Vernon County censor. [volume] (Viroqua, Wis.) 1865-1955, 1910-03-09

expedition was In town the other cay,
and was a,jked what he thought OF
Cook in TIE light of the verdict OF
the Copper lagen savants. Mr.. Dunn,
in The Shameless Diary Of an Explor.
er. had already given a preliminary
study, at close range. of Cooks per
sonality. Mr.. Dunn, in discussing the
matter said:
IF this controversy, so-called. must
be historic. its cardinal point, the
germ and handspring of the whole
affair, is the personal character of the
Doctor. Could we know that as it is
there would be no dispute. Even
could DR.. Cooks understanding OF
himself have been spread before the
cool and unprejudiced eye of the man
in the street, verdict might have been
allayed all squeamishness about a
national disgrace. am sure that the
doctor would be the first to concede
this, for his wishes are often fathers
TO his thoughts, even in the trivial
ties of discovery, as all who have hit
the trail with him are aware
"of course, the frontier is down
upon him. He has not the mercurial
temperament. The doctors fayorite
and professed maxim is; Follow the
line Of least resistance. This is his
philosophy of life, and he turned so
many cheeks to those boreal rough
necks that they suspected a duality of
faces In addition, they imagined that
he owed them money for toting his
outfit on their objectionable
sin for an eastern 'dude!' They
Used him, and, following the line OF
least resistance, he came to court
Some characters are translucent;
all their actions are the proper com
Elements of obvious qualities: your
conception of AS nature and his ex
preston of it by deed fit together like
the adjoining parts of a jig-saw
puzzle; his whole life is logical, con-
sistent. Such, for example, were Lin
coin, Gladstone, Napoleon. But some
men may be the reverse of this, in
whom intention and execution never
seem TO match Your idea of B and
BIS own conduct are at war. Always
there seems to be a link lost some
where, a broken circuit which makes
life contradictory.
Men like this become mysteries;
controversies wage about them as if
they were fated to battle the world.
Our minds, in constructing personali-
ties from their history, pick here a
plain quality, there a distinct act, and
the resulting men of straw may live
and breathe and be quite human, but
they cannot be explained Fiction,
perhaps, is the only medium in which
Justice may be done them by the hui
manistic means of manipulating facts
in themselves conflicting to outline a
being rather more than less actual for
discrepancies in its components. In
this category, perhaps, DIR. Cook be-
longs.
HE has the divine itch for explor.
alton, that lust for the thrill of first
beholding new, untrodden valley;
horizon-fever of Kipling heroes-in
the da~s when they sprang into
print. here can be no doubt of this.
But he lacxs-the mere fact must be
stated I'd pressed no further-the
traditions of self-denial, or educa.
tion, maybe, which one associates
with the pioneers of Anglo-Saxon
blood To this must be added logged.
ness a persistence that is more pig
headedness than determinations and.
| third unsensitiveness. Mix we'll, and
add this dominant impulse, the subtle
yeast that pervades and leavens every
atom. every fiber of his being; van
| ity, a deep, self-concealing vanity A
| person like that said man very
much sanely of the world, who heard
this synthesis-and he spoke slowly
and seriously-'may go to lengths
quite beyond the suspicion or even
realization of the men who think they
know him best
In this light, then, consider the
doctor the man-of-straw in fiction,
as suggested, And keep in mind the
maxim. which is as true humanity as
scientifically. A single hair divides
the false and true A Flaubert might
choose any moments in his career
from which to project telling por-
trait of him, but for the sake of brev-
| ity, let us select say, about Septem-
her l0,1906, after the doctor has dis.
/ sipated most of his second Mt. Me-
Kinley party. and announced that the
mountain has stumped him again
! He starts up Tokashetna glacier
alone with Ed. Barrill.
Keep an eye on his traits listed
above, and put yourself in his posi-.
ton He has spent some dozen years,
the best lustrum Of any mans life.
in following the hehest of the ruling
passion. In that time he has accom-
piished nothing upon his own hook,
nothing as a leader of an expedition
and explorers of even weaker vanity
than his count subordinate jobs wiah
party as hardly trial heats. Also.
not only has ne failed to arouse re-
spect for his scientific ability AMONG
most Americas explorers and scien-
fists, but they have secuted and
questioned his pretensions in both re-
CARDS He Is past middle age, and the
down grade of life is before him. The
first serious expedition in which he
was a mogul was a failure-to Ne.