d result from their best laid plans and efforts.

Dr. Jonathan Jones sat in his office in the populous, thriving city of
R----, situated in one of our western states. He occupied an easy chair,
heels upon a low, flat-topped writing desk, newspaper in hand, reading
an account of the failure of Dr. Nansen to reach the North Pole. That
renowned and hardy explorer proposed reaching the spot by floating on an
ice floe. We are all familiar with the fact that he did actually get to
within about three hundred miles of the coveted spot, but was obliged to
turn back for want of dogs and sledges.

Dr. Jones laid the paper down with a groan. "Will they never learn?" he
apostrophizingly cried to a bust of Hahnemann that rested upon a bracket
in a corner of the room. "They can never get there on any such lines. I
believe it to be a perfectly feasible scheme, if worked out on simple
scientific principles. If I had capital, I would try it."

He sat with the points of his extended fingers touching each its mate of
the opposite hand, and mused for several moments. Suddenly he seized a
pencil, and rapidly jotted down figures, lines, and characters that
meant nothing to any mortal but himself.

"Figures don't lie!" he shouted to aforesaid bust. "That depends,
Doctor, on whether they are legitimately used or not. Sometimes they are
made to represent the vilest untruth," said a voice behind him. The
Doctor wheeled about and encountered the genial countenance of Mr. A.L.
Denison.

"Hullo! Denison. Just the man I wanted to see. Sit down."

"What's up now, Doctor? Anyone hurt or seriously sick?" inquired
Denison, as he occupied a chair.

For answer the Doctor read aloud the account of Dr. Nansen's failure to
reach the North Pole, and then said: "I do not wonder that he failed. No
one will succeed upon any such lines or plans."

"Well, Doctor, you don't suppose that anyone will ever get there and
back alive, do you?"

"Whether they will or not, I do not know; but that it is a perfectly
feasible and rational undertaking, under proper conditions, I as firmly
believe as I do that I am alive," and he brought his fist down upon the
desk by way of emphasis with a whack that made the various loose
articles in the little office rattle. Even the bust upon the bracket
moved about uneasily, whether by way of approbation or not, this
truthful chronicle ventures no opinion. Denison looked at the flushed
face and glittering eyes of the Doctor, moved