Groans From
"Purgatory::
By WILLIAM YANERT.
[ Editoh’j Note.—This article is welcomed
because it voices a line of thought that is
widespread in the present day and that all
people should give earnest consideration
to whether they approve or deplore it. The
article is referred to on the second page of
this paper. Of the writer it-is superfluous
to say he is no fool. For years he has lived
an isolated l.fe in the Yukon flats, and he
and others in that region are hard hit by
the proposed discontinuation cf the winter
mail service between Fort Yukon and Ram
part—a step the Leader 1 eiieves to be con
trary to enlightened public policy, but one
that is not out of harmony with current
ideas of centralization. The writer is known
as “Mysterious” Yanert—not through any
disrespectful application of the nickname,
but because people cannot understand why
so pleasing a personality and one possess ng
uutinuai mental ai.d social qualities should
place himself out of touch with his kind.
It will only he added that his camp is called
Purgatory and that the heading for his
aitic.e io supplied by us.]
1 am an individual who lias only lately
mastered the art of reading and writing:
a great achievement, indeed; but some
how I sometimes think back of the days
of abject ignorance and it seems to me I
slept more soundly then, and i know for
eei tain that in those blessed days I never
got out of bed feeling grouchy and will
ing to hop onto somebody. I am now
tackling arithmetic, and my instructor,
old man Potlatch Pick, a native, tells
me that just as soon as 1 am past page 0
of the hook on “How to Figure Things”
I will savvy this and most other puzzling
problems.
Old man P. I>. is a great reader; he
knows a lot, but no matter what he
reads he invairably smiles at the end,
puts away the paper and says nothing,
i differ from him in that i become so
blamed hot at things that sometimes 1
have to stick my head into the water
keg to keep from spoiling my excellent
temper, it appears to me that being
able to read is not entirely a good tiling
for a poor man. Now the other day 1
read something dreadful; one’s mind
had to be riveted good and solid to basso
profundo all the time in order to appre
ciate the horrors of the different chap
tors. It was a play—Hamlet. I slept
poorly that night-,’ saw more specters
than Richard ill ever did, and 1 swore
1 would never do so again. In the
morning, however, I remembered only
some fragments of the gruesome lines
spoken by H. One was, ‘‘.My gorge rises
at it,” and the other ‘“There’s something
rotten in Denmaik.” 1 am not up in
psychology to any alarming extent, hut
l believe that my consciousness of the
high value of an Alaskan gorge had some
subtle connection with my recollection
of tiie first, while an odor arisihg out of
old T. D.’s boots had prevented complete
erasure from memory’s little cylinder of
tiie second line, ife that as it may, I
attached no importance to either of tiie
lines, seeing that I was not in Denmark;
let Hamlet hold down his cheap Danish
vittles while l keep mine down by tying
a string around my own esophagus. I
imagined I was done with these two
lines for good, but the other day I stood
on the river bank watching times grow
ing harder all along the creek ; I saw the
salmon going up stream beneath the wa
ter ami some suckers going down in
boats. Pretty soon a steamer came along,
and ere long she blew her whistle and
old P. D. came loping madlv out of the
shack yelling “Mail! Mail!! Mail!!!”
He yanked off his hoots and pantaloons
in a hurry, and, prancing up and down
along the beach, lie began to bark hoarse
ly between jumps just like a Chesapeake
Day retriever. I tried to calm him, but
just then the mail came whizzing
through the air tied to a club; it hit tiie
steeply rising beach, executed the true
parabola of the up-to-date Hying ma
chine and Hopped back into the now
madly tossing steamer waves. I rubbed
| my eyes: the old man was gone, the
mail was gone and the steamer was go
ing h. b. for e. on her mad course. I
looked dazedly at the pilot house and
there I saw a man’s face wreathed in
the real genuine Bill Taft smile as he
took in the situation. Benignant? Why,
a Russian icon was never more so in ap
pearance! But what of old P. I).? and
what, oli what, of his mail? I ran for
our beat, jumped in and scanned the
waves. Suddenly I saw a commotion in
the water and a big pike leapt skyward ;
he had a eaved-in face and one tin was
gone. The next instant I saw old P. D.
coming up; he had that mail in his arms
1 and a pike tin in his mouth, a snag in
his left ear and a long sinewy root about
his neck. All he said was: “I kinder
thought she’d have my mail aboard.” 1
pondered and wondered, and bye and bye
something hissed in my ears, unaware
like; it was a thought leaking out from
my cranium and it sounded like “Can
such things be and overcome us like a
! summer cloud without our special won
: der?” Old P. 1). heard it too; he smiled
! and said, “I’ve lived here a long time,
and if the Susie brings the mail 1 get it
like the American 1 am; but for the
others I’ve got to evolute backwards into
what them people think I am.” Now I
understood the retriever act. Blessed is
true wisdom and strong the paunch that
can keep one’s gorge down.
After drying the mail old P. 1). read
the printed word of the newspapers and
made pretty close guesses at the ink
blotches of the letters, smiled and hand
ed it to me in his silent way. In the
papers I read of a $17,000,000 deficit in
our postal department; I read of a
$1,000,000 profit by the Canadian postal
service; I read of 0 cents per pound
charges by our railroads and of M cent
per pound charges across the line. I
found that the tallow-tilled brain of
Roosevelt’s protege had evolved some
wise measures to help out the shortage
by imposing higher rates upon us, but I
am still frantically digging around in
the papers to find what he is going to do
to improve the postal service; how he
is going to head off thievery, graft, etc. ;•
but I see nothing of it;—wonder if that
pike got away with the page containing
that. Then 1 read of tlie franking fraud
practiced by our “great” men, the M.
C.’s; of their stufriing of the mail with
tons of obsolete printed matter during
the weighing periods, to help themselves
to another cash recognition, by the rail
roads, of their services. Now I am tak
ing up the remaining piece of mail, and
behold, it is a magazine;—why, no, it is
not after all; it proves to be a publica
tion by tiie geological people at Wash
ington of the year li'Ufi and pertaining
to a certain mining distiict of Alaska,
wnicii, so far as I am concerned, might
be rituated adjacent to Svrtis Niajor on
.Mars. This piece of mail was addressed
to me, not to old 1*. D. at all, and it was
“franked” and bore across its face a
verv prominent signature of James
Wie:ibrsham, M. 0. Why, how nice
of this great and good man to think of
me. I never knew that he had found
out that I could read nowadays. l>ut
iiow about it in the face of the light
breaking in upon us? how about it in
the very face of millions of delicit, of a
proposed raise in postage, of the frank
ing evil? how about it when we up here
are to have NO mail at all this winter:
I mean the Fort Yukon-liampart sec
tion? Is not this a pretty appropriate
time for the seeker of cheaply obtained
publicity to come along and rub his
franked signature under one’s nose? it
is by little things one may gauge the
size of a man, and in my estimation the
great “wire - me - your - support” James
W'ickersham, M. C., is assuming the
proportions of the rest of the able capi
talist-lawyer backers of graft and cor
ruption, lawyer Taft at the head, laugh
ing and smiling forever. There is the
brood of the scorpion, fastened tooth
and nail into its mother’s back, never to
let go until she is consumed.—Strong
woms, perhaps; but I am not the Indian
punka wallah wtio begs indulgence of his
majesty the Man-eating Tiger by calling
him “Uncle.”
I am a miserable failure at predict
ing atmospheric disturbances; no good
whatever in many other directions; but
you may set me down as having said
that our government, as now conducted,
is inviting the storm that will crush it
w hen it comes; it is rumbling behind an
ever-thinning wall of political ignorance
now, and soon its noise will reach the
slumbering ear of every worker in our
land; they will wake and read the pro
Headquarters for the Traveling Public
Pioneer and Tower Houses
Two First-class Resorts
The Rooms just fitted up and furnished at the Tower House may cost a
little more—they are certain to afford a lot mor<? com fort
than can be had at other places.
Joe Anicich, Prop. Tanana, Alaska
THE TANANA RESTAURANT
Best Meals in the Camp
Short Orders at All Hours
Best cf everything1 « n the Market. Service unexcelled in the North
Fresh and Delicious Bread, Fies and Pastries Always on Hand
tests that Eugene Debs is tacking to
capitalism’s church at our own Witten
berg; we will have an American Ref
ormation that will make the world gasp,
i Mark it. The people are awakening by
! Die thousands today and they are cast
ing questioning glances at their robber
barons chiefly. When they shall have
focused their vision on the capitalist,
courts, however, they will be on the
light trail: your knight of the spotless
mantle and the rotten core, he is the
real hellhound at your throat. Set me
down, also, as having said that the
American people will know no clean
government, Republican, Democratic,
Socialistic or any other, until they have
disbarred from participation in politics
every lawyer in tlie land, able or shy- j
ster; for just so long as they are there
with legal advice at so much per quart
when it is a case of honest John I’oor
sucker versus crooked Tom Scadowner,
we will not have to journey to Denmark
to find things that are rotten, nor will
we have to gaze at Yorick’s skull to
make our gorge rise. They are the crew
who have taken care that no man today
can make one single move without pay
ing tribute first; who have seen to it
that a man’s word, even between broth
ers, stands for nothing; you must go to
the lawyer, and don’t you forget it.
