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THE COURIER.
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The Passing Show.
WILLA CATHER.
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"Do you know the world's white roof tree do you know the windy rift
Where the baffling mountain eddies chop and change?
Do you know the long day's patience, belly down on frozen drift,
While the head of heads is feeding out of range?
It is there that I am going where the boulders and the snow lies,
With a nimble, trusty tracker that I know,
I have sworn an oath to keep it on the horns of Ovis Poli,
And the Red Gods call to me and I must go!"
Kipling's "Feet of the Young Men."
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, -omtT CMt If I )
$ LADIES' HEALTH
8HE8
with cork Boles and heavy grade Dongola
kid, with medium round toe6, are just
the thing to keep jou from catchirg
cold during the coming winter. O
course, "there are others' and we Lave
them fiom A to Zia every shape, weight
and style, and all of the best manufac
ture. and up to date in every particular
i7
III -entertaining" Fridljof Nansen
the Writers' club outdid itself. It
has, Indeed, favored Dr. Watson and
Hopkinson Smith and Anthony Hojmj
Hawkins and such like with supiier
and smokers and receptions, according
to their several deserts. Hut Nansen
is almost as much of a hero as Boh Could anything have been more
Fitzsimnions, and forhim.onlyastate heart-rending? Poor Hansen! who lias
hanmiet was tit ting. Besides it is the :" drowning at ins tongue s end, and
proper thing to banquet Nansen: the
But brows have ached for it
and souls toiled and striven;
And many have striven,
and many have failed,
And many died, slain by
the truth they availed."
Prince of Wales started l he fashion
and far Ikj it from loyal Americans to
disregard such a precedent. They do
say, too, that these continued ban
quets are using him up worse than
the Pole, and that he quite pines for
solitude and ice lergs and raw liars'
meat and "Boreal climes of the Pole."
claims even to have read "Prince
Hoheiistiel-Schwangau." it only re
mains to hoje that he had never
heard of "Lucile" and its odium. The
rest of Mr. Church's toast, however,
was rather letter than its discourag
ing lieginning. I will quote it in full:
'At the frozen North .Pole there
dwells a spectre, clad in snow and ice.
that lieckoiismeu on forever to honor
where reporters and indigestion are and to death. It guards the secret of
not, the centuries, and while luring men
This particular banquet was given its habitation, defies them to
jiu ihwi i pluck out the heart of its mvsterv.
in the dining hall of the Hotel Henn. Vet W,H slia say tha, pvc1 y.,-Uire s
the only other really first-class hotel impregnable in her icebound fortress?
here is called The Lincoln, bv the Arctic exploration began inthesix-
wav. The orchestra fiddled and tooted J'"!' rcnuiry, and now each genera-
-"', , .. ,.,,,,, tion finds men pressing in closer to
hi a clump of iwlms and the table the Po,e aMl overcoming its outer
were decorated with La France roses barriers, like soldiers of fortune. In
and maidetfs-hair ferns. I will spare 1.VJ4 Barents sailed from Holland, and
Ml the elite were ",1111 "v ""' mane a una mane on
.. Arctic ireoirmnhv of 702 miles from
. .. ...-. Ba-V IlllllllVIlt ..-' -"
1 Utl "V II HUIIIUIV,
Perkins As Sheldon, 1129 O St.
the real object is to explore the tin- ingwith her band to hand, of a life
known regions of the earth for the that would lie life indeed. Perhaps,
promotion of science. It is to learn . ., ., , .,
for humanitv the diameter of the Ihmh tlusmaii there awoke the in.-
cuntry that lies in the farthest stained blood of Viking voyagers, cen-
North. Hie finding of the Pole does turics dead.
not matter so much. Some day it will uA .
be found, and that will satisfy the nemustgogogo
popular desire to reach the mysterious away lrom here,
Pole. Explorations however, will go Cn the other side the
on. I think some one will reach the world he's over-due;
Pole soon, pcrhaiis in the present cen- j . j
tury I hojie so. at least. I should , , ,
not lie surprised if the American Hag clear bctore you
were the lirst to float from the Pole. When the old spring-fret
Next to my own flag I should choose comes o'er you,
yours There has always lieen a feel- And the Red Gods
tug of sympathy between America and ,,
Norway. I think it is a sympathy of call to you.
