'"
"Makes you proud to have been an enumerator, doesn't it?" asked the boy.
"But it always seems difficult to realize hardship unless you have been
there."
"I spent a winter in Alaska," said Barnes emphatically, "and I can feel
the thrill of it in every line. He knows what he's writing of, too, this
man. Hear how he describes it: 'All the men in the service,'" he
continued, "'covered hundreds of miles over the ice and snow, in weather
ranging from 30 to 70 degrees below zero, the average temperature
probably being about 40 below. Because of the absolute lack of beaten
trails--' I wonder," he broke off, "if any one who hasn't been there can
grasp what it means!"
Hamilton waited.
"No beaten trail," Barnes said reminiscently, "means where stunted
willows emphasize by their starved and shivering appearance the nearness
of the timber; where the snow-drifts, each with its little feather of
drifting snow sheering from its crest, are heaped high; where the snow
underfoot is unbroken; where under snow-filled skies a wind studded
with needle-sharp ice crystals blows a perfect gale; where the lonely
and frozen desolation is peopled only by the haunting shape of fear that
next morning a wan and feeble sun may find you staggering still blindly
on, hopelessly lost, or fallen beside a drift where the winter's snows
must melt before your fate is known.
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