There are strange things done in the midnight sun

By the men who moil for gold;

The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold; The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see

Was that night on the marge of Lake Labarge

I danced with Samantha McGee

RANSVESTIA

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.

Why he left his home in the South to toam 'round

the Pole, God only knows.

He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;

Though he'd often say in his homely way that "he'd sooner live in hell."

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson Trail.

Talk of your cold! Through the parka's fold it stabbed like a driven nail.

If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze till

sometimes we couldn't see;

It wasn't much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.

And that very night, as we lay packed tight

in our robes beneath the snow,

And the dogs were fed, and the stars o'erhead were dancing

heel and toe,

He turned to me, and "Cap," says he, "I'll cash in this trip,

I guess

And if I do, I'm asking that you won't refuse my last request."

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn't say no;

then he says with a sort of moan:

"It's the cursed cold, and it's got right hold till I'm chilled clean through to the bone."

"And Cap," says he, "I've gone stiff in the knee, and the freeze will do me in;

So my last request is next to my breast in a bag of seal skin."

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