My chief criticism of Zarathustra is his taste for propaganda. Why, after all, concern himself with the mob. In picturing his hero as a teacher has not Nietzsche been tricked away from a true ideal to an historical one? Of necessity the great selfish figures of all time have gone down to oblivion. It’s the will of human society that only the benefactors of mankind shall be cherished in memory. A pure ideal is to be the thing yourself, concerning yourself no bit with proving it. And if the onward path of mankind seems to go another way than yours—proud soul, let it.
FROZEN FALL
Wednesday, January twenty-ninth.
Alaska can be cold! Monday broke all records for the winter. Tuesday made that seem balmy. It was so bitterly cold here last night in our “tight little cabin” that we had to laugh. Until ten o’clock when I went to bed the large stove was continuously red hot and running at full blast. And yet by then the water pails were frozen two inches thick—but ten feet from the stove and open water at supper time, my fountain pen was frozen on the table, Rockwell required a hot water bottle in bed, the fox food was solid ice, my paste was frozen, and that’s all. My potatoes and milk I had stood near the stove. At twelve o’clock the clock stopped-starting again from the warmth of breakfast cooking. I put the water pail at night behind the stove close to it, and yet it was solid in the morning. We burn an unbelievable amount of wood, at least a cord a week in one stove. So I figure we earn a dollar a day cutting wood. We felled another tree to-day and cut most of it up. Still we manage to gain steadily with our wood pile always in anticipation of worse weather. Last night at sundown the bay appeared indescribably dramatic. Dense clouds of vapor were rising from the water obscuring all but a few peaks of the mountains and darkening the bay. But above the sun shone dazzlingly on the peaks and through the thinner vapor, coloring this like flames. It was as if a terrible fire raged over the bay. This morning for hours it was dark from clouds of vapor. They swept in over our land and coated the trees of the shore with white frost.
Yesterday I had to go to the lake and chop out a bag of fish for the foxes. I returned covered with ice and the fish were frozen solid before I reached the cabin. I cut them up to-day with the axe and cooked a week’s supply of food for the foxes.
Rockwell has been a trump. The weather can’t be too cold for him. This morning he pulled his end of the saw without rest. He rarely goes out now without his horse, lance, and sword and he addresses me always as “My lord.” Surely Lancelot himself was no gentler knight. And now it’s bedtime. The cold is less than last night but still I sit huddled at the stove. It is the bitter wind that makes the trouble.