old. 1 think it !cgaii when the Nor-
wegians discovered America, for it '" :PIearance Fridtjof Nansen is
was they who first set foot on these verv niiich like hundredsof well set-up
shores, and they were received with Norsemen vou will find the world over,
open arms. They were not strong -,. ... , , ,
enough to claim it. however-the In- T,,ei wcre aIw!U! s,lch wanderers,
dians were too plentiful for them." those Norsemen. They have not
changed much since the days when
I do not suppose the immense crowd Eric the Bold turned his warship to
of people who went to the Carnegie ward Iceland. You will find Nansen's
musie hall that night cared uarticu- kind within a hundred miles of Lin
larly for the scientific results of his coin. They are scattered all over
explorations as they cared tosee the those vast midland plains popu
man himself, the man who has cut in lated by the iieasantry of Europe. I
two the distance between the un- have passed some of mvdavs among
you the menu
there, for this
man of letters whom we were "enter
taining." Even the mayor of the city
came and made a toast and quoted
Shakespere and ate with his knife.
Thin- s:iv that Chris Ma gee "runs" the
the Pole he laid him down on the ice
and died.
"Gfeely's stop at 4.V miles from the
Pole was farthest north until 1SI.1
In that year all records were broken
when Nansen passed Greely and
slopiied at V.u miles iievond him.
known and the known, who has known
the "most disastious chances of mov
ing accident by flood and field."
For centuries the North Pole has
been a
turous
them. He has the prominent cheek
lMne, fair ruddy skin, and yellow hair
of his ieopIe. The commanding feat
ures of his face are his masterful
standing challenge to adven- mouth, high forehead, and his eyes
blood. It has been to mod- that are as deep and blue as the water
mavor and has taught him all he When the pack closed upon the ship
knows about politics. I must say l
wish he would teach him table man
ners. The toastmaster of the occasion was
Mr. Samuel Harraden Church, who is
the Frain rose like a saucy spirit of
the air and floated 1200 miles on ton
of the ice. The pa-k had lost its
Kwer to crush, and the bold designer
had overcome the most relentless bar
rier to past achievement. That was
fkdih ffiit lint iiirlr rliA .., lint- AVMmii
always trotted out on such occasions. t,eFnim VM successfully begun her
Now a word of this gentleman. He is strange sail above the water, and vin-
a rather interesting ieionage. It dicated the bold purpose or her mas-
seems that he used to work lor the ter the intrepid explorer bade fa re-
sctuis i u.i l ut . well to his comrades, stepped over the
great and only Carnegie, and Carnegie, side like some Lohengrin notamena-
the founder of concert halls, art gal- ble to Nature, and fearlessly preyed
lories :ind libraries, took a notion that " to the Pole, pursuing his'wild way
!t.,.i.i i- :. wf.nlivniifIli(Miproleiit the piercing splendor of a comet.
em knighthood what. The man who lelwecn the ice lissures. His hair
pushes his way into the ice-bound stands up all ovef his head, scorning
mystery of the Polar sea further than the sedative influence of the brush,
any man before him has done is a just like that of hundreds of Norwe
world hero. That is a kind of achieve- gians down in Webster County, and
nient which, like military achieve- he has the powerful shoulders of a bi
inent, is comprehensible to every man. Norseman I used to watch stack straw
To appreciate it requires no knowl
edge of science or feeling for art, no
technical discriminations as in the
case of an artistic masterpiece or a
scientific discovery. It beseaks the
primitive virtues of hardihood, the
out on the Divide last summer.
He spoke Fnglish well, but with
considerable hesitation and with that
unmistakable Norse accent, so like
that of a dozen EricEricsons and Olaf
Olesons I know that for a inonienL-a
thing to manufacture a novelist: so
he educated Mr. Church and sent him
abroad and awaited developments. In
the course of time Mr. Church wrote a
When he had gone ISCi miles bevond
every human foot he wasstoped by a
hill of ice. unscalable and terrible.
