writer has ever gazed upon. It had the nose of a human being,
which bore the signs of conflict with the elements, and brilliantly
registered a long course of fiery internal applications. But he was a
nice old fellow, who wanted to get back to his home in southeastern
Alaska, and envied me my departure. Arrived at Chenik, I put up at
Dexter's Hotel, a pretentious and comfortable structure recently
erected by that pioneer of northwestern Alaska.

At dinner, doubtless in order to make me feel "at home," I was engaged
in conversation by a stout female person rather pretentiously attired,
who proved to be the housekeeper of the hotel. At least forty-five
summers had added successive weight to her proportions, and the only
delicate thing about her was her sensibility--and this I knew because,
in effect, she told me so. It was so trying for a woman to be alone in
Alaska, and how astonished her people at home would be to see what she
had to put up with--one who had been reared, so to speak, in the lap of
luxury. It made her homesick to hear that I was heading for New York,
whose gay metropolitan life, I somehow felt I was to infer, she had
enjoyed in days gone by. This engaging creature, in a softly modulated
voice, quite impressively selected her words,--the longer the
better,--and the fact that they were not always appropriate to the
thought was absolutely immaterial so long as the sentences were rounded
and sonorous. For instance, in speaking of the ability of the
commissioner at Chenik, judging from her association with lawyers (and
she had always known the very best), she hardly believed that he
possessed a "judiciary" mind. In reply to her leads, I said that I had
just come from Council, and that I was an attorney; but, in answer to
her query whether I had made my "stake," with great discretion I forbore
to boast of the fortune secreted about my person, remarking that in
Alaska one employed his profession as an opening-wedge for mining
interests, and that as yet my mines were in a state of development. This
elicited the information that she felt similarly as to _her_ profession;
and when I made bold to inquire what that profession might be, I was
slightly staggered by the rejoinder, "The operetta." Now, if she had
said _opera_, it wouldn't have been so bad, for one associates with the
opera something grand, massive, and substantial; but she didn't fit in
with "operetta" at all. It was a rude shock, later in the evening, wh