“Dick Byrd was never a robust man. He had the physical handicap of a bad ankle to overcome, and his general build has always been slight. He is not the huge, strapping hero of story-book fame; he was the little Napoleon with a great determination that outweighed any physical weakness. A man doesn’t have to be big to get places. A little fellow, if he wants to badly enough, can accomplish a lot. “And Dick Byrd certainly wanted badly to go to the Pole. Even when he was a kid in school, it was his ambition to be the first man to reach the North Pole. Somebody beat him to it. Peary got there first, but it took him a long time, and he had to go on foot. Byrd flew, and accomplished in a few hours what had taken days and weeks to do before. “Not only did he want to go to the Pole—he wanted to go to all sorts of places, and he did, too. Before he was fourteen years old, Richard Byrd traveled alone around the world! That took nerve. And not only nerve on Richard Byrd’s part, but on the part of his mother! The trip wasn’t a regular round-the-world tour that anybody can make today on a boat that’s like a little palace, but it was a rough, adventurous voyage on an army transport, and a British tramp. “It was like this. You see, Dick had struck up a friendship with Captain Kit Carson. After the Spanish American War, Carson went to the Philippines as a Circuit Court Judge. But he didn’t forget his friend Dick. They exchanged letters. In one letter the Captain mentioned that it would be a fine idea if Dick Byrd came down to the Philippines to see the exciting time that they were having down there. Dick took him up on the idea, and made plans to go. At first his mother was horrified at the idea, since Dick was not a strong boy. But with unusual intelligence, she decided to let him go, since the trip would be an educational one, and would do the boy more good than any possible harm that could come to him. The very fact that he wanted so badly to go, and planned his trip so carefully, made her feel that he had reached an age where he must be allowed to decide for himself. This was a very wise decision on her part, since it was probably this trip, with its adventures in self-reliance that made Richard into the successful adventurer that he is.” “The trip to Manila was made exciting by a typhoon that stuck the transport—something that the boy would not have wanted to miss, although the Captain of the transport could have done very well without it—he said it was the worst that he’d ever been through.