The Pole was only 20 miles aw a
alKiut as far as Boston is from New"
WklL' llllt lltfi llflrl rliimi niimiffli I,i
biography of Oliver Cromwell, which the annals of all exploration his per
1 have not read and consequently can formance has never lieen beaten, save
sav nothing about. This vear a rcpti- by Columbus. J ask you then to join
table house has published his histori- Jj jg '" .JSJEi
cal novel, "John Marniaduke, a story guest and the world's hem, whom I
of Cromwell's time, in which one of nowpresent to you Dr. Fridtjof Nan-
the characters remarks that he "was ?"
raised in Ireland," and in which the
fair heroine is called '-Miss Catherine;' Dr. Nansen's reply was as simple
throughout. In a very casual reading and modest as his lecture:
I found some two hundred or more of u js one of the saddest fac's in life
the grossest anachronisms. Andrew that we meet only to part. In mv life
Carnegie mar control the iron market ,tis,a ,,H,S prominent fact. Every
4 . .. -m" i...t i.n n.wt -.11 iii mil da-v l InceL fr't'ds only toleave them
of the world, but he and all his mil- tle IIMt it is the lot of the traveler.
lions can't make a novelist. That is and I am a traveler. I cannot rest
one of the little perquisctes that the from travel. I go roaming about with
Lord reserves for himself. a !'"" heart, plucking here and
iAU , . ,,.,, o i there a flower for remembrance. Or
Well, this celebrated Mr. Samuel these lhere sliaI1 ahvas JVroiu
Harraden Church began his toast to Pittsburg.
"Vansen with a quotation from "Lu- . "There is one thing I should 1 ike to
cile " one of the worst he could have
selected, too.
"Not a truth has to art
or to science been given,
impress upon the minds of mv fiends.
Men do not go to the great North 1 mds
to seek the Pole and to make record.
True, the glory that goes with such
records sometimes tempts us to forget
the real object of our expedition, but
jKmer of the strougarm whichstrikes desjierate homesickness came over-me
an answering .chord in the breast and I lethoiight me of an old waltz
alike of the savant and the savage, time that the Norsemen used to plav
After all. there is nothing quite like at their dances.
it. that power of the strong arm. It He has. too, their old tricks of tell
is the glory of Caesar and NaiKileon. ing the most startling things in the
Nansen may be honored by a few uni- most naively calm and phlegmatic
versities because of his scientific dis- manner. I imagine that the people
c overies, but to the eopIe at large he who went to hear tlirillingdescription
is a hero because he reached the 8th and blood-curdling word pictures went
parallel. Much of this talk about the away disappointed. After the prac.
scientific value of such explorations is titioners of yellow journalism have
all nonsense, invented out of consid- ransacked the dictionary to find ad
eration for the feelings of the Philis- jectives glaring enough to paint his
tine, who can never accept the poet or adventures, it was almost incredible
the iminter. or the actor as such, but that the man who had actually doi.e
must measure them by a material all these things should speak of thein
standard. It is in the same spirit with such epic simplicity. A commit
that we make practical excuses for teeman making his official report
art to our stolid friends. Nansen could not have been more terse and
never turned the prow of the Frani direct. I have heard gentlemen de
northward for practical purposes. He scribe a fishing trip much more dm
said so plainly in his peroration. He matically. There was something in
went because he was lwssessed of an his terseness and economy of verbiage
old unrest, the Odysseus fever; be- that recalled the Commentaries of
cause there sang in his blood that Caesar. When he expanded at all it
siren voice that is forever wooing us was on the beauties of the polar riight
away from the life of hotels and thea- orsomething qui teas impersonal in
tres and electric lights, whispering to own deeds of daring he mentioned
us of a larger liberty, of meeting Na- casually. His terrible swim in the
ture once more breast to breast, cop- Arctic waters after the drifting boats