We old miners are always grave,
unless were drinking."
Another old-timer, out of the bitterness of a "home-mood," imagined
himself a Martian astronomer explaining to a friend, with the aid of
a powerful telescope, the institutions of the earth. "There are the
continents," he indicated; "and up there near the polar cap is a
country, frigid and burning and lonely and apart, called Alaska.
Now, in other countries and states there are great insane asylums,
but, though crowded, they are insufficient; so there is Alaska given
over to the worst cases. Now and then some poor insane creature
comes to his senses in those awful solitudes, and, in wondering joy,
escapes from the land and hastens back to his home. But most cases
are incurable. They just suffer along, poor devils, forgetting their
former life quite, or recalling it like a dream." Again the grip of
the North, which will not let one go--for "MOST CASES ARE INCURABLE."
For a quarter of a century the battle with frost and famine went on.
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