Tanana leader., 1910-07-14

my eyes: the old man was gone, the mail was gone and the steamer was gO- ing h. b. for e. on her mad course. 1 looked dazedly at the pilot house and there 1 saw mans face wreathed in the real genuine Bill Taft smile as he took in the situation. Benignant? Why, a Russian icon was never more so in ap- pearance! But what of old P. D.? and what, oh what, of his mail? 1 ran for our beat, jumped in and scanned the waves. Suddenly 1 saw a commotion in the water and a big pike leapt skyward !; he had caved-in face and one lin was gone. The next instant 1 saw old P. D. coming up; he had that mail in his arms and pike fin in his mouth, d snag in his left ear and long sinewy root about his neck. All he said was: "I kinder thought she'd have my mail aboard" l pondered and wondered, and bye and bye something hissed in my ears, unaware like; 1t was a thought leaking out from my cranium and it sounded like "Can such things be and overcome Us like a summer cloud without our special won der?" Old P. D. heard it too; he smiled and said, "I've lived here long time, and if the Susie brings the mail 1 get it like the American 1 am; but for the others I've got to evolute backwards into what them people think I am.' Now understood the retriever act. Blessed is true wisdom and strong the paunch that can keep ones gorge down.
 After drying the mail old P. D. read the printed word of the newspapers and made pretty close guesses at the ink
 blotches of the letters, smiled and hand ed it to me in his silent way In the papers read of $l7, 7,OOO,0 ,0OO deficit in our postal department; 1 read of a
 $l ,00O, ,O0O profit by the Canadian postal service; 1 read of 9 cents per pound charges by our railroads and of 14 cent per pound charges across the line. 1 found that the tallow filled brain of Roosevelt's protege had evolved some wise measures to hel p out the shortage by imposing higher rates upon us, but 1 an still frantically digging around in the papers to find what he is going to do to improve the postal service; how he is going to head off thievery, graft, etc. but see nothing of it ;-wonder if that pike got away with the page containing that. Then 1 read of the franking fraud practiced by our ''great' men, tine NJ. C.'s; of their stuffiing of the mail with tons of obsolete printed matter during the weighing periods, to help themselves to another cash recognition, by the rail- roads, of their services. Now I am talk ing up the remaining piece of mali, and behold, 1t Is magazine ;-"hy, no, 1t Is not after all; it proves to be d puDlica- tion by the geological people at Wash ington of the year 1906 and pertaining to a certain mining district of Alaska, Which, so far as 1 am concerned, might be situated adjacent to Syrtis Major on Mars. This piece of mail was addressed to me, not to old r. D. at all, and it was ''fran anked" and bore across its face a very prominent signature of James
 Wle.1ersham, Fl. (. Why, how nice of this great and good man to think of me. 1 never knew that he had found out that 1 could read nowadays. But how about it in the face of the light breaking i'll upon Us? how about it in the very face of millions of deficit, of a proposed raise in postage, of the frank ing evil? how about it when we up here are to have NO mail at all this winter l mean the Fort Yukon Rampant sec ton? Is not this a pretty appropriate time for the seeker of cheaply obtained publicity to come along and rub his franked signature under ones nose? 1t Is by little things one may gauge the size of man, and in my estimation the great ''Wire me your suppOrt' James Micke,sham, NJ. C., is assuming the proportions of the rest of the able capi- talist-lawyer packers of graft and cor ruption, lawyer Taft at the head, laugh ing and smiling forever. There is the brood of the scorpion, fastened tooth and nail into its mothers back, never to let u0 until she Is consumed .-StrOno