“There was subdued cheers and they tiptoed.  Ben Sutton was telling the judge that he felt highly complimented, but it was a mistake to ring in that snow stuff on Alaska.  She’d suffered from it too long.  He was going on to paint Alaska as something like Alabama—­cooler nights, of course, but bracing.  Alonzo still had Beryl Mae by the scarf, telling her how flowerlike her beauty was.

“I went into the big room, picking a chair over by the door so I could keep tabs on that grillroom.  Only three or four of the meekest husbands had come with us.  And Wilfred started.  I’ll do him the justice to say he was game.  The ladies thought anything bordering on roughness was all over, but Wilfred didn’t.  When he’d try to get a far-away look in his eyes while he was reciting his poetry he couldn’t get it any farther away than the grillroom door.  He was nervous but determined, for there had been notice given of a silver offering for him.  He recited the verses on the card and the ladies all thrilled up at once, including Beryl Mae, who’d come in without her scarf.  They just clenched their hands and hung on Wilfred’s wild, free words.

“And after the poetry he kind of lectured about how man had ought to break away from the vile cities and seek the solace of great Mother Nature, where his bruised spirit could be healed and the veneer of civilization cast aside and the soul come into its own, and things like that.  And he went on to say that out in the open the perspective of life is broadened and one is a laughing philosopher as long as the blue sky is overhead and the green grass underfoot.  ‘To lie,’ says he, ’with relaxed muscles on the carpet of pine needles and look up through the gently swaying branches of majestic trees at the fleecy white clouds, dreaming away the hours far from the sordid activities of the market place, is one of the best nerve tonics in all the world.’  It was an unfortunate phrase for Wilfred, because some of the husbands had tiptoed out of the grillroom to listen, and there was a hearty cheer at this, led by Jeff Tuttle.  ‘Sure!  Some nerve tonic!’ they called out, and laughed coarsely.  Then they rushed back to the grillroom without tiptoeing.

“The disgraceful interruption was tactfully covered by Wilfred and his audience.  He took a sip from the glass of water and went on to talk about the world’s debt to poetry.  Then I sneaked out to the grillroom myself.  By this time the Chinaman had got tangled up with the orders and was putting out drinks every which way.  And they was being taken willingly.  Judge Ballard and Ben Sutton was now planting cotton in Alaska and getting good crops every year, and Ben was also promising to send the judge a lovely spotted fawnskin vest that an Indian had made for him, but made too small—­not having more than six or eight fawns, I judged.  And Alonzo had got a second start.  Still he wasn’t so bad yet, with Beryl Mae’s scarf over his arm, and talking of the unparalleled beauties of Price’s Addition to Red Gap, which he said he wouldn’t trade even for the whole of Alaska if it was offered to him to-morrow—­not that Ben Sutton wasn’t the whitest soul God ever made and he’d like to hear some one say different—­and so on.