just like boys with blocks when it comes to building. They love it. It just hurts My Dear that he cannot pitch in and play too. His foot is awfully bad to-night. We played Mah Jongg and he could hardly sit through it.

Fed my hands pretty well to-day. Roast beef and raisin pie for noon dinner, baked beans, johnnycake, and chocolate blancmange for supper. It is a bit easier for me to cook now than it used to be. I don't get quite so confused and 'het up.'

To-morrow I have to bake dog biscuits and go to the village for supplies, as well as take care of the puppies and get three meals. My two sets of pups, Danes and Malamutes, have to be cooked for night and morning. Then I also do most of the Zoo feeding, so that the men can stay at the cabin work. Well, I may not be gathering much moss, but I won't get any cobwebs, either!

Old Jack, the brown bear, is caged and to be shot at dawn. He has grown very mean and is making Jill ugly. He is no use to us for work and is an extra mouth, so it is better he should make a rug for the floor and some soup for the dogs.

Just supposing you could shoot useless people that way! But a bad person would not even be as useful dead as a bad bear.

Blowing a gale to-night.
I am so tired.

September 27

There is recompense in even so prosaic a thing as a diary; a sort of getting off by yourself which, even when you are tired and it is night, gives you a grain of satisfaction. The fine frenzy of constructive work! I often think of that in the midst of baking or dishwashing. Still, I can cook good meals and wash a dish clean, and maybe I'm

not so much at covering white paper with pothooks, or gumming up good celluloid, as I may imagine.

The Boy and I baked a hundred dog biscuits yesterday, as well as doing all our chores and getting breakfast and dinner. Then My Dear and I went to the village for supplies. It was a lovely day, a rich, vivid, oil-painting day, clear and clear and soft and velvet-hushed. Coming home we headed into a rainstorm, could see it raining across the sunset a most peculiar effect, the storm clouds a deep maroon. We bundled up and got ready for the deluge, but the storm skirted us and passed down the lake, raining pitchforks upon the place that we had just vacated.

When it was dark we saw, very dim and eerie, but unmistakable, the northern lights. They shot up from behind the Selkirks with faint, fairy fingers of light and they brought memories of my first sight of them, in Fairbanks, so many long times ago. I remember I was running the swift, hard-fleshed run of a very young girl- and a big dog was beside me. It had just turned cold, and the lights fairly sizzled and crackled. When I saw them again in Faust, Lesser Slave Lake, another big dog was with me, my dear Tresore. Of all the unkind, wicked things done to me in this country, the killing of my Great Dane was the most cruel. Two men came in a rowboat to the place he guarded, the 'point of honor' under the flag, and threw him poisoned meat. He was the truest, most honorable friend a human being ever had. When they brought me the news of my father's death, following so close on the going of my dear mother, Tresore was the one who gave me the most comfort and consolation. I can never forget his great head resting upon my lap, his true, kind eyes uplifted in immeasurable love and understanding. . . .

We baked two hundred and seventynine dog biscuits to-day. I did not stop work nor sit down once from the time I hit the kitchen at 7 A.M. and started to cook the hot cakes until now. I did n't even manage to brush my teeth, let alone my hair.

The cottonwoods on the shore are all golden now. This is the loveliest time of the year, so quiet and rich, so ripe with fulfillment. It should be the best time of a person's life, too. You have your Spring of Promise, your Summer of Achievement, and then the Autumn, the harvest, the garnering and storing of all you have gained, against the coming of Winter- of old age and the shut-in senses.

September 30

Last day of September and as warm and sweet as a sun-kissed peach. Must get out this afternoon for a ramble with the dogs. I wish this weather could go on forever, but it won't. Winter will hit with a bang.

The Jim boy got a badly infected knee and had to go out to the doctor, but the walls are up to the windows and that is something. We are so anxious to get at the inside. Adversity pays after all, for if we had money we'd probably put in hideous board walls. As it is, there won't be a bit of milled lumber in the shack nothing but logs and poles.

Old man Beaver chawed out day before yesterday, but stayed around and at feeding-time came back to his cage and walked in. Only his long, flatsome tail stuck out, so we gently folded that in and shut the door. This is the second time he has been loose, and I believe that if it were not for his going housekeeping up some creek we could give him his freedom, as we have the mallards, and still own him.

