pearance as
plausible as the breakfast food of the angels, it is as hot in the
mouth as ginger, increasing the pangs of the water-famished. It is a
derivative from water, air, and some cold, uncanny fire from which the
caloric has been extracted. Good has been said of it; even the poets,
crazed by its spell and shivering in their attics under its touch, have
indited permanent melodies commemorative of its beauty.

Still, to the saddest overcoated optimist it is a plague--a corroding
plague that Pharaoh successfully side-stepped. It beneficently covers
the wheat fields, swelling the crop--and the Flour Trust gets us by the
throat like a sudden quinsy. It spreads the tail of its white kirtle
over the red seams of the rugged north--and the Alaskan short story is
born. Etiolated perfidy, it shelters the mountain traveler burrowing
from the icy air--and, melting to-morrow, drowns his brother in the
valley below.

At its worst it is lock and key and crucible, and the wand of Circe.
When it corrals man in lonely ranches, mountain cabins, and forest
huts, the snow makes apes and tigers of the hardiest. It turns the
bosoms of weaker ones to glass, their tongues to infants' rattles,
their hearts to lawlessness and spleen. It is not all from the
isolation; the snow is not merely a blockader; it is a Chemical Test.
It is a good man who can show a reaction that is not chiefly composed
of a drachm or two of potash and magnesia, with traces of Adam,
Ananias, Nebuchadnezzar, and the fretful porcupine.

This is no story, you say; well, let it begin.

There was a knock at the door (is the opening not full of context and
reminiscence oh, best buyers of best sellers?).

We drew the latch, and in stumbled Etienne Girod (as he afterward named
himself). But just then he was no more than a worm struggling for
life, enveloped in a killing white chrysalis.

We dug down through snow, overcoats, mufflers, and waterproofs, and
dragged forth a living thing with a Van Dyck beard and marvellous
diamond rings. We put it through the approved curriculum of
snow-rubbing, hot milk, and teaspoonful doses of whiskey, working him
up to a graduating class entitled to a diploma of three fingers of rye
in half a glassful of hot water. One of the ranch boys had already
come from the quarters at Ross's bugle-like yell and kicked the
stranger's staggering pony to some sheltered corral where beasts were
entertained.

Let a paragraphic biography of