Gouverneur Morris

“ He left Quickstep Inlet when he was about fifteen years old, naked as the day he was born; ignorant of everything—who he was or what he was, or that the world contained anything similar to him. It was some restless spirit of exploration that smoulders I suppose, in every human heart, that compelled him to leave the few hundred acres of shore and wood that were familiar to him. He carried with him upon his bold journey a roll of bark, resembling birch-bark, upon which he had scratched with a sharp shell the most meaningless-looking lines, curves, spirals and gyrations that you can imagine. ”

“ Margaret, like most women, suffered a little from self-centration, and to her the trunk of a birch was just a nasty old wet tree, but to Aladdin it was the clammy limb of one drowned, and drawn from the waters to stand in eternal unrest. At length the stumbling progress brought them to a shore of the island: a slippery ledge of rock, past whose feet the water slipped hurriedly, steaming with fog as if it had been hot, two big leaning birches, and a ruddy mink that slipped like winking into a hole. ”

“ And he planned in the dark of the night, how upon a great, clean bone, the shovel of its own antlers, he would inscribe the moose with the arrow in him, standing arrogantly among the bushes as he bled to death, and leaning unconquered against the tree. Then fear of the night descended upon No Man, and he closed his eyes and slept—twitching, coughing and snarling as the dreams of ancient days possessed him. ”

“ Cynthia had never seen a boy with such a beautiful round head and such beautiful white teeth and such bright red cheeks. She always said that she loved him long before he loved her. As a matter of fact, it happened to them both right away. As one baby, unabashed and determined, embraces a strange baby—and is embraced—so, from their first meeting in the great cold stillness of the North Woods, their young hearts snuggled together. ”