The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-08-28
TUESDAY, AUGUST @s, 1908.
WALT IS 4 OTTER.


 We are sadly badly and me1ancholi- cally disappointed in Walter wellman. We were betting on Walt. He was so positive, confident and determined over that little job of winging his wlnsome way 10 the Pole that we could almost see him coming back with chip of it pinned to his breast. We have hHen watching the dispatches closely. each morning expecting to see the announce. nent that, he had kicked the earth from under his feet and was soaring through "the viewless fields Of air In search of what has cost so mucn in time. money and human life.
 We had faith in Walt, and were con- hdent that he had cut the word "fail" out Of his vocabulary. He has been calmly, methodically and industriously making his preparations for this little summer outing some months and we wanted him to light out. We were an- ticipating wireless messages from him at least once a day telling us where he was, who and what he was seeing and how he liked it as far as he had gone. Then we thought of his triumphant homecoming, of a reception that would give MT Bryan a thirty cent feeling and how he would bring back descrip- tions and pictures of Polar land that would lay over anything of the kind ever seen in the yellow journals. As The Columbia State says:
 We were up in that balloon with Mir. WnTln1An sailing down CfQan and chill tides of air that roll their currents down Yaanek in the ultimate climes of the pole, in the boreal climes of the pole. Though the sun exhausted his quivers of red-hot darts, though the United States sweated from Maine to Death Valley, though the paving stones Russell Sage melted and turned nto gold, we could still be comfortable by thinking of MT Wellman. We could be cooler than the proverbial cucumber, takes the moral question of tainted campaign contributions cooler than Siioam's shady Till, or the deep cisterns of the midnight air, cooler than the icicle that hangs on Dtans temple or the wine that fevered Keats imagined he was drinking-cooled long time in the deep delved earth: cooler than De- pew when there is casual mention of insurance retainers, cooler than the sunless caverns where Alph the sacred river ran down to a sunless sea. In the midst of this fantastic summer heat we don't care what Shakespeare says frosty Caucasus; and we could be still cooler by thinking on MT Wellman in his icy current of arctic air racing with the northern stars in their cOurs- es. with helm set hard for the Aurora BorealIn
 But alas and alack; likewise alack-a- day. Walt has gone back on Us, he has | has fumbled the ball, he is a quitter. He has thrown up the job and declares that he will not undertake the trip not this year. at all events. He says it is too late in the season. Perhaps that Is true. Any day of the year may be too late for such a foolish under taking but he should have thought of that long ago and prepared us for the shock. But how does he know, for that matter, but that it may be summer up there, or that he might not find it an altogether delightful resort while we are shivering and paying coal bills al home. He doesn't know and Is not likely to ever find out-and we don't care what he contempIates for the fu- ture. He has disappointed us and may come back and hide himself in Chicago for any interest we will take in him.
 
 One would naturally think that Portland, Me. would be a compara- lively cool spot in summer, but on Thursday of last week there were only two cities in the United States that recorded a higher temperature than Portland. and they were Phenix, Ariz.. and Vicksburg, Miss The high tenn perature on that day appears to have