run away,
and meet with a new pressure. He may continue running, each new
pressure prodding him as he goes, until he dies and his final form will
be that predestined of the many pressures. An exchange of
cradle-babes, and the base-born slave may wear the purple imperially,
and the royal infant begs an alms as wheedlingly or cringe to the lash
as abjectly as his meanest subject. A Chesterfield, with an empty
belly, chancing upon good fare, will gorge as faithfully as the swine
in the next sty. And an Epicurus, in the dirt-igloo of the Eskimos,
will wax eloquent over the whale oil and walrus blubber, or die.

Thus, in the young Northland, frosty and grim and menacing, men
stripped off the sloth of the south and gave battle greatly. And they
stripped likewise much of the veneer of civilization--all of its
follies, most of its foibles, and perhaps a few of its virtues. Maybe
so; but they reserved the great traditions and at least lived frankly,
laughed honestly, and looked one another in the eyes.

And so it is not well for women, born south of fifty-three and reared
gently, to knock loosely about the Northland, unless they be great of
heart. They may be soft and tender and sensitive, possessed of eyes
which have not lost the lustre and the wonder, and of ears used only to
sweet sounds; but if their philosophy is sane and stable, large enough
to understand and to forgive, they will come to no harm and attain
comprehension. If not, they will see things and hear things which
hurt, and they will suffer greatly, and lose faith in man--which is the
greatest evil that may happen them. Such should be sedulously
cherished, and it were well to depute this to their men-folk, the
nearer of kin the better. In line, it were good policy to seek out a
cabin on the hill overlooking Dawson, or--best of all--across the Yukon
on the western bank. Let them not move abroad unheralded and
unaccompanied; and the hillside back of the cabin may be recommended as
a fit field for stretching muscles and breathing deeply, a place where
their ears may remain undefiled by the harsh words of men who strive to
the utmost.

Vance Corliss wiped the last tin dish and filed it away on the shelf,
lighted his pipe, and rolled over on his back on the bunk to
contemplate the moss-chinked roof of his French Hill cabin. This
French Hill cabin stood on the last dip of the hill into Eldorado
Creek, close to the main-travelled trail; and its one windo