I cannot exaggerate the waste of the President's time and the consumption of his nervous vitality involved in listening to congres...smen's intercession as to local appointments. Why should the President have to have his time taken up in a discussion over ... who shall be the postmistress of Devil's Lake, in North Dakota? How should he be able to know ... who is best fitted to fill such a place?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Indian from time to time pointed out to us where he had thus crept along day after day when he was a boy of ten, and in a star...ving condition. He had been hunting far north of this with two grown Indians. The winter came on unexpectedly early, and the ice compelled them to leave their canoe at Grand Lake, and walk down the bank. They shouldered their furs and started for Oldtown. The snow was not deep enough for snowshoes, or to cover the inequalities of the ground. Polis was soon too weak to carry any burden; but he managed to catch one otter. This was the most they all had to eat on this journey.... For six months after getting home, he was very low, and did not expect to live, and was perhaps always the worse for it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Looking southward, the heavens were completely overcast, the mountains capped with clouds, and the lake generally wore a dark and ...stormy appearance, but from its surface just north of Sugar Island, six or eight miles distant, there was reflected upward to us through the misty air a bright blue tinge from the distant unseen sky of another latitude beyond. They probably had a clear sky then at Greenville, the south end of the lake. Standing on a mountain in the midst of a lake, where would you look for the first sign of approaching fair weather? Not into the heavens, it seems, but into the lake.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We crossed a deep and wide bay which makes eastward north of Kineo, leaving an island on our left, and keeping to the eastern side... of the lake. This way or that led to some Tomhegan or Socatarian stream, up which the Indian had hunted, and whither I longed to go. The last name, however, had a bogus sound, too much like sectarian for me, as if a missionary had tampered with it; but I knew that the Indians were very liberal. I think I should have inclined to the Tomhegan first.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The clouds breaking away a little, we had a glorious wild view, as we ascended, of the broad lake with its fluctuating surface and... numerous forest-clad islands, extending beyond our sight both north and south, and the boundless forest undulating away from its shores on every side, as densely packed as a rye-field, and enveloping nameless mountains in succession; but above all, looking westward over a large island, was visible a very distant part of the lake, though we did not then suspect it to be Moosehead,--at first a mere broken white line seen through the tops of the island trees, like hay-caps, but spreading to a lake when we got higher. Beyond this we saw what appears to be called Bald Mountain on the map, some twenty-five miles distant, near the sources of the Penobscot. It was a perfect lake of the woods. But this was only a transient gleam, for the rain was not quite over.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The great fact in life, the always possible escape from dullness, was the lake. The sun rose out of it, the day began there; it wa...s like an open door that nobody could shut. The land and all its dreariness could never close in on you. You had only to look at the lake, and you knew you would soon be free.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My country is bleeding, my people are perishing around me. But I feel as a South Carolinian, I am bound to tell the North, go on! ...go on! Never falter, never abandon the principles which you have adopted.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
--Here, the flag snaps in the glare and silence Of the unbroken ice. I stand here,... The dogs bark, my beard is black, and I stare At the North Pole. . . And now what? Why, go back.
The discovery of the North Pole is one of those realities which could not be avoided. It is the wages which human perseverance pay...s itself when it thinks that something is taking too long. The world needed a discoverer of the North Pole, and in all areas of social activity, merit was less important here than opportunity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »