rative of polar discovery. The consequence was I had
awakened in my mind an enthusiasm to penetrate the sublime secret of
the pole. I longed to stand, as it were, on the roof of the world and
see beneath me the great globe revolve on its axis. There, where there
is neither north, nor south, nor east, nor west, I could survey the
frozen realms of death. I would dare to stand on the very pole itself
with my few hardy companions, monarch of an empire of ice, on a spot
that never feels the life-sustaining revolutions of the earth. I knew
that on the equator, where all is light, life, and movement,
continents and seas flash through space at the rate of one thousand
miles an hour, but on the pole the wheeling of the earth is as dead as
the desolation that surrounds it.

I had conversed with Arctic navigators both in England and the United
States. Some believed the pole would never be discovered. Others,
again, declared their belief in an open polar sea. It was generally
conceded that the Smith's Sound route was impracticable, and that the
only possible way to approach the pole was by the Behring Strait
route, that is, by following the 170th degree of west longitude north
of Alaska.

I thought it a strange fact that modern sailors, armed with all the
resources of science and with the experience of numerous Arctic
voyages to guide them, could get only three degrees nearer the pole
than Henry Hudson did nearly three hundred years ago. That redoubtable
seaman possessed neither the ships nor men of later voyagers nor the
many appliances of his successors to mitigate the intense cold, yet
his record in view of the facts of the case remains triumphant.

It was at this time that my father died. He left me the bulk of his
property under the following clause in his will:

"I hereby bequeath to my dear son, Lexington White, the real estate,
stocks, bonds, shares, title-deeds, mortgages, and other securities
that I die possessed of, amounting at present market prices to over
five million dollars. I desire that my said son use this property for
some beneficent purpose, of use to his fellow-men, excepting what
money may be necessary for his personal wants as a gentleman."

I could scarcely believe my father was so wealthy as to be able to
leave me so large a fortune, but his natural secretiveness kept him
from mentioning the amount of his gains, even to his own family. No
sooner did I realize the extent of my wealth than I resolved to