THE POLE! 
where my boys were already sound asleep. 
The thermometer registered 29° below zero. 
I fell into a dreamless sleep and slept for 
about a minute, so I thought, when I was 
awakened by the clatter and noise made by 
the return of Peary and his boys. 
The Commander gave the word, "We will 
plant the stars and stripes — at the North 
PoleT and it was done; on the peak of a 
huge paleocrystic floeberg the glorious ban- 
ner was unfurled to the breeze, and as it 
snapped and crackled with the wind, I felt 
a savage joy and exultation. Another world's 
accomplishment was done and finished, and 
as in the past, from the beginning of history, 
wherever the world's work was done by a white 
man, he had been accompanied by a colored 
man. From the building of the pyramids and 
the journey to the Cross, to the discovery of 
the new world and the discovery of the North 
Pole, the Negro had been the faithful and 
constant companion of the Caucasian, and I 
felt all that it was possible for me to feel, that 
it was I, a lowly member of my race, who had 
been chosen by fate to represent it, at this, 
almost the last of the world's great work. 
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