It is now after midnight and I’ve just finished a drawing. Rockwell is concerned about these late hours and when I told him that I could work so very well alone at night he seriously suggested that I send him out in the daytime to stay all day without dinner so that I could work better. I’m reading about King Arthur and the round table to him; that’s good for both of us. He has made himself a lance and a sword and to-morrow I expect to confer some sort of knighthood upon him. Apropos of the book of King Arthur, Rockwell said to-day, “I don’t think the pictures in the book are half nice enough. I think of a wonderful picture when you read the story and then when I see the one in the book I’m disappointed.” And these King Arthur pictures are rarely good in execution. It just shows that one need not attempt to palm off unimaginative stuff, much less trash, on children. The greatest artists are none too good to make the drawings for children’s books. Imagination and romance in pictures and stories a child asks for above all, and those qualities in illustration are the rarest.
WELTSCHMERZ
Monday, January thirteenth.
Of the three days that have again passed two have been quite fair enough for Olson to have come. Both yesterday and to-day Rockwell and I made frequent trips down the shore to look for him. It is terribly depressing to have your heart set upon that mail that doesn’t come. I begin to think that some other cause than the weather holds Olson away. It is possible that the steamer we saw going to Seward was no mail steamer, and that Olson, who has gone for his pension money, is waiting for a mail. I feel like making no record of these days. I take pleasure only in their quick passage.
Saturday night Rockwell received the order of knighthood. For three quarters of an hour he stayed upon his knees watching over his arms. He was all that time as motionless as stone and as silent. Now he is Sir Lancelot of the Lake and jousts all day with imaginary giants and wicked knights. He has rescued one queen for himself but as yet none for me.
We have run about some on our snowshoes, though the snow is nowhere deep enough for that except along the shore. The weather is still mild—hardly freezing at all—and it forever successively rains, snows, and hails. All the animals are still alive. I don’t love them, they’re rather a nuisance. Nothing could be less amusing than a blue fox,—small creatures, excessively timid, of cowed demeanor. Saturday I had to get a bag of fish from the lake where they had been soaking and cook up another great supply of fox food.
Wednesday, January fifteenth.
Yesterday to begin with a snowstorm and then a clear, gray day. To-day blue sky in the morning, a north wind and bitter cold; gray again at noon and mild. By the geological survey report of Kenai Peninsular, January should average in temperature at Seward sixteen degrees. From now on it must average close to zero to give us sixteen for the month. Here it’s not as cold as New York. Rockwell bathed to-night standing within six feet of the open door. I have definitely decided that Olson stays for some cause other than the weather, although to-day and yesterday he could not have come. We snowshoed a bit to-day. Alaska snowshoes are certainly the easiest that ever were to travel on.