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conscientious effort to solve the [[great?]] Northern mystery; that he will make all possible preparation for the perilous journey, but that at the margin of the long-forbidden regions he will not make the attempt if the conditions are utterly unfavorable to the enterprise.  This explorer is firmly of the opinion that other men who have attempted the journey, by balloon or otherwise, have been drowned or frozen to death, leaving nothing to tell the story but their absence.  Going to such a certain fate, there would be nothing more of Mr. Wellman, except in a world whose metes and bounds are not known to human survey, or nothing for those he would leave behind.  Mr. Wellman has lately revived the theory that there is simply a great sweep of water over the place where the pole ought to be, or a sheet of ice impervious to landmarks.  Now, if he can discover this to be the fact, and that the pole itself is utterly unfindable, and can, by electricity or other modern appliance, communicate the word to the people who stayed by their firesides, and then take the water route to the present long home of preceding explorers, 'twill be "but a man gone," and the surviving millions will know enough not to waste more time and treasure on the polar enterprise.

But if the Wellman expedition returns only with the information that the pole is nothing that a person could