Yukon Rivlr, Alaska,
June 25, DUO.
INSPECTORS OF
HULLS AND BOILERS
The board of inspectors of hulls and
boilers for the St. Michael district have
been in Tanana for several days. The
steamboats so far inspected by them
are the Julia B., the Jeff Davis, the
General Jacobs, the Schwatka, the J. P.
Light, the St Michael and the Minne
apolis.
The board consists of Thomas P.
Peering, inspector of hulls; Thomas J.
Ileney, inspector of boilers, and Jerome
A. Desio, secretary of the board. It is
possible they will remain in Tanana
some time, as this is a point where
most of tlie boats plying Yukon waters
necessarily touch.
Capt. John Bermingham, supervising
inspector of the first district (which in
cludes all American territory from
Alaska to Mexico and also the Hawaiian
Islands), arrived at Tanana on the
steamer St. Michael last Sunday and
departed next day on the Herman. He
is on a tour of supervision of the whole
district.
Jack Cavanaugh buys and sells Second
hand Goods of all kinds.
AFFAIRS OF THE
LATE PHILIP GIROUX
Publication is requested l>v the per
sons having the matter in charge of the
following statement of the moneys re
ceived and paid out in connection with
the sickness and death of the late Philip
Giroux. The accounts are in the hands
of J. .1. O' Prien :
RECEIPTS.
G. S. Kaig.§ 1.00
Joseph. 1.00
H. W. .50
Leader. 1.00
C. A. Brown. .. 1.C0
E. Biedermun 1.00
G. Bailey. 3.00
Ida Johnson . 1.0.1
G. H. Tiffany... 1.00
O. T. Thompson 1.00
Cash. 1.(0
E. P. A Hurd .... 10.00
E. R. Anieich .. 1.00
George Curl ... 5.00
Northern Sai’n. 10.00
Ed Woods. 5.00
T. Dieterick.... 5X0
Frank Smith... 10.00
George Dale . 5.10
H. A. Stockman 5.00
Gilmore. 2.00
Dan Kenally — 5.00
F. McGraw. 5.0u
A. R. Randles .. 2.00
A.G. Vachon. 10.(0
H.W.Stralignum 3.00
John Sander . 3.00
H. Robeson. 5.00
A. Carney. 2.00
Joe Anieich .... 10.00
J. P. Mulligan 3.00
John Woods.... 3.00
Total.
A. J. Cnmphell § 5.00
Frank Lundiii. 2.00
G. J. Miller .... 2.00
J. B. Huhhard.. 5X0
T. F. Carlin ... 1.00
W. Biirnyeat. .. 5X0
Tom Howell . . 5.00
Ed Y. Lee. 10.00
H. Doty . 1X0
W.C. Brown. .. 2.00
T. G. Shaw. 5.(0
H.Conard. 1.G0
G. Yautier. 1.00
Y.S. Lee. 1.00
James Taylor - 5.00
Ed Sullivan .... 2.00
A. G. Frenzel . 5.00
Oscar Lundiii.. 10.00
G. Thornhlr.de. 2.00
J.S. Hunnewell 5.00
P. Larson. 5.C0
W. A. Lasers .. 2.00
W.^C. McGuise. 1.00
J. Mai ion. 2.00
W. E. Leslie... 2.00
J. Renalle. 3.00
C. Chamiuist 10.00
Mrs. Nusshaum 2.00
J. J. O’Brien 5.00
C. A. Munro... . 5.00
F. Fullthorpe.. 3.0.)
.... §236.50
KXI’KX IJITCRKS.
A. S. Kinzer, medicines and dressings
for 3 months preceding death, §23;
undertaking, §75.§100.00
Harry Lawless and Joe Lawless, dig
ging grave. 30.00
Benjamin Green, cleaning cabin. 5.50
John Langlais, headboard and fence
for grave. 15.00
H. Anderson, material, §30.25; making
ami decorating coffin and case, §33. 60.25
H. Feron, S. J., funeral services. 16.25
Golden North Cafe, meals to attend
ants. 3.00
Total. §236.00
The widow of the noted pioneer, the
late Jack MeQuesten, is visiting Fair
banks and is being entertained by Mrs.
Dan Callahan. Mrs. McQuesten is a
native. She came in from her home in
Berkeley, Cal., and will visit places
along the Yukon where she is ac
quainted.