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While the writer has never seen the royalty statements of Robert W. Service, it is probable that they would present a showing of figures that would be proof positive of just how financially successful poetry writing can be when the popular note is struck.

Service has been called "The American Kipling"—perhaps by the virtue that he is quoted almost as often as his older English contemporary across the sea.

While "The Songs of a Sourdough" and "The Ballads of a Cheechako" established his name and fame as a popular poet, he has done the best of his writings so far in "The Rhymes of a Red Cross Man."

An adventurer in the far North, lured by the promises of a gold fortune in the Yukon, like Balboa of old, he found a greater thing than that for which he sought. For here came the inspiration which resulted in such famous lines as these first two stanzas from "The Spell of the Yukon":

I wanted the gold, and I sought it;
 * I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.

Was it famine or scurvy—I fought it;
 * I hurled my youth into a grave.