"Well, say, weepin' Sinew! It tastes like icicles made out of them durn little blue flowers you call voylets. I picked some out from under the snow once, an' eat 'em. There was moisture froze all over 'em—so I know how they taste; and that's the way the Ar'tic Circle tastes, with—well, maybe a little rum mixed in, the way they fix things up at the Butler down in Seattle. I darn!... Just you remember, when you get to the Circle, an' say, straight goods, if Cyanide Bill ain't right."
"Talkin' about climate," he resumed, as the train hesitated in passing the Grand Canyon, "there's a well at White Horse that's got the climate of the hull Yukon country in it. It's about two blocks toward the rapids from White Pass Hotel. It stands on a vacant lot about fifty steps from the sidewalk, on your right hand goin' toward the Rapids. Well, I darn! I've traipsed over every country on this earth, an' I never tasted such water. Not anywheres! You see, it's dug right down into solid ice an' the sun just melts out a little water at a time, an' everything nice in Alaska tastes in that water—ice an' snow, an' flowers an' sun—"
"Do you write poetry?" I asked, smiling.
His face lightened.
"No; but say—there's a young fellow in White Horse that does. He's wrote a whole book of it. His name's Robert Service. Say, I'd shoot up anybody that said his poetry wasn't the real thing."
"I'm sure it is," said I, hastily.
"You bet it is. You can hear the Yukon roar, an' the ice break up an' go down the river, standin' up on end in chunks twenty feet high, an' carryin' everything with it; you can wade through miles an' miles of flowers an' gether your hands full of 'em an' think there's a woman somewhere waitin' for you to take 'em to her; you can tromp through tundra an' over rocks till your feet bleed; you can go blind lookin' for gold; you can get kissed by the prettiest girl in a Dawson dance hall, an' then get jilted for some younger fellow; you can hear glaciers grindin' up, an' avylanches tearin' down the mountains; you can starve to death an' freeze to death; you can strike a gold mine an' go home to your fambly a millionnaire an' have 'em like you again; you can drink champagne an' eat sour-dough; you can feel the heart break up inside of you—an' yes, I God! you can go down on your knees an' say your prayers again like your mother showed you how! You can do every one of them damn fool things when you're readin' that Service fellow's poetry. So that's why I'm ready to shoot up anybody that says, or intimates, that his poetry ain't the genuine article."