Have n't done much outside of cooking and washing. Don't mind the first

so much. Had a nice chicken-dinner for them to-day and a plum pudding, which has boiled twenty-four hours and is n't done yet. The only part I don't like is baking about 'steen million sourdough hot-cakes in the morning. The stove is so hot and I get so faint.

October 5

Must take some time for writing or I'll turn into a plain, greasy cook. Am trying to map out a schedule whereby I can get breakfast, clean up, feed the puppies, bake, prepare and serve dinner at twelve, clean up, take an hour's rest, and put in the afternoon at the typewriter. It seems that I ought to be able to do it, that my brain should function even if my back is tired. Also I must get the Boy back to his lessons. We were getting along splendidly when we had to stop on account of the extra work.

The cabin is up to the top logs and looks very fine. It is about 24x40. A passing lumberjack asked me if I thought we 'was going to be able to get all of our animals into that barn.'

We have only Daddy and Charlie, the ex-hack-driver, to work on it, as Jim turned out to have a touch of blood-poisoning and is in the hospital.

October 10

Old Codger Charlie walked out today for no reason that we can see. Just another drifter, unable to stay long in any one place. The boy Jim is back, but not able to do much on account of his knee; so we are not so very well off. Yesterday we went to the village to try for another man. I was glad for the breathing-spell. I wonder why this cooking business shoots me so to pieces?

My Dear has realized, at last, that he is quite crippled, and unless his foot takes a big mend it will have to go. An operation right now is out of the

question, and the only thing we can do is try to keep him sitting quiet. A mean job, as the least thing will bring him hobbling out, and away goes a day's gain. His nerves, and hence his temper, are absolutely shot, and he is fearfully hard to get along with, but so pathetic in his misery that one's heart aches for him. Sitting still and doing nothing is not his headline act. I racked my brain to think up something for him to do, and at last set him to cutting out colored prints and pasting them on cardboards for the cabin walls. Old Daddy admired the results immensely and suggested that we

paper the cabin completely with them. 'People will come to see you,' he said, and it will take all their time to look at the pictures.'

Having kidded my poor cripple into keeping quiet all day, I proceeded to step on his foot. Half-blind with weariness, I missed my step and banged him. After he had come to I went out on the raft and indulged in Grade-A hysterics. These are the silent kind. Your body writhes and your feet and hands twist together and you cry — great, blubbering, swollen tears.

'Dear God,' I begged the stars, 'do something for us!'

AFTER I secured a good boarding-house I went to my desk at the Department of the Interior. A large pile of patents had accumulated and I began to sign the President's name at the rate of about nine hundred times per diem. Shortly I received orders to transfer myself to the correspondence desk in the northeast room of the White House. At first I had to make visits to my old office to sign patents, but that was ended by an order to have them all sent up to the White House, for my presence there was needed hourly.

I

The business of Private Secretary, per se, was pretty well absorbed by

Nicolay and Hay, but there were odd days when I had to go over and take Nicolay's place in the opposite room. That gave me more than a little instruction. Among other things, I learned that the House and Senate did not recognize any individual, but knew the Private Secretary only by the practical fact of his bringing a message from the President. It was therefore an important day for me when I proudly appeared at the doors of the Houses and was led in to be loudly announced to the Vice-President and the Speaker as "The President's Private Secretary with a Message.' From that hour onward, by rule, I was free of the floor of both Houses.

I doubt if there was any spot in the United States in those days, outside of a battlefield, that was more continually interesting than was the correspondence desk of the Executive Mansion. I took pains, at one time, to strike an average of the number of daily arrivals, other than newspapers, and was surprised to find that it was not far from two hundred and fifty. These were of every imaginable character, with quite a number that could not be reasonably imagined. The newspapers themselves were interesting. The majority of them contained marked columns, editorials or letters, abusive, complimentary, or advisory, which the authors fondly hoped might reach the eyes of the President. They did not do so. At one time he ordered me to make a daily digest of the course and comments of the leading journals, East and West, and I made one. It was wasted work and was discontinued, for Mr. Lincoln never found time to spend an hour upon those laborious condensations.

