The Wreck of the South Pole and Other Strange Tales — page 152: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

What Shall She Do? 145 of my own childhood, the ghost of my early manhood, the ghost of my own airy dreams. Many a time have I pur- sued the phantom, always following, never reaching, never holding, never with these man’s steps to overtake it, never with these man’s hands to grasp it, never with this man’s heart to inclose it. And for the ten nights I followed it, followed with more earnest desire, and with stronger outstretched hands than when a boy, yet only for a second time to find it as before in boyhood—only a shadow never to be realized. Ah, well! How much is left after five years of love and ten of wandering—coming back to find love gone— for the man of forty to follow but phantoms. LE: THE QUESTION. My life has been somewhat of a bohemian one, I must confess, and consequently I have met a great many dif- ferent classes of people. Just why it is that I never could remain long in a place has always been a mystery to me hever fathomed. In the few years of my life (I do not want to make myself out an old man) the press from Maine to California has become familiar to me, and many are the offices which have known me for a day and for- gotten me the next, But that has nothing to do with my story. | | CONNIE OOOLKS (SO)