The Wild Lover

 18

Homeward Bound

 19

Approaching Night

 20

[Pg ix]

[Pg ix]

FOREWORD

Songs from a far-away world; a cry from another sphere. To those of us who once experienced the still and pitiless cold, a cry terribly suggestive of the horror-charged gloom, of the icy silence as unbroken as that of unfathomable deeps, of the stern and uncompromising individuality of a disturbed and vengeful North.

Yet one is also reminded that, even in the Klondyke, in due season the brooding spruces are awakened from slumber by the songs of happy-throated songsters, that the melancholy of the forest is brightened by gay flowers. The weight is then lifted from men's hearts; singing is heard in the cabin, and the sound of laughter on the trail. When the mighty Yukon is open to the Behring Sea, the far North is in touch with the world and men are glad.

But the Arctic summer is short-lived. The days of the bird and the flower and the rippling creeks are numbered. Soon the sky turns grey, the wind chants the sun's requiem, the snow falls; and then returns the cold, the gloom, the feeling of isolation, the indescribable terror.

I heard these songs sung in the Arctic, the singer at my side—these songs of nature, songs of hope, home, heart. They seem a part of my life. I heard them as the cry of a lone bird in the vast silence of eternal snows.

The Heights, Cal.

Nov. 15th '99

[Pg 1]

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