Evening star., 1909-02-28
The Drifters
Continued from page 4

his cruisings. He took photographs of nearly
naked natives through all the South Sea Is
lands. and made pretty good Drifter's living
at 1t. Pulling up in Seoul, Korea, he became
the officially designated court photographs"
at the Korean capital. He was given place
of abode close to the palace of the Emperor.
His business for couple of years, was to make
photographs of the members of the court. In
cidentally he did a thriving trade in photo
graph making among the Koreans and Euro
Peans and Americans living in Seoul.
Then, with some money in his pocket, he
became interested in the SO called Korean gold
dlgglngs. Now, there never was enough gold
IN Korea to hurt anybody, though plenty of
American exploiters used to think there was.
Carlisle lost all his savings in the Korean gold
diggings. This caused him to develop dislike
for Korea. So, again with his Photographic
KIT and his collapsible dark room he set off
adrifting again. He remained the Drifter with
the camera, UP and down the lonely seas and
dropping off at ports where no camera ever
had been seen before. until the Klondike gold
craze broke out The goldbug dating back to
his Korean experience, still was in his system
and he was one of the first to get into the
klondike country. That settled his drifting.
He got rich in the Klondike
Drifting to the End
A ND so on One could tabulate a list as
long as ones arm of more or less success
full Drifters. Not many of Them of course
given The majority of them, in truth, keep
right on drifting until the end. Some of them
attain a more than moderate success after
many years of wandering
In Australia at the present time there is
middle aged American, a man of fine educa-
ton and address. who has picked up quite
sizable competency by giving readings from
Bret Harte to the Australians. This American
was Drifter in Pacific waters, working always
as shipping clerk hither and yon. until, pull
:~,<v, for ~.<>I Of Il
bourne, he discovered how exceedingly fond
the Australians, in common with all folks of
English origin, are of the stories of Bret Harte,
the mellow California storyteller of another
day. So he decided that he would give read
ings from Bret Harte. He had fine presence,
a good voice, and he perfectly understood the
spirit that breathes through the Harte tales.
He was success at his new line of work from
the start. He became the Harte exponent and
reader for the continent of Australia thereby
becoming at the same time an ex-Drifter.
Everywhere in Pacifc-laved lands you'll
find our Drifters, and it is not often, either,
that you will find occasion to feel ashamed of
one of them. There are American dentists
plenty who pull and plug the teeth of the
dusky and yellow peoples of the Pacific ION
the wing, as it were, and thrive at it. Ameri-
can prestidigitators proftably practise their
magic in strange isolated places where even
the kindergarten tricks of the magician are
deemed miraculous; and few of these men ever
IeIuIH 10 The On1CeQ OtaCeS unI1l Iney 1eel
that they are about ready to die.
There are even drifting American physicians
and surgeons who do we'll at the business of
dropping periodically into out-of-the-way ports
and fixing up the ailments of sick and manned
natives. Cable operators are great Drifters.
The constant extension of the cable business
makes it comparatively easy matter for them
to get work at the cable ports, and so they keep
on the move. Men who sent from this coun-
try to definite points in the Pacific to assist in
establishing American ice manufacturing plants
or breweries or to help in surveying and build
ing railroads, take to drifting from sheer love
of it, after the tasks for which they left the
United States are finished
A careless, careful lot, the Drifters This
may sound paradoxical: but it isn't; for.
while they're middling careless as to where
they're going next, they re pretty careful as to
how they are going to get there and also as to
what they are going to do after they arrive
Not all of these roamers of the Pacific gather
moss; but enough of them do to make
considerable of puncture in that moss grown
adage about the nonaccumulative propensity
of the rolling stone