The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-09-26

the f1OIel 1lefk.
 Has it?' said the House De- tective4
 Tt has, said the Hotel Clerk. Here whole week gone and not a single am ateur or professional discovers the Pole. don't understand it. Now, back in the early part of the month they were finding the Pole almost as often as they used to find the chap that killed Millionaire Shell. You'd pick up the paper intending to see how the race for the pennant was pro- gressing, only to find the front page all gummed up with the latest and most un- reliable intelligence from the new First ward. It would be old Dock Cook discov- ering the Pole and treating it for what ailed 1t by a private prescription of his own; others present being Hokey and Pokey, trusty natives who were born and bred in the frozen waste. Or also 1t would be Com Peary, U. S. N. (which means Used Steel Nails) discovering the Pole and deliberately stealing Conan & Harris 8 best stuff by mailing the Stars and Stripes to it. When I read the Com's first dis patch it sounded so much like a cue line, that I involuntarily looked off stage to see If chorus of Philadelphia roasting size coryphees wasn't about to come on. with red, white and blue stockings on, to give old LoEgMay a neat boost
 And 1t looked for while as if the Pole was going to be discovered two or three hundred times during the early fall l was expecting that a number of women and children would probably be crushed to death In the rush to get to the Pole before the end of Indian summer. Wal ter Wellman had slowed away his cele- brated Arctic balloon, Foozle the Second s.. to start for the Pole on a safety bicycle. Professor The Herr Blotz, B. V. D., C.. B. x Q. E. & w. A. P, l. O. O. F, etc., etc, the eminent Hamburg savant, thought of making the round trip in a houseboat, equipped only with carionet and a complete set of Schopenhauer. Old Man Weston the pedestrian, was report ed as having bought a pair of gum go- lashes at Fergus Falls, Minn.. with the evident intention of walking through as soon as the roads were better.
 ''Only England hadn't started any of her hardy sons north. She was keeping them all at home to repel the Kaiser, suppose. Anyway. it's the English GUS tom to let some other nation do the rough work and then step in and grab off the finished product Sir Gilbert Parker arose in Parliament and solemnly claimed the Pole for his majesty on the ground that the Pole was located north of Cana = da- regard it as the height of modesty for Sir Gilbert not to claim Heaven, it also being located north of Canada, ac cording to many of the best authorities. But thinking 1t over. I doubt if Heaven would make a thoroughly satisfactory British possession. It's too full of Ger mans
 Anyway, there were big dongs in the discovering line for a few days. And then all of sudden we quit That's the with Americans Larry We are an excitable and uncertain race, as we have often been told by our cousins across the sea. We start a thing and get tired of it and call 1t a dog and are on our way home before an older and rustler civ ilzation would hardly have got under way. Look at our reprehensble behavior in the war with Spain. With character istic Yankee ignorance of the proper mode of procedure in such cases, we hoped in and had that war all sewed up and packed away in camphor balls in- side of three months. How much more dignified and becoming was the attitude of the British in their row with the Boers. There's an example for you of the proper way to conduct a war. I have no doubt in my own mind that if a lot of Cana dians and Australians and other half wild colonials hadn't jumped into the muss, the war in South Africa would still be going on and the native Brttains would still be winning those spelndid vic. tories ending with triumphant march or flight of the Kings Own Royal Pro and Con Dorsetshires back to where they started from, arriving there one at time, the fastest runners coming first, with their bluff British tongues hanging down on their manly chests and their path marked thick with letter IFS and field kits that they'd dropped on the way.
 But, be that as it may, we've quit dis