THE LIFE POLAR EXPEDITION

Mt. Kisco, New York, January 21st.—At a meeting of the older members of the expedition last night it was voted to ask Bobby for his resignation, not in any spirit of anger but simply because it was felt that he wasn’t in sympathy with the aims and policies of those in command. Lieut.-Commander Connelly was elected to inform Bobby and to see that he got his carfare back to Scarsdale.

Bobby had anticipated our action, however, by resigning on his own hook and was already on his way home with one of the Barry children in the Barrys’ car, leaving a note to the effect that he was pretty tired of the whole thing and doubted whether the expedition would reach the Pole at all because of having so many fat men on it.

And so ends the first really unfortunate episode of our trip. As Bobby grows older he probably will acquire more repression and will learn that individual whims must sometimes give way to the common good. I also hope that he starts growing tall pretty soon.

With the discordant element out of the way, the next thing to do was to plan for our hop-off. We still have quite a distance to go before we even get in sight of the Pole and we must be moving. So a meeting was called in the Barrys’ study, to which Mr. Barry was, ex-officio, invited, as it was thought that he might have some suggestions. His very first suggestion was excellent; it was, in part, to concoct an eggnog, a hot eggnog. He had some very good eggs, he said, and added that that was one of the advantages of living in the country—you get good eggs. This was voted on, and it was decided that Mr. Barry was right. So the eggnog was made hot and the meeting called to order.

Lieut.-Commander Connelly said that we ought to decide how we were to overcome the retarding action of deep snow on our wheels. We have made several trial spins around the house here, just to see that our cycles were in good order, and found (a) that they were not, and (b) that even if they had been, the snow would have made any kind of progress at all very difficult. As Lieut.-Commander Connelly said, “It is almost as if someone were actually holding the wheels back!”

From there the discussion got around to cases in which wheels actually had been held back by some unseen force, but nobody had ever heard of such cases. Ensign Thermaline said that he knew of a case once where a man with hypnotic power had put a friend under a spell and made it impossible for him to move his hand away from his face. Mr. Barry asked whose face it was the man’s hand was on, his own or the hypnotizer’s, and Ensign Thermaline said that he had never thought to inquire, but that he could get the man on the telephone in a jiffy and find out. We all said that it would be interesting to know. So a telephone book was sent for and Ensign Thermaline set about looking up his friend’s number.

While this was going on, we got back to the business of the expedition and the question of when we should start on. Our route lies pretty fairly straight ahead of us, on up through Westchester County to Massachusetts, then on up through New Hampshire to Canada, and from there to the Pole. “It ought to be very pretty up around Williamstown at this time of year,” said Lieut.-Commander Connelly. “That’s where Williams College is.” Everyone agreed to this and it was remembered that the Williams song, “The Royal Purple,” has some very neat harmony to it. Furthermore, it was discovered that Mr. Barry sings a very passable baritone, and a baritone is the one thing that our expedition has lacked, for Lieut.-Commander Connelly twists out a very tricky tenor, and with me leading and Ensign Thermaline on a low but fairly accurate bass it began to look as if we might do something worth while after all.

“Here’s a funny thing,” spoke up Ensign Thermaline, still buried in the telephone book. “There are two people by the name of ‘Gepp,’ both living in Jersey City. A ‘Ben F. Gepp’ at 218 Belvidere Ave., and a ‘William A. Gepp’ at 82 Jewett Ave.”

“Probably brothers,” suggested Mr. Barry.

“Not necessarily,” retorted Lieut.-Commander Connelly, a little testily.

“All right; cousins then,” said Mr. Barry, and the threatened hard-feeling was avoided. Mr. Barry would be a very good man to have come along with us to the Pole as he is very conciliatory and diplomatic, and after Bobby we need somebody like that.

As a matter of fact, I suggested to him that he come with us and he said that he really ought to take his family to Cannes in March as he had promised them. But he added that he was almost persuaded to give that plan up and come along with us. I suggested that we go right then and sound out Mrs. Barry on the subject because I was sure that we could make her see the thing in the right light. So we all went upstairs to look for Mrs. Barry, but she was asleep. Lieut.-Commander Connelly suggested a little serenade, on the ground that married women get little or no romance in their lives, and said that if he knew married women at all Mrs. Barry would be very glad to have a serenade sung outside her door, asleep or not. So we did “The Royal Purple” for her, very soft the first time through and then crescendo on the repeat.

Then, at Mrs. Barry’s suggestion, we went to bed.