Transcription:
2 I have kept step by step with you and little Stickeen from the moment you started out in the early morning called by the
luring yet imperative verse of the storm - Had I been there I think I would have insisted upon the cup of coffee and a breakfast
as a wise preparation for a day's tramp over a glacier in the company of so fine a storm - I watched with you the flying clouds
and the driven rain, and listened to that most thrilling of all wood land music, the whispering of the leaves, and the long,
deep sighing, half-moaning voice of the wind among the top most branches of the trees. How well I know that sound, it catches
my heart as few things can. Then I saw the trees - my special friends - being torn and crushed and ground in the cold, pitiless
grasp of the beautiful ice. Then as you pushed out for the western shore of the great prairie of ice , I note your remark
that Nature can make us do any thing she likes . illegible e illegible e, and yet what tricks she often plays upon her devot
illegible met with during the early part of the day. But when the return journey began, and the flowers of the mountain clouds
came down upon the swift wings of the wind, wrapping all in a gray gloom, my heart began to be faint with fear for the two
wanderers, seemingly alone with the tempest and the night. For, after all, you see I was only looking on, and that is the
most nerve-trying thing any one can do in a time of danger. But now? , when worn and spent by the fatigue of the day, the
awful chasm yawned at your feet, little the fate of death, and with no alternative Ah, dear friend, I am glad that time has
spread her 04725