Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 August 1896 — No Money in the Pole. [ARTICLE]

No Money in the Pole.

You cannot get a quotation for the Aurora. Borealis on the Stock Exchange. The Interest of the average newspaper reader in Nansen, Jackson, and the balloon Is mingled with the suspicion that their renown is foreign to practical affairs There may even be a misgiving lurking at the back of this citizen’s mind that the discovery of the pole would increase the education rate by stimulating the illicit zeal of the teachers for the imparting of useless information. So the Arctic explorers are regarded by many as interesting but foolhardy persons,, who pursue a chimera into uncomfortable regions, and provide a little excitement now and then by returning with horrible tales of privation or by leaving their bones in some frozen waste to serve as milestones to their successors. On the other hand, the man who reaches this pole will be the most prodigious lion of his time, and will set the popular Imagination in such a blaze that Mr. Cook’s clients will gird on their sealskins and collect their potted meats. Then a tickle populace will weary of the north pole, and will pine for its neglected opposite In the south, where the mariner in Poe’s tale was carried by the current into the bowels of the earth, after committing his veracious narrative to a bottle.— SDeaker.