``In the early spring he stood above the heights of Miles Canyon ... the line 'I have gazed on naked grandeur where there's nothing else to gaze on' came into his mind and again he hammered out a complete poem, ``The Call of the Wild''. Conversations with locals led Service to write about things he had not seen (some of which had not actually happened) as well. He did not set foot in Dawson City until 1908, arriving in the Klondike ten years after the Gold Rush when his renown as a writer was already established. After having collected enough poems for a book, Service ``sent the poems to his father, who had emigrated to Toronto, and asked him to find a printing house so they could make it into a booklet. He enclosed a cheque to cover the costs and intended to give these booklets away to his friends in Whitehorse'' for Christmas. His father took the manuscript to William Briggs in Toronto, whose employees loved the book. ``The foreman and printers recited the ballads while they worked. A salesman read the proofs out loud as they came off the typesetting machines.`` An ''enterprising salesman sold 1700 copies in advance orders from galley proofs.`` The publisher ''sent Robert's cheque back to him and offered a ten percent royalty contract for the book.`
William Briggs
Robert