Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1911-02-23

the GirI or the Shows
T. OR perhaps the first time in his life
Rowland felt the spirit of romance,
of adventure, of sympathy for
the picturesque and the unknown surg
ing through his veins. A billion stars
glowed like yellow. p~assionless eyes in
the polar cold of the skies. Behind
him. white in its sinuous twisting
through the snow-smothered wilder
ness, lay the icy Saskatchewan, with a
few scattered lights visible where
Prince Albert, the last outpost of civ
ilization, came down to the river half
a mile away.
But 1t was into the North that How
land looked. From the top of the great
ridge which he had climbed he gazed
steadily into the white gloom which
reached for a thousand miles from
where he stood to the Arctic Sea.
Family in the grim silence of the
winter night there came to his ears
the soft Kissing sound of the aurora
borealis as it played in it's age-old
song over the dome of the earth, and
as he watched the cold flashes shoot
ing like pale arrows through the dis
tant sky and listened to it's whispering
music of urending loneliness and mys-
terry, there came on him a strange
feeling thu ( vas reckoning to him
and calling u Aim-telling him that up
there very near to the end of the
earth lay all that he had dreamed OF
and hoped for since he had grown old
enough to begin the shaping of a des-
tiny of his wv
He shivered as the cold nipped at his
blood, and lighted a fresh cigar, half
turning to shield himself from a wind
that was growing out of the east. AS
the match flared in the cup of his
hands for an instant there came from
the black gloom of the balsam and
spruce at his feet a wailing.
hungerful cry that brought a startled
breath from his lips. 1t was a cry such
as Indian logs make about the tepees
of masters who are newly dead. He
had never heard such a cry before. and
yet he knew that it was a VOLTS. 1t
impressed him with an awe which was
new to him and he stood rs motionless
as the trees about him until, from out
LILO Blog ISL 6lbbili " Nv HCoNf AlltA9
came an answering cry, and then, from
far to the north, still another.
Sounds as though I'd better go back
to town." he said to himself, speaking
aloud. by George, but it's lonely!'
He descended the ridge, walked rap
idly over the hard crust of the snow
across the Saskatchewan, and assured
himself that he felt considerably easier
aI.. H. Jg-ht1 80 nnI.az Iz-%
cleaned a few hundred yards ahead of
him.
Jack Rowland was a Chicago man,
which means that he was a hustler, and
not overburdened with sentiment. For
fifteen of his t~hirty-one years he had
been hustling. Since he could easily re-
member, he had possessed to a large
but one ambition and one hope.
With q persistence which had left him
peculiarly a stranger to the more friv-
olous and human sides of life he had
worked toward the achievement of this
ambition. and tonight, because that
achievement was very near at hand, he
was happy. He had never been hap
pier. There flashed across his mental
vision a swiftly moving picture of the
fight he had made for success. 1t had
been q magnificent fight. Without
vanity he was proud of 1t, for fate had
handicapped him at the beginning, and
still he had won out. He saw himself
again the homeless little farmer boy
setting out from his Illinois village to
take up life in a great city; as though
1t had all happened but yesterday he
remembered how for days and weeks he
had nearly starved. how he had sold
papers at first, and then, by lucky
chance, became errand boy in a big
drafting establishment 1t was there
that the ambition was born in
him. He saw great engineers
come and go-men who We're greater
than presidents to him, and who
sought out the ends of the earth in the
following of their vocation. He made
a slave of himself In the nurturing
and strengthening of his ambition to
become one of them-to be a builder of
railroads and bridges, a tunneler of
mountains. a creator of new things In
new lands. His slavery had not
lessened as his years increased. Volun-
tarily he had kept himself in bondage,
fighting ceaselessly the obstacles in his
way. triumphing over his handicaps as
few other men had triumphed, rising
slowly, steadily. res stlessly. until now
-. He flung back his head, and the
pulse of his heart quickened as he
heard again the words of N Horn,
president of the greatest engineering
company on the continent.
"Howland, we've decided to put you
in charge of the building of the Hud-