To-night it looked like the picture I have drawn. These are beautiful days. Yesterday it was as calm in our little cove as one would look for on a summer's day. The day was blue and mild, a day for work. I made of my "North Wind" the most beautiful picture that ever was. I stood it facing outwards in the doorway and from far off it still showed as vivid, _more_ vivid, and brilliant than nature itself. It's the first time I've taken my pictures into the broad light. There's where they should be seen.
Last night was calm until four o'clock in the morning. Then the wind again struck in and the trees roared and the roof creaked and groaned. To-day it was calmer. We began by felling a tall spruce more than two feet in diameter. It lies now near the cabin a great screen of evergreen. Its wood should last us many weeks. I painted out-of-doors on two pictures. That's bitterly cold work--to crouch down in the snow; through bent knees the blood goes slowly, feet are numbed, fingers stiffen. But then the warm cabin is near....
This minute I've returned from splitting wood out in the moonlight. On days when painting goes with spirit the chores are left undone.
If only it were possible to put down faithfully all of Olson's stories! Last night he told of his return to San Francisco from the Yukon thirty years ago, how the little band of weather-beaten, crippled miners appeared on their return to civilization. Olson was on crutches from scurvy, his beard and hair were of a year's growth; all were in their working clothes, all bearded, brown, free spirited. And their wealth they carried on them in bags, gold, some to $7000 worth. As Olson tells it you yourself live in that day. You hear the German landlady of the "Chicago Hotel" in San Francisco, a motherly woman who put all the grub on the table at once so you could help yourself, say, "You boys have some of you been in Alaska for years and I know about how you've lived. Now that you're back you must have a hankering for some things. Tell me whatever you want and I'll get it for you." And up spoke one big fellow, "I remember how my mother used to have cabbage. I want you to get me one big head and cook it and let me have it all to myself!"