?"

The native jerked his head up the river.

"Many people there?"

He nodded.

"White men, too?"

He shook his head.

"How far to the nearest white men?"

Nicholas's mind wandered from the white man's catechism and fixed
itself on his race's immemorial problem: how far it was to the nearest
thing to eat.

"I thought you said he could speak English."

"So he can, first rate. He and I had a great pow-wow, didn't we,
Nicholas?"

Nicholas smiled absently, and fixed his one eye on the bacon that Mac
was cutting on the deal box into such delicate slices.

"He'll talk all right," said the Boy, "when he's had some breakfast."

Mac had finished the cutting, and now put the frying-pan on an open
hole in the little stove.

"Cook him?" inquired Nicholas.

"Yes. Don't you cook him?"

"Take heap time, cook him."

"You couldn't eat it raw!"

Nicholas nodded emphatically.

Mac said "No," but the Boy was curious to see if they would really eat
it uncooked.

"Let them have _some_ of it raw while the rest is frying"; and he
beckoned the visitors to the deal box. They made a dart forward,
gathered up the fat bacon several slices at a time, and pushed it into
their mouths.

"Ugh!" said the Colonel under his breath.

Mac quickly swept what was left into the frying-pan, and began to cut a
fresh lot.

The Boy divided the cold beans, got out biscuits, and poured the tea,
while silence and a strong smell of ancient fish and rancid seal
pervaded the little tent.

O'Flynn put a question or two, but Nicholas had gone stone-deaf. There
was no doubt about it, they had been starving.

After a good feed they sat stolidly by the fire, with no sign of
consciousness, save the blinking of beady eyes, till the Colonel
suggested a smoke. Then they all grinned broadly, and nodded with great
vigour. Even those who had no other English understood "tobacco."

When he had puffed awhile, Nicholas took his pipe out of his mouth,
and, looking at the Boy, said:

"You no savvy catch fish in winter?"

"Through the ice? No. How you do it?"

"Make hole--put down trap--heap fish all winter."

"You get enough to live on?" asked the Colonel.

"They must have dried fish, too, left over from the summer," said Mac.

Nicholas agreed. "And berries and flour. When snow begin get soft,
Pymeuts all go off--" He motioned with his big head towards the hills.

"What do you get there?" Mac was becoming interested.

"Caribou, moose--"

"Any furs?"

"Yes; trap ermun, marten--"

"Lynx, too, I suppose, and fox?"

Nicholas nodded. "All kinds. Wolf--muskrat, otter--wolverine--all
kinds."

"You got some skins now?" asked the Nova Scotian.

"Y--yes. More when snow get soft. You come Pymeut--me show."

"Where have ye been just now?" asked O'Flynn.

"St. Michael."

"How long since ye left there?"

"Twelve sleeps."

"He means thirteen days."

Nicholas nodded.

"They couldn't possibly walk that far in--"

"Oh yes," says the Boy; "they don't follow the windings of the river,
they cut across the portage, you know."

"Snow come--no trail--big mountains--all get lost."

"What did you go to St. Michael's for?"

"Oh, me pilot. Me go all over. Me leave N. A. T. and T. boat St.
Michael's last trip."

"Then you're in the employ of the great North American Trading and
Transportation Company?"

Nicholas gave that funny little duck of the head that meant yes.

"That's how you learnt English," says the Colonel.

"No; me learn English at Holy Cross. Me been baptize."

"At that Jesuit mission up yonder?"

"Forty mile."

"Well," says Potts, "I guess you've had enough walking for one winter."

Nicholas seemed not to follow this observation. The Boy interpreted:

"You heap tired, eh? You no go any more long walk till ice go out, eh?"

Nicholas grinned.

"Me go Ikogimeut--all Pymeut go."

"What for?"

"Big feast."

"Oh, the Russian mission there gives a feast?"

"No. Big Innuit feast."

"When?"

"Pretty quick. Every year big feast down to Ikogimeut when Yukon ice
get hard, so man go safe with dog-team."

"Do many people go?"

"All Innuit go, plenty Ingalik go."

"How far do they come?"

"All over; come from Koserefsky, come from Anvik--sometime Nulato."

"Why, Nulato's an awful distance from Ikogimeut."

"Three hundred and twenty miles," said the pilot, proud of his general
information, and quite ready, since he had got a pipe between his
teeth, to be friendly and communicative.

"What do you do at Ikogimeut when you have these--" "Big fire--big
feed--tell heap stories--big dance. Oh, heap big time!"

"Once every year, eh, down at Ikogimeut?"

"Three times ev' year. Ev' village, and"--he lowered his voice, not
with any hit of reverence or awe, but with an air of making a sly and
cheerful confidence--"and when man die."

"You make a feast and have a dance when a friend dies?"

"If no priests. Priests no like. Priests say, 'Man no dead; man gone
up.'" Nicholas pondered the strange saying, and slowly shook his head.

"In that the priests are right," said Mac grudgingly.

It was anything but politic, but for the life of him the Boy couldn't
help chipping in:

"You think when man dead he stay dead, eh, and you might as well make a
feast?"

Nicholas gave his quick nod. "We got heap muskeetah, we cold, we
hungry. We here heap long time. Dead man, he done. Why no big feast? Oh
yes, heap big feast."

The Boy was enraptured. He would gladly have encouraged these pagan
deliverances on the part of the converted Prince, but the Colonel was
scandalised, and Mac, although in his heart of hearts not ill-satisfied
at the evidence of the skin-deep Christianity of a man delivered over
to the corrupt teaching of the Jesuits, found in this last fact all the
stronger reason for the instant organisation of a good Protestant
prayer-meeting. Nicholas of Pymeut must not be allowed to think it was
only Jesuits who

Question: Summarize the above passage in exactly 500 words and give a brief outlook on it.