THE COURIER.
which was the greatest feat of per
sonal endurance in all that voyage, he
mentioned: but he dccrilwd the kill
ing of his twi faithful dog as the
most trying ordeal he had to face in
those three years. "I could not verm
well kill my nun dog. 1 kill Yohan
sen's an' Yohanen he kill mine."
Can't you ju.-t hear Eric Erickou
say it?
Mouths of marching over ice hum
mocks in frozen clothing, dragging
heavy sledges, he described as "verm
hard work." I don't believe the man
has a superlative adjective in his vo
cabulary. He seems better acquainted
with big deeds than big words. A
hero is a tine thing, but a modest hero
is almost too good to be true.
The story of his lecture N too well
known to need repetition. Here,
however, is a bit of the descriptive
pari of his talk, taken down in short
hand and done into rather more con
ventional English than he used. His
lecture throughout was illustrated by
stereopticon pictures which were so
beautiful that they quite overcame
one's prejudice again-t that sort of
thing.
"Sometimes we had a smoking con
cert Some of the men sang, or played
the accordion or Borne other musical
instrument on board. We had an excel
lent library. We had plenty of time to
read, and i believe that many of the
men on board heve no reason to regret
they spent those days in reading, as they
learned more during those thiee years
than during the whole of the rest of
their lives. We had plenty of games on
board cbess and dominoes and cards
Of course, three years spent in such
surroundii gs, becomes a little monoto
nous. But these places in the noith
have their attractions. There was one
long polar night that lasted for mouths,
and many of the men would get tired of
the perpetual darkness and would long
for the daylight again, and spring came
like a fairy tale laid in frost and snow.
The ship was covered from the the top
to the deck with snow and everything
was pure and clean, and then the sun
arose from the horizan and would circle
around the s'y day and night for tive
months, perbrps, without a break. The
snow would m It aay to some extent,
andtheehip would be surrounded with
ice, and the ice was so white, and the
sun rises higher and higher in the s'y,
and the eky loses its color only a Da'e
blue 6ky and you lone for some colors.
There is nothing to rest your eye upon,
and you have to protect your ej es against
thedazz'ing light by help of snow glasses
in order to avoid snoar blinding.
You get tired of the long polar daya.
and then perhaps jou begin t3 long for
the polar night with the stars again.
But the fall comes, the sun sinks to the
horizon again, and then at midnight you
have a most wonderful sky. The sun
sinks dceperTand the evening sky gets
elf arer and the ice world is dreaming in
the light of the northern stillness. At
last the 6iin disappears under the hori
zon, and then the dawn in the south
grows fainter and fainter every day.
But it was wonderfully beautiful, this
twilight of the dying, disappearing polar
day. It is like dreamland, painted in
the imagination's most delicate tin's.
It is a farawav, faint clear music, a dis
tant, subdued melody. It is a ead
scene of the djingday."
Dr. Xansen said, in a conversation
at the hotel before the lecture, that
he had read a great deal of Browning
during that voyage. I supjMtse it was
in the desperation of a Polar night
that he read Prince Hohenstiel
Schwangua. Heaven knows it would
take nothing less to take most of us
through the Prince!
His peroration was almost pathet
ically earnest. He made a plea for
those glorious follies of adventure
without which the health and virility
diesoutofa nation. He urged that
monev and material things were not
all of life sad heresy to utter in Pitts
burg. And. like every ioet. evcry
painter, every actor, he humbly :imiIo
gized to the Philistine forbeinggreat.
The old apology that only Whistler
refuses to make. He quoted some
lines from Tennyson's "Ulysses" that
must seem to carry a special meaning
from one of the world's wanderers to
its last:
"One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate,
but strong in will
To strive to seek, to find
and not to yield."
As he quoted the same oem in his
toast.be inuM. have a partieularweak
nes for it. He clo-cd with the clos
ing lines of Browning's Epilogue:
"At noonday in the bustle
of man's work-time,
Greet the unseen with a cheer!
Bid him forward, breast and
back as either should be,
'Strive and thrive!' cry 'Speed
light on fare ever there as here!' "
"e.t week I want to write of Mime
of bis opinions on American and Nor
wegian literature.
Pittsuukc;, Pa .
THIS XEW-
Allegretti (Jbocolales
OAT-O
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Chicago.
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