The letters were a study. Large packages of documents were all the while coming, relating to business before one or another of the departments. Some were in law cases. Some were in relation to claims. In any event, it was my duty to know where they properly belonged and to endorse them with the necessary reference from the President, favorable or otherwise. There was a river of documents relating to appointments to office and these too were referred to the President, except such as belonged in my custody. The larger number of the epistles belonged in one or another of the two tall wastebaskets which sat on either side of me, and their deposits were as rapid as my decisions could be made. It had to be swift work. It did seem to me as if the foulest blackguards on earth had made up their minds that they could abuse

the President through the mails and they tried to do so. Added to these were the lunatics.

One day I and my paper-cutter and my wastebaskets were hard at work when in came a portly, dignified, elderly man who sat down near me while waiting for an audience with Mr. Lincoln. He appeared to be some kind of distinguished person, perhaps a governor or something of that sort, and he watched me with an interest which evidently grew upon him. He became uneasy in his chair; he waxed red in the face. At last he broke out with:

'Is that the way you treat the President's mail? Mr. Lincoln does not know this! What would the people of the United States think, if they knew that their communications to their Chief Magistrate were dealt with in this shameful manner? Thrown into the wastebasket! What does Lincoln mean? Putting such a responsibility into the hands of a mere boy! A boy!'

I had been all the while watching him as he fired up. Now there had been an uncommonly dirty mail that morning and I had put aside as I opened them a number of the vile scrawls. My critic had risen from his chair and was pacing up and down the room in hot indignation when I quietly turned and offered him a handful of the selected letters.

'Please read those, sir,' I said, 'and give me your opinion of them. I may be right about them. Do you really think that the President of the United States ought to turn from the affairs of the nation to put in his time on that sort of thing?'

He took the awful handful and began to read, and his red face grew redder. Then it was white with speechless wrath. Perhaps he had never before perused anything quite so devilish in all his life.

'You are quite right, sir,' he gasped, as he sank into his chair again. 'Young

man, you are right! He ought not to see a line of that stuff! Burn it, sir! Burn it! What devils there are!'

But he was correct about the responsibility, for it was a big one for any fellow, old or young. It included many of the applications for pardons and all of these were at one time in my keeping. I remember some of them and what became of them. There were those who grumbled at Mr. Lincoln's strong objection to any kind of capital punishment and his tendencies toward mercy for all sinners. I may have been one of these. There came, one day, a pile of influential petitions on behalf of a southwestern guerrilla. He was unquestionably a red-handed murderer, but the movement in his favor was a strong one. It included even loyal politicians, and next day a gang of big men of several kinds came up to see the President about it. They spoke of the high character of the papers in the case and these were sent for, but they were not in my possession. They may have been duly referred and transferred to the War Office, as was sometimes the custom. Inquiry was made there, but the papers could not be found. The delegation went its way and that application for pardon was hung up. So was the guerrilla who was the most interested person in the case; hardly had that fact been telegraphed before all the missing papers arrived at the White House. I think Mr. Lincoln did no more than look sidewise at me and I am sure he made no verbal commentary.

Nor have I forgotten the almost daily communications from "The Angel Gabriel,' who professed to write in blood that appeared to me more like an inferior variety of cheap red ink. Besides, the angel mixed his inspiration terrifically and some of his work would have read well in Puck. One day there came a really curious paper which afterward perished with my collection of

autographs in Arkansas. It purported to come from the spirits of a score or more of the old worthies of the Republic and it was certainly a strong and dignified document of advice and encouragement which would not have disgraced any of them. It was signed with the signatures of George Washington, John Hancock, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and others, as perfectly as the most expert forger could have done it if he had traced the names over the printed copy of the Declaration of Independence. It was a queer thing and so were all the letters from simple people who wished that the President would kindly step around among the several departments and attend to their business for them. Even inventors asked him to see about their patents and hurry them up.

II

Naturally, one of the important problems before the Administration was the procuring of guns and ammunition for the armies it was gathering. With the general perplexities of the War Department I had nothing to do, but a part of them speedily drifted into my northeast room. Every proposed vender of condemned European firelocks was possessed by the idea that he might make a sale of them if he could induce the President to overrule the decisions of the Bureau of Ordnance. In each case of that kind, I was likely to have a specimen gun deposited in the corner. At the same time there came to the front a large number of inventors, and some of them had practical ideas and some had not、

At the first, however, I had an opportunity for studying quite a number of out-and-out cranks. I remember in particular one enthusiast who had invented a curious kind of far-shooting rifle the weight of which required it to