The age-herald., 1900-12-09
Balance all and swing your sweets!

 Shake your spurs and make em rattle. Kenol Promenade to seats. Here, as at the other resorts. roughly dressed men are reaching over the tables to place their money. A young woman in a neat tailor-made gown strols about, nod , ding and calling men by their first names She plays roulette for little while, and then strolls out. She appears not quite fit here. Spite of the cold, mechanical smile that plays about her once pretty mouth, her eyes are still beautiful; deep, dark and almost bewitching. But that light must fail soon. She is burning her candle rapidly.
 If the prompter could be suppressed, and a blue-eyed, branless woman who screams occasionally would go to sleep, this camp away up here in the shadow of the North Pole, would be as quiet Jerusalem and almost as safe for a man or a woman to walk about in.
 A young man is dancing with a young woman in a long skirt. They appear to be perfectly happy. They are to be married after the ball, and they are going "out- side"
 spare man, with wide blue eyes and pale hair, is leaning on the end of the bar reading a poem to some friends.
 When the poet had gone out l cultivated the barkeeper, who had a woman's diary in his vest pocket and her story by heart.
 This is the story of the woman
 They were married at Montreal under the rose. It rained flowers that day. The streets were crowded with carriages It had been a case of love on sight with both of them, but they quarreled, as the best of lovers will, and he went away to the Klsa- dke. She tried heroically to live without him, but she was a woman who could not live without love. So she followed him. He took the Edmonton trail. She went in over White Pass and passed him on the wat. When she had been ten days in Dawson she i-, hnr- forx IoA m $250; got ten cents left
 Three days later she wrote:
 I'm hungry. Saw a man pay $17 today for a head of lettuce that grew in to- maHo can.'
 The next day:
 "I feel now that you have forsaken me. Six months-there is no trail as long as that We'll I'm going to work tonight. The manager of the theater has just left me. I am to take dinner with him.5 nd then am going to work in his theater-to rustic the boxes,' he told me. I presume l am to take the coupons and show the people to the proper seats But first we are to dine. at o'clock, I think he said. Mon dieu! three hours more, and I have lasted three days Two hours of the long, long night have passed The candles are burning iii the tents and cabins. Outside the snow is falling softly. silently. l saw them lay I young woman to sleep in the snow today
 
 see the people all muffled up like Esquf- maux and the mute, uncomplaining husk- ies hauling the black coffin across the white field.
 Far up the mouth of the Troanduick | hear malamute mourning his masters ab- sence I wonder why dogs always howl af- ter a funeral God! was ever a land so lonely, so utterly lost in darkness? Even the winds go by on tiptoe! If they whisper they say 'Hushn Not a sound comes to me save the harsh, imperative 'mush! 'mush.' | of the drivers and the mournful cry of the l hungry dogs. Ah my poor little candle Is | going out. I must dress for dinner now | without light. It is still showing. Ii l showed on our wedding day, you remember | mon chere And you spent fifteen hundred 1 dollars for flowers. Good night!'' 1 That was all she ever wrote in her diary l But the barman, who had been her friend | who had loved her without knowing hei | past-almost without knowing her-told u | that she had been very unhappy in Daw | son. One night they missed her at the the l ater. The next night she failed to show up and on the day following the manager call l ed at her room. That aftSRpoon he sent ; | doctor up, and two days later an under | taker
 And this man with the wide blue eye | and pale hair had been her husband. Sh had been dead year when he came t | camp Now I understood the meaning O that melancholy chorus to his sad song:
 'She had fifteen hundred dollars
 Worth of fiowers at her wedding
 The reoF girl. at her funeral,
 She didn't have a flower"
 The night winds that came down tn