My Boyhood Part 8

Near Orca, Prince William Sound, Alaska, June 27 {1899}.

MY DEAR JULIAN,

Since I wrote you at Sitka we have come further north and spent five days in Yakutat Bay and since Sat.u.r.day in this sound--have seen innumerable glaciers and lofty mountains and wild strange scenes. At Yakutat we went into Disenchantment Bay, 30 miles where no large steamer had ever gone before. This bay is a long slender arm of the sea which puts out from the head of Yakutat Bay and penetrates the St. Elias range of mountains. It was a weird grand scene. Birds were singing and flowers were blooming with snow and ice all about us. I saw a single barn swallow skimming along as at home. There were many Indians hunting seal among the icebergs.

In coming on here the ship rolled a good deal and I was not happy, though not really sick. On Sat.u.r.day we entered this sound in clear sunshine and the clear skies continued Sunday and Monday. This morning it is foggy and misty. We steamed eighty-miles across the sound on Sunday in the bright warm sunshine over blue sparkling waters. How we all enjoyed it! Far off rose lofty mountains as white as in midwinter, next to them a lower range streaked with snow and next to them and rising from the water a still lower range, dark with spruce forests.

Orca, where we anch.o.r.ed Sat.u.r.day night, is a small cl.u.s.ter of houses on an arm of the sound where they can salmon, immense numbers of them. Two hundred men are employed there at this season. The salmon run up all the little rivers and streams, some of our party have shot them with rifles.

Camping parties go out from the ship to collect birds and plants and to hunt bears and to stay two or three nights. No bears have as yet been seen. I stick to the ship. The mosquitoes are very thick on sh.o.r.e and besides that my face has troubled me a good deal, till the sunshine came on Sunday. I must have a taste of camp life on Kadiak Island, where we expect to be eight or ten days. Yesterday we found many new glaciers and two new inlets not down on the largest maps. We are now anch.o.r.ed to pick up a camping party we left on Sunday. Near us are two islands where two men are breeding blue foxes, their skins bring $20. We have seen one Eskimo here in his kyack. One can read here on deck at eleven o'clock at night. We have set our watches back six hours since leaving New York.

I am rather dainty now about my eating, but keep well. I dreamed last night again about home and that the grapes were a failure. I hope dreams do go by opposites. I suppose you are shipping the currants. We get no mail. I hope to send this by a steamer from the north, said to be due.

We have lectures and concerts and games and the people enjoy themselves much. I keep aloof much of the time. I hope you both keep well. Love to you both. J. B.

From Kadiak Father wrote of the "epidemic of verse writing" that broke out among the members of the expedition. It was the custom to hang the verses up in the smoking room, and on that fact, even, Father later wrote some doggerel. It was while on this expedition that he wrote, "Golden Crowned Sparrow in Alaska," one verse especially:

But thou, sweet singer of the wild, I give more heed to thee; Thy wistful note of fond regret Strikes deeper chords in me.

seems so strangely pathetic and like many of his moods.

Kadiak, July 5, '99.

MY DEAR JULIAN,

In trying to get off last night the ship got aground and must wait for high tide. I wrote to your mother yesterday. It is bright and lovely this morning, the mercury at 70--it is hot. I send you a jingle. Several of the men write doggerel and put it up in the smoking room, so I am doing it too. Mine is best so far. We will soon be off now, I trust you are well. I try not to worry.

Bow westward faithful steamer And show the east your heels New conquests lie before you In far Aleutian fields Kick high, if high you must But don't do so at meals, Oh don't do so at meals.

Your swinging it is graceful But I do detest your reels.

We're bound for Unalaska And we do not care who squeals But mend your pace a little And show the east your heels But in your waltzing with old Neptune Don't forget the hours of meals Don't forget the hours of meals I'm sure you have no notion How dreadful bad it feels!

Push onward into Bering And hasten to the seals One glance upon their harems Then take unto your heels More steam into your boilers More vigor in your wheels But in flirting with the billows Oh regard the hours of meals Do regard the hours of meals.

If in this we are exacting Please remember how it feels.

We're bound for Arctic waters And for the midnight sun Then quicken your propeller And your pace into a run We'll touch at lone Siberia To take a polar bear Then hie away through Bering Straits And more frigid regions dare But in all thy wild cavorting Oh don't forget our prayer

A n.o.ble task's before us And we'll do it ere we go We'll cut the Arctic circle And take the thing in tow And put it round the Philippines And cool 'em off with snow.

Our boys will hail our coming, But a chill will seize the foe.

And we'll end the war in triumph Go you homeward fast or slow.

Kadiak, July 2, 1899.

Though this was a delightful trip, one might say, an ideal trip, he was homesick, sea sick, and, as he says of himself, of all the party the most ignorant, the most untravelled, the most silent. It was a new experience to him, this going with a crowd. I know he often spoke of the expedition's cheer, and how they would all give it when they came into stations--

Who are we!

Who are we!

