EARLY LIFE AND EXPERIENCES OF DR. COOK 91 



This accomplished, he continued his studies. But the demands of 

 his business upon his time were such that it took him six years to 

 complete his course at Columbia, he being a member of the class 

 that graduated in 1890. He was then in his twenty-fifth year. 



His business at that time was sufficiently profitable to justify 

 him in seeking to make a home for himself, and in 1890, the year of 

 his graduation, he married Miss Libbie Forbes, of Brooklyn. But, 

 as fortune willed, this early married life, doubtless a happy one, was 

 very brief, the young wife dying within a year after the wedding. 

 As there were no children, the husband was free to accept any line 

 of work that might open to him. His brother was conducting the 

 milk business and he had not yet succeeded in building up a practice 

 as a physician, so that he naturally looked around for some more; 

 promising employment. 



At that time Lieutenant Robert E. Peary was making prepara- 

 tions for a polar expedition to north Greenland, and, about six 

 months after he left college, the new-fledged doctor saw a news- 

 paper statement that a surgeon was needed for the Arctic voyage. 

 He wrote to Lieutenant Peary, offering himself as an applicant for 

 this position, and for two months patiently awaited an answer. He 

 had almost given up hope of receiving one when a telegram from 

 Peary reached him, asking him to come to Philadelphia. An inter- 

 view was held, the applicant proved satisfactory, and young Dr. 

 Cook was engaged as surgeon in the North Greenland Arctic 

 expedition. 



As he tells us, he applied for this position simply to give him 

 something to do, and not from any proclivity for Arctic work, in 

 which he had previously taken no special interest. But the love of 

 adventure must have been latent in him, for it became a passion 

 with him after this expedition, and since that time there have been 

 few years in which he has not been engaged in explorations. 



A few words more must serve to complete our record of Dr. 

 Cook's private life, it being with his career as an explorer that we 



