The Alaska socialist., 1914-03-31
IN TRUTH
By vERTSSIMUS

| ing the book of Jobf Well now, there you go! Chasing a wil1-o-the-wisp!
 Tn that fanciful old legend you are drifting away on a shoreless and .un- charted sea of fiction you are feeding your young mind lurid dream of myth lcal lore, beside which, the Arabian Nights, and the hair lifting tales of Bar or Munchasen, seem life the punv efforts of some Senegambian choir Don't I ad- mire the character of Job? Why of course I admire all "good nien and truei" of every age, III every cline, Job was a fine old chap, a>credit to his nat i've ladn, and had by honest dealing and upright ways made marked success of life He didn't, it is true, have as many oil tanks as our John D. Rockefeller. He couldn't clip the coupons from quite so many steel certificates as can our Han l dy Andy, but he did have very com- fortable tortune for his day and age, and lie had rear'd family of promising boys and girls of whom any father might we'll have been proud.
 It was what God, and the Devil, did to that worthy old citizen of the land o f Uz, that rasps me. But proceed with the musty time worn story and let us see how it strikes your young mind Yep are on a still hunt for truth; your brain at this stage of the journey is, iii a measure, unpolluted with superstition and bigotry, now let us abserve how this absurd old fable impresses you:
 There was a man ill the land of Uz
 whose name was Job, and he was
 one that feared God an Id eschewed
 evil. And there were born to him
 seven sons and three daughters. '
 His substance also was seven thou
 sand sheep and three thousand cam-
 els, and five hundred yoke of oxen,
 and five hundred $ u asses, and
 very great household.
 Here indeed was quite sizeable tor tune, and all accumulated by honest and upright dealing.
 Now ny boy was born in southern cline, and we'll l know how the warm hearted planters and farmers of the South dearly love to entertain their friends and neighbors; and there dwells not in my mind even lingering shade Of doubt, that when any neighbor called upon this thrifty old ranchman---tha neighbor was treated with unbounded hospitality. When any young farmer ot that section, or any dude from tke near by city, or any epauletted young ensign of the navy, CT any future and oily tongued young disciple ot the law, sought the society of those three sweet daugh- ters of Job. I'll venture they were one and all, generously served with an un- limited supply of homemade butter and fresh milk; milk with the cream left oil I'll bet those girls could not only make good butter, but could keep house and fashion their own frocks as well.
 It is true they were born in land where most of the comely maidens were taught to dance the Hooch Coochy, but there never was even one little zephyr of scandal anent the daughters of Job. They were well bred, and well behaved girls in everyway, possessing a gentle and modest dignity of character; and i'll my humble judgment, each and every one of them, if given the opportunity could have made home for some de cent man, that would have filled his heart with glad sweet song.
 But they were not given the oppor- tunity, and it IS the conspiracy that was