We're the Harriman, Harriman H. A. E.! H. A. E.!

and "how the people would stare at us!" Father said. He liked it, this jolly comradeship and crowd spirit, but it was new to him, almost painfully new, and though no one had more human sympathy, more tenderness and understanding with human weaknesses and shortcomings, no one had less of the crowd spirit. As he said, he kept aloof--not from aloofness but from embarra.s.sment and shyness. Later he overcame most of this and was able to face a crowd or an audience with composure and sureness. With this picture in mind another is recalled, one of him here at Riverby on summer days, sc.r.a.ping corn to make corn cakes. With an armful of green corn that he had picked, I can see him seated and with one of Mother's old ap.r.o.ns tucked under his beard. He would carefully cut down the rows of kernels and then with the back of a knife would sc.r.a.pe the milk of the corn into a big yellow bowl. He would hold the white ears in his brown hands and deftly cut each row, a look of composure and serenity in his eyes. He could eat his share of the cakes, too, and I like to think of those summer days. That fall he wrote from Slabsides:

Nov. 30, 1899

MY DEAR JULIAN,

I am over here this morning warming up and making ready for dinner.

Hud and his wife and your mother are coming over soon. We are to have a roast duck and other things and I shall do the roasting and baking here.

I wish you were here too. It is a cloudy day, but still and mild. I keep pretty well and am working on my Alaska trip--have already written about ten thousand words. The _Century_ paid me $75 for two poems--three times as much as Milton got for "Paradise Lost." The third poem I shall weave into the prose sketch. The N. Y. _World_ sent a man up to see me a couple of weeks ago to get me to write six or seven hundred words for their Sunday edition. They wanted me to write on the Thanksgiving turkey! Offered me $50--they wanted it in two days. Of course I could not do it off-hand in that way. So I fished out of my drawer an old MS, that I had rejected and sent that. They used it and sent me $30. It was in the Sunday _World_ of Nov. 19.

I have sold four lots here for $225. One house will be started this fall. Wallhead and Millard of P. If I don't look out I will make some money out of this place yet. Your mother begins to look more kindly upon it. A N. Y. sculptor has bought the rock beyond the spring for $75.

Van and Allie are ditching and cleaning the swamp of the Italians below here.

Photography is not an art in the sense that painting or music or sculpture is an art. It is nearer the mechanical arts. Nothing is an art that does not involve the imagination and the artistic perceptions.

All the essentials of photography are mechanical--the judgment and the experience of the man are only secondary. A photograph can never be really a work of art. You can put those statements in the form of a syllogism.

I hope you are better of your cold. Some building burned up in Hyde Park early last night. Robert Gill shot himself in N. Y. the other day--suicide. We shall be very glad to see you again.

Your loving father,

J. B.

A long line of ducks just flew over going north.

The last letter from Slabsides was on May 23, 1900:

MY DEAR BOY,

I am here surrounded by the peace and sweetness of Slabsides. I came here Sat.u.r.day morning in the rain. It is a soft, hazy morning, the sun looking red through a thin layer of seamless clouds. Amasa is hoeing in the celery, which looks good, and the birds are singing and calling all about. I have got to go to N. Y. this afternoon to a dinner. I had much rather stay here, but I cannot well get out of going.... I begin to feel that I could get to writing again if I was left alone. I want to write a _Youth's Companion_ piece called "Babes in the Woods" about some young rabbits and young blue birds Teddy {Footnote: The son of President Roosevelt.} and I found.

Did you row in the races? What race are you preparing for now? It is bad business. The doctors tell me that those athletic and racing men nearly all have enlargement of the heart and die young. When they stop it, as they do after their college days, they have fatty degeneration. In anything we force nature at our peril.

When you are in Boston go into Houghton Mifflin Co. and tell them to give you my last book "The Light of Day" and charge to me. There is some good writing in it. Your loving father,

J. B.

When I graduated at Harvard of course Father was there and he went to the baseball game and other things--we had a little reception in my room in Hastings. In the yard one day one of the old cla.s.ses came along and among them was the new Vice-President, Theodore Roosevelt, and everyone cheered. "Yes," said Father, as we stood there that bright June day, "Teddy takes the crowd"--how little did he know the future, or guess that some day he would write a book "Camping and Tramping with Roosevelt"! Jacob Reid has said that no one who really knew Roosevelt ever called him Teddy, and I know it was so in Father's case. On his trip to the Yellowstone with the President, Father wrote:

In South Dakota, April 6, 7 P. M.

DEAR JULIAN,

We are now speeding northward over Dakota prairies. On every hand the level brown prairie stretches away to the horizon. The groups of farm buildings are from one half to a mile apart and look as lonely as ships at sea. Spots and streaks of snow here and there, fallen this morning.

A few small tree plantations, but no green thing; farmers plowing and sowing wheat; straw stacks far and near; miles of corn stubble, now and then a lone school house; the roads a black line fading away in the distance, the little villages shabby and ugly. When the train stops for water a crowd of men, women, and children make a rush for the President's car. He either speaks to them a few minutes or else gets off and shakes hands with them. He slights no one. He is a true democrat. He makes about a dozen speeches per day, many of them in the open air. As his friend and guest I am kept near him. At the banquets I sit at his table; on the platforms I sit but a few feet away, in the drives I am in the fourth carriage. If I hang back he sends for me and some nights comes to my room to see how I have stood the day. In St. Paul and Minneapolis there were fifty thousand people on the sidewalks. As we drove slowly along through the solid walls of human beings I saw a big banner borne by some school girls with my name upon it. As my carriage came up the girls pushed through the crowd and hurriedly handed me a big bouquet of flowers. The President saw it and was much pleased.... Other things like that have happened, so you can see your dad is honored in strange lands--more than he is at home.... I see prairie chickens as we speed along, and a few ducks and one flock of geese.... It is near sundown now and I see only a level sea of brown gra.s.s with a building here and there on the rim of the horizon.... We are well fed and I have to look out or I eat too much. You can see that the world is round up here. Your affectionate father,