Radio Digest (Jan-Oct 1926)

RADIO DIGES T— Illustrated February 27 , 1926 un Greetings for "Mounties" (6)LD VET of Royal Mounted ^-S Tells of Hardships Where the Night is 135 Days Long. Friends Send Radio Messages. loves his God and fellow man up there is joining with the Eskimos in the Sun Dance. Tis a great occasion. Sure, he's only there long enough to promise he'll come back tomorrow, but seein' as it's the first time he's been nigh the top o' the world for 135 days it's worth the trouble.'' " A REN'T you glad you're not up there _/~\_ any more, Uncle Jim?" asked the little lady who could not understand the heart of a soldier of the woods. "In His Majesty's service, Margaret, a man is glad to be where his duty calls. If you are raeanin' that duty does not call me there today, and tells me to be here, then here it is I'm glad to be. Though I think I could still do the Sun Dance with the best of 'em. Birthdays? Say, girl, when the sun forgets to shine for about five months, who's goin' to remember the birthdays in the dark — except that they're registered in the little black book of the command. And when they begin to accumulate past a certain number — "But they're a merry crew above the JAMES CAMPBELL, retired sergeant of the, Canadian Royal Mounted Police, found much to interest him in the pages of the Winnipeg newspaper as he sat by the kitchen range at the home of his nephew who lives in one of those boxed-up, steam heated apartments in Minneapolis. Presently the old veteran of the Arctic frontier peered over the rims of his steel bowed spectacles as the cheery lady of the house busied herself in turning flapjacks and stirring the ham that was sizzling in the pan. "Do ye mind that this is the Twentieth of February?" he observed. "And what does that mean?" asked the lady, "Somebody's birthday?" For a moment he seemed oblivious to his surroundings as he slowly folded his paper* and dropped it on the edge of the table. He crooned a curious chant, low and gutteral. Then he hopped to his feet and began a weird Indian dance about the kitchen floor. "I'm pretty spry yet, what?" he paused in front of his chair and sat down again. "Today the sun is showing himself north of Fifty-Five and every biped fcfc^ that Arctic today. Old Sol hoists a bloody eye over the hills of snow and ice, gives one wink and is gone again to warm himself for returnin' tomorrow when maybe he'll be givin' two winks. Each day he'll come back for a little longer and soon he'll be squintin' long and warm through the black trees bringin' the sap from the ground. That'll start the leaves comin' and the country will become more beautiful which will please Old Sol inducin' him to stay longer and longer until midsummer he'll be payin' visits in the middle of the night and forget to go down at all. "Sure and don't I know the truth of it myself and don't I know the pleasure of seein' the sun on the Twentieth of February, which is no less than the comin' of the mail that mushes all the way from Edmonton by the dog teams? It's hard enough to be shut off in darkness 3,240 hours and each hour a little longer than the last — no word between you and your kin and never knowin' whether your own are dead or alive. Oh, and don't I know, the feel of the deadly white fingers of the bristling ice that freezes and squeezes the very marrow out of your bones? But never was there a man whose hand was the law that would complain of that." The old man turned again to his paper. "Don't they have the telegraph up there?" asked Margaret. "Now, I was just a-comin' to that," he ran a long, leathery finger {Continued on page 24) Below are two little Eskimo pupils sent by Mrs. W. B. E. Moore, who, with her husband, teaches a school at Pilot Point, Alaska, 45 miles from the nearest white person. Mrs. Moore wrote to KMA, Shenandoah, la., telling of the Radio program they had received there and which was enjoyed by their Eskimo charges. Pilot Point, she described as. "just a little jaunt" from Siberia, Russia.