Alaska -- Description and travel; Frontier and pioneer life -- Alaska
When I called for Jennie at the hotel today I found her crying with pain
in her leg, so she could not take a lesson, but I sent out for little
Charlie who came running to me with outstretched arms. He is a dear
little child, and I am getting very fond of him. It is some weeks since
Jennie first began crying occasionally with pain, and her parents cannot
understand it, unless it is caused by a fall she had on the steamer
coming from San Francisco last summer, and of which they thought nothing
at the time. I sincerely hope she is not going to be very ill, with no
doctor nearer than White Mountain. The sick woman still suffers, though
they are doing what they can for her. The captain requested me to bring
our medical books over, or send them, that he can look up remedies and
treatment of rheumatic fever, for that is what she no doubt has.
While seated at the organ an hour later, in came the storekeeper and his
clerk, followed soon after by the captain and musician. Then we had
music and solos by the last named gentleman, and the knitting needles
kept rapidly flying. At eleven o'clock they went out into the intense
cold, which sparkled like diamonds, but which pinched like nippers the
exposed faces and hands.
Here is another cold, quiet day, with the thermometer at thirty-five
degrees below zero, and it is a first class one to spend by the fire. We
have read, slept, eaten, and fed the fires; with only one man, three
girls and myself in the house. At ten in the evening G. and B. came in
from a five days "mushing" trip on the trails, being nearly starved and
frozen. They were covered with snow and icicles, their shirts and coats
stiff with frost from steam of their bodies, as they ran behind the
sled to keep warm. A hot supper of chicken (canned), coffee, and bread
and butter was prepared in haste for them, and they toasted themselves
until bedtime.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE LITTLE SICK CHILD.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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