But I've always enjoyed books and
stories about Alaska, and I'd like to read the report."
"It will give you the atmosphere," said Barnes, "listen to this
paragraph, for example: 'The work was performed during the severest
winter known in this part of Alaska by the oldest settlers there. There
did not appear to be a man who did not have a pride in his work, an
anxiety to create a record for traveling time, a desire to enumerate all
the people in the district assigned to him, and to have to his credit
less loss of time because of weather than any of the other agents.'"
"I guess," said Hamilton, "that supervisor had those enumerators just
breaking their necks to beat out the other agents, and he worked on
their pride to get up their speed."
"'That the service lost none of its men from freezing to death, and that
every man returned safely, is a matter for congratulation and of good
fortune, from the fact that there were in this part of Alaska more
deaths from the weather this winter than all preceding years in total;
cases in which those who met such deaths did not begin to go through the
sacrifice and privation that these agents of the service did.
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