Page 348

348

Wednes.
Mar. 21.

On this day one year ago Mr. Brooks
and his party were in the hummocks.
The habit of comparing the condition of
two periods of balancing the thoughts &
hopes and realizations of one with the
other, seems to me a very unprofitable one.
It interferes with the practical [performing,
preventing] executive spirit of a man to
mix a bright and happy past with a
dim and doubtful present. It's a maudlin
price of work at best and I'll none
of it.

But listen to poor Brooks there talking.
He is sitting up congratulating himself
that he can nearly straighten his worst
leg. "Well Mr. Ohlsen I thought we'd never
get through them hummocks. You know
we unloaded three times, now I wouldn't
say it [there?] but seeing that I'm down,
I'll tell you. When we laid down the
last pemican case I went behind the ice and
[laid down] dont remember nothing
till Patersen called me into the tent.
I think I must have strained something
and gone off like, in a kind of fit."

Ohlsen who is as self absorbed [thoughted] a
man as I ever knew replied by stating
that his boots pinched him, to which
poor Brooks never dwelling long on his
own troubles, says in quiet soliloquising
way "Yes and Bakers boots pinched
him too but it wasnt the boots but the
killin cold outside of [them?]. These was
Pierre: his boots were moccasins with deer
skin foot rags but he died of cold for
all that, and theres Mr. Wilson and me
both hanging on in neither one way nor
tother: its a question which of us lasts
the longest." McGeary, another bed