AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN
had found the Pole, but that he had been successful. If, however, he did get there it was partly an accident and he has not the merit of a man who has planned and labored for the result.”
“Governor, there is no ‘if’ in the proposition. I knew the two Esquimaux who were with him, from their childhood. They are very keen about directions and distances. They could not be mistaken about where they went. He wandered about the country, but he was never far from land. The Esquimaux are savages. If the wife of one of them for any reason cannot go hunting with him and the wife of his friend can, they trade wives and think nothing of it, but about many things they know better than we do.”
“Are you going to let that man Shackelford capture the South Pole?” I inquired.
He replied with earnestness:
“If I had a hundred thousand dollars I should go there.”
This was interesting because it had been reported that he would never undertake anything of the kind again.
“Why don't you seize upon Andy?” and I pointed to Carnegie, only a few feet from us.
“He will not do a thing toward it,” he said rather sadly, and I gathered the impression that he had made the effort. In his canny fashion Andy had, nevertheless, introduced him as the only discoverer of the North Pole and committed the society to the statement.
John R. Brooke
John R. Brooke, who fought at Gettysburg, commanded in Cuba during our war with Spain, who has been the senior major general in the United States Army, called on me, November 26, 1913, together with Major David S. B. Chew, to ask me to try to prevent the memorial erected in
