Nowhere had the new forces so vigorously corrected the
errors of the old, or so effectively redressed the balance of the
ecliptic. As one approached the end -- the spot where, seventy
years before, a futile Carlylean Teufelsdrockh had stopped to ask
futile questions of the silent infinite -- the infinite seemed to
have become loquacious, not to say familiar, chattering gossip in
one's ear. An installation of electric lighting and telephones
led tourists close up to the polar ice-cap, beyond the level of
the magnetic pole; and there the newer Teufelsdrockh sat dumb
with surprise, and glared at the permanent electric lights of
Hammerfest.
He had good reason -- better than the Teufelsdrockh of 1830, in
his liveliest Scotch imagination, ever dreamed, or mortal man had
ever told. At best, a week in these dim Northern seas, without
means of speech, within the Arctic circle, at the equinox, lent
itself to gravity if not to gloom; but only a week before,
breakfasting in the restaurant at Stockholm, his eye had caught,
across, the neighboring table, a headline in a Swedish newspaper,
announcing an attempt on the life of President McKinley, and from
Stockholm to Trondhjem, and so up the coast to Hammerfest, day
after day the news came, telling of the President's condition,
and the doings and sayings of Hay and Roosevelt, until at last a
little journal was cried on reaching some dim haven, announcing
the President's death a few hours before.
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