Captain Fitz Horrigan has the Stroller's heartfelt thanks for a fine, large turnip which he was so kind as to bring with him on his late trip from Dawson to this place. The fact that the turnip was grown in the captain's own garden at Dawson increases the Stroller's appreciation of the gift.
After all a turnip is only a turnip, but as the Stroller surveys the captain's gift as it reposes on his table it counts for more than a turnip.
In the first place that particular turnip tips the scales at twelve pounds, indicating great care and skill in its cultivation. As the Stroller gazes at the
inanimate thing before him he realizes how the industrious and indefatigable captain must have cared for and nurtured it. How, when all Dawson was in the long, unstarched robes of sleep, he was out with his little hoe and cultivating that turnip; how he cared not for staining his usually dainty fingers by grasping an intruding weed by the nap of the neck and jerking it hence; how, with his own hands he would spread a blanket over that turnip when the nights were chilly; how, with his own hands he sewed little nighties for the lownecked squashes which are left to mourn the departure of their neighbor, the turnip.
Anybody in any country can raise a turnip, but to raise a twelve-pound
turnip so far north it is necessary to look almost straight up to see the North Star and do it in the three short months allotted by Nature for turnips to grow in that country, is going some and requires that the gardener be up and hoeing at daylight and daylight comes then at 1 o'clock in the morning.
And yet during the growth and maturing period of that turnip tbe genial
captain never slipped a cog or missed a pink tea in his social whirl. His magisterial duties were in no way neglected. His friends were not slighted in any respect, yet that turnip was kept expanding, reaching out - aye, spreading like a greenbay tree - until it reached the mammoth proportions of twelve pounds.
Nor was the work all done when that turnip was removed from the soil which nurtured it. Not by a long shot, for it required fully twenty minutes hard shoveling to fill up the hole which remained when the turnip was removed.
By the growth of that turnip Captain Horrigan has added luster and fame to his already good name, for what is more memorable than to be recognized as a past chief patriarch as a agriculturist and devotee of "pastural" pursuits?
Ere long we may expect to hear of a work being issued by Captain Horrigan entitied "Turnips and How to Grow Them."
