The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1902-10-19
GOOD FELLOWS. "
BY CY WARMAN.
Copyright, 1902. by cy warman.)

Beside the crystal Klondike on the
trunk of fallen tree, we sat talking
of the town of Dawson. of the various
camps and the country generally. Some
men were polling and roping along up
the swift stream with a fiat boat filled
with supplies. A prospector, floating
down from Dominion. who had just
SHOT a rapid with a Peterboro. waved
his hand and my companion waved
back. The man in the boat held up
a brown bag filled with dust-his har-
vest of the yellow corn of the Klon-
dixie.
The old miner pulled his white beard
tn one side and spat far out into the
stream, staining the river as he had
stained the lower fringe of his NOUS
tache, and remarked that Dawson
would never be taken by miner for
a mining camp.
1t was all very we'll, ne said, to talk
of law and order, and looked we'll in
the outside papers, but If forty
miner or a fifty-niner came to the
Klondike. as he had come, to breathe
once more the free, wholesome atmos-
phere OF Early Days, that man would
go back to the camp of his boyhood,
with it's electric lights, trolley cars
and painted houses, deeply disappoint-
ed.
II have made money in every min
ing camp that I have seem" said he.
II have travelled abroad for pleasure.
prospected and found gold. In South
Africa and Siberia wherever 1 struck
a stake or drove n drill I found the
pay-streak.
IT'S the simplest thing in the world
to follow this girdle of gold that belts
the earth. We know II best where 1t
crosses our own country, so wide that
it covers the whole West, from Col
orado to the coast.
Then it sweeps up through British
Columbia, spreads out over Alaska and
the Hudson Bay country and follows
the Yukon down to the Boring Sea.
Cross this cold pond and you pick up
the pay-streak again and follow 1t
across Siberia, and so around the
earth.
And all along this trail you find
the proSpecto.r-on the sands of Afri-
ca, on the SHOWS of Siberia-hunting
hoping, living in a dream that can
never be realized, because, IL he find
a fortune. he will have exhausted the
anticipation to such an extent that
| the realization will only sadden him.
There will be a momentary thrill
and then will come the realization that
| his, dream is over. Having become sud
| denly rich and disseminated he strives
| for pleasure in the things that money
| buy. He will travel round the world,
as l have done, panning the streams
| and searching the faces of all the
| frowning cliffs. When he hears of a
new field he will join the mad rush in
the hope, not of finding a fortune, but
the old camp of his boyhood days.
"Ah,' he unused, stroking his snow
white whiskers: 'if 1t were as easy to
find happiness as it is to find gold, I
should be always happy.
For there is the other prospector
the one who fails, forgets his name,
drifts, dies and is forgotten"
More of this talk there was, from
which / gathered that this l1oary pros
pector was wifeless childless, rich and
unhappy and there was a helpful les
son in his life. There we sat, side by
side like a stack of red and a stack
of white chips on a green cloth, just
the same hight-six feet of earth would
do either of us-both independent; one
independently rich, so that he could
pay his debts, the other independently
poor so that the sheriff, If he came,
could find nothing. Yet in spite of
that fact, one was sad. disappointed
and tired, the other cheerful and full
of interest in the great show called
Life.