Tanana leader., 1910-07-14
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By WILLIAM YANERT.

IEDIToR'5 NoTE.-This article is welcomed because it voices line of thought that is widespread in the present day and that all people should give earnest consideration to whether they approve or deplore 1t. The article is referred to on the second page ct this paper. Of the writer it is supertiuous to say he is nc fool. Flo" years he has lived an isolated life in the Yukon flats, and he and others ill that region are hard hit by the prorosed discont ntinuatior of the winter mail service between Fort Yukon and Ram part-a step the Leader Lelieves to be con trary to enlightened public policy, but one that is not out of harmony with current ideas of centralization. The writer is known as Mysterious" Iancrt-nct through any d;sre >i,: ctfl! application of the nickname, but because people cannot understand why so pie asing personality and one possess ng unusu:. mental ard social qualities should place himself out of touch with his kind It will oi,!y be added that his camp is called Purgatory and that the heading for his a1tiv.e is supplied by us.]
 am an individual who has only lately mastered the art of reading and writing: d great achievement, indeed; but some how 1 sometimes think back of the days of abiect ignorance and 1t seems to me l slept more SOundly then, and 1 know for certain that in those blessed days never got out of bed feeling grouchy and will ing to hop onto somebody. 1 am now tackling arithmetic, and my instructor, old man Potlatch Dick, a native, tells me that just as soon as am past page $ of the book on ''How to Figure Things" l will s;lvvv this and most other puZZlng problems.
 Old man P. D. is a great reader; he knows a lot, but no matter what he reads he invairably smiles at the end, puts away the paper and says nothing. 1 differ from inn in that 1 become so blamed hot at things that sometimes l have to stick my head into the water keg to keep from spelling my excellent temper. 1t appears to me that being able to read is not entirely good thing for poor man. Now the other day 1 read something dreadful; one's mind had to be iiveted good and solid to basso prof,ndo all the time in order to appre- ciate the horrors of the different chap tcrS. It was play-Hamlet. l slept poorly that night, saw more, specters than Richard III ever did, and l swOre
 
 morning, however, l remembered only some fragments of the gruesome lines spoken by Il. One was, My gorge rises at it," and the other ''Thcre's something rotten in Denmark" 1 am not up in psychology to any alarming extent, but i believe that my consciousness of the high value of an Alaskan gorge had some subtle connection with my recollection of the first, while an odor arising out of cid r. D.'s boots had prevented complete erasure from nemorys little cylinder of the second line. Be that as it may, attached no importance to either of the lines, seeing that 1 was not in Denmark; :; let Hamlet hold down his cheap Danish vittles while 1 keep mine down by tying string around my own esophagus. l imagined 1 was done with these two lines for good, but the other day stood on the river bank watching times grow ing harder all along the creek; saw the salmon going up stream beneath the wa ter and some suckers going down in boats Pretty soon a steamer came along, and ere long sine blew her whistle and old P. D. came loping madly out of the shack yelling "Mail! Mail!! Mail !' He yaiked off his boots and pantaloons in hurry, and, prancing up and down along the beach, he began to bark hOarse- ly between jumps just like Chesapeake Bay retriever. l tried to calm him, but just then the mail came Whizzing through the air tied to a club; it hit the steeply rising beach, executed the true