PAGE ROBERT SERVICE

A new ballad is being written of cold, of hunger, of a great lust for gold. The scene is New Mexico; the characters are the same daring, credulous, foolish, get rich-quickers who have strewed tin cans, romance, and their own bones on every trail from civilization to gold field since the days of '49. Gold Dust is the new town and the howling desert is its back yard. All the old setting is there: wild rumors, pokes filled with precious dust, a mad scramble for claims, tents, grimy men, and tired women. The automobile is the one touch of the twentieth century, and it is used merely to give light for night digging.

Who can blame the pessimist for his views? A million times has the amateur miner turned over nothing but hardship and want with his pick. But unlike the child he heeds not burnt fingers. Each adventurer believes himself the favored of the gods and forgets the laws of chance.

Yet it is not wholly greed that prompts this front and sacrifice. The thought is revolting. A gold rush is as much an opportunity to throw off the constantly increasing strain of civilization as one to gain wealth. The same urge that sends men toiling to the woods and streams for game whose value is rarely ever that of even the instruments that one employed to get it, sends them through a New Mexican blizzard to the town of Gold Dust. Men are more elemental than they know.

The psychologist will doubtless find a scientific explanation for the recurrence of this old mania; the layman will regret that he too cannot banish telephone rates and trolleys from his mind, shoulder a pick, and let his imagination and actions run riot. The wealth he grubs from the ground will be a small part of that which he gets from his holiday.