lling her how flowerlike her
beauty was. And old Judge Ballard was holding about half the men,
including Ben Sutton, while he made a speech. I hung back to listen.
'Sir,' he was saying to Ben, 'Secretary Seward some years since
purchased your territory from Russia for seven million dollars despite
the protests of a clamorous and purblind opposition. How niggardly seems
that purchase price at this moment! For Alaska has perfected you, sir,
if it did not produce you. Gentlemen, I feel that we dealt unfairly by
Russia. But that is in the dead past. It is not too late, however, to
tiptoe to the grillroom and offer a toast to our young sister of the
snows.'

"There was subdued cheers and they tiptoed. Ben Sutton was telling the
judge that he felt highly complimented, but it was a mistake to ring in
that snow stuff on Alaska. She'd suffered from it too long. He was going
on to paint Alaska as something like Alabama--cooler nights, of course,
but bracing. Alonzo still had Beryl Mae by the scarf, telling her how
flowerlike her beauty was.

"I went into the big room, picking a chair over by the door so I could
keep tabs on that grillroom. Only three or four of the meekest husbands
had come with us. And Wilfred started. I'll do him the justice to say he
was game. The ladies thought anything bordering on roughness was all
over, but Wilfred didn't. When he'd try to get a far-away look in his
eyes while he was reciting his poetry he couldn't get it any farther
away than the grillroom door. He was nervous but determined, for there
had been notice given of a silver offering for him. He recited the
verses on the card and the ladies all thrilled up at once, including
Beryl Mae, who'd come in without her scarf. They just clenched their
hands and hung on Wilfred's wild, free words.

"And after the poetry he kind of lectured about how man had ought to
break away from the vile cities and seek the solace of great Mother
Nature, where his bruised spirit could be healed and the veneer of
civilization cast aside and the soul come into its own, and things like
that. And he went on to say that out in the open the perspective of life
is broadened and one is a laughing philosopher as long as the blue sky
is overhead and the green grass underfoot. 'To lie,' says he, 'with
relaxed muscles on the carpet of pine needles and look up through the
gently swaying branches of majestic trees at the fleecy white clouds,
dreaming away the hours far from the