"I am delighted, Mr. Rivers, delighted," said the President, "to have this opportunity of seeing you again, and to hear you approve this new plan so heartily."
"I didn't approve of it at all, Mr. President," answered Rivers with characteristic abruptness, "but this boy has converted me."
"Tell the President the story, Mr. Rivers," suggested Mitchon.
"I had been pointing out to the lad," accordingly said the geologist, "how exceedingly strenuous is the work on the Alaskan trail, how that none but picked, experienced men of iron constitution and frontier powers of endurance could carry out the work, and how one weak man in the party might cripple the entire season's trip."
The President nodded.
"That is absolutely true," he said; "that is why so many hunting trips are failures when there is a large party along. But I interrupt."
"So I urged that he must get a reputation before coming with me. As far as I can remember, I said to him, 'You must first learn your business as a rodman and so forth, be able to throw a diamond hitch over a vicious mule, climb a peak with no firmer hand-hold than your finger-nails will give you, learn to swim a glacier-fed river with a six-mile current, ride any brute that ever was foaled, run every kind of rapid in any sort of a canoe, find out how to swing an ax and build a bridge, be able to find your way over the most rugged country in the vilest weather or on a pitch-black night, get used to sixteen hours on the trail, and to picking out a soft rock to sleep on, chum up with grizzlies and grow to like mosquitoes, and by that time you will be ready for the Alaskan trail.'"
The President burst into a hearty laugh, and said,
"That ought to have settled him!"
"Hm! Settled him! He just said, 'You can enroll me on that party of yours,' and by all the powers, I will."