“Only a month before his death, Mr. Curwood sent me this telegram:
‘Am working on an article for you which I have wanted to write for five years, and I think it is the best thing I have ever done. Shall have copy ready to mail you within week. Good wishes.’
“But it was nearly a fortnight before the article reached us, for the author was already in the primary stages of his fatal malady.
“Almost at the beginning of this, his last article, Mr. Curwood wrote:
‘When I am ready to enter this most glorious of adventures, the mystery and privilege of death, I shall need no greater comforts in the first abysmal moments of its presence than these things—the grass, the flowers, the beautiful dove on her nest, the voice of the birds, the rippling song of water, the inspiration and courage of the trees.’
“Before that message could be put into type the hand that had written it lay in eternal rest.
“These pages hold Mr. Curwood’s final plea for the preservation of our wildlife, a movement in which he was a veritable crusader. He hated game hogs, with an undying hatred, because he loved nature with an undying love. Here you will find, simply and sincerely expressed, his creed of the wild.
The Editor”
Two days after his death, on the fifteenth of August, James Oliver Curwood was laid to rest in the quiet, peaceful little cemetery of Oak Hill, in Owosso.
The Detroit Free Press recorded the ceremony:—