The times., 1898-05-22
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with an Illustrated supplement. One of
the advertisements reads as follows:
On account of want OF storage room, guam
uty OF old clothes are at present for sale, by
private arrangement at No. Pump Lane. Re-
peated requests 10 remove them having been OF
no effect. | am obliged TO dispose of them in this
way. The clothes quite fresh, having been
IN salt for a long time
All through the journal the strong,
faithful. home-loving nature of the
star is mentioned. with the comment: 1T
must be Liv's star" Again. on January
z: Little LiV is year old today; it will
be a fete day at home" And again:
when / look at the picture of our beau
tiful home in the evening light, with my
wife standing in the garden, I feel as IL
ii were impossible that this could go on
much longer" And here is a reflection,
written in the midst Of cracking ice:
Can't something happen? Could not a hurri
cane come and tear up this ice, and set II rolling
IN high waves 10 the open sea? Welcome danger,
II II only brings us the chance OF lighting for
our liyes-only lets us move onward The miser-
able thing is to be inactive onlookers, not TO
be able TO lift hand TO help ourselves forward.
II wants ten times more strength of mind TO sit
still and trust in your theories and let nature
work them out without your being able 50 much
as TO lay one stick across another TO help, than
il does TO trust in working them out by your
own eneTgy-that is nothing when you have
pair Of strong arms. Here | sit, whining like
old woman. Did / not know all this before
started? Things have not gone worse than | eX-
pected, but, on the contrary, rather better.
Where is now the serene hopefulness that spread
itself in the daylight and the sun? Where are
those proud imaginings now that mounted like
young eagles toward the Brightness OF the fu-
ture? Like broken winged, wet crows, they
leave the sunlit sea, and hide themselys in the
misty marshes Of dependency. Perhaps it will
all come back again with the south wind; but
NJ met gl1
philosophers again
And here is another bit of philosophi-
cal meditation, which somehow reminds
one of Carlyle:
What demon is il that weaves the threl Is of cur
lives, that makes us deceive ourselves, and ever
sends us forth on paths have not ourselves
laid out-paths which we have no desire to
walsf Was il a nero feeling Of duty that inn
PEELED me? Oh, mol ! was simply child yearn-
ing for great adventure out in the unknown,
who had dreamed Of il for long L at believed il
really awaited me And it has, indeed, fallen
10 my lot, tie great adventure of the ice, deep
and pure as inanity; the silent, starlit, polar
night; nature itself in its profundty; the mystery
Of life the eeaseless eircling of the universe; the
feast OF death-without suffering, without regret
eternal in itself. Here in the great night thou
standest in all thy naked pettiness face TO face
with nature; and thou sittest aevoutly at the feet
Of eternity, intently listening; and thou knowest
God, the all-ruling. the center of the universe.
All the riddles of life 10 grow clear TO thee,
and thou laughest at thyself that thou coucst
be consumed by breeding, it is all so little. so
unutterably little. "Whoso sees Jehovah dies
After the weeks and mon rs Of compar-
ative inaction on board the Fran, came
the journey, by sledge and on foot, Of
which all the world knows. In the chron-
icle of this expedition there are naturally
fewer philosophical reflections, and more
adventure and incident. The whole book
is extremely interesting, and easily tbs
best of the books which have been writ
ten on the subject OF Arctic explorations.
(New York: Harper & Bros Wash
ington: All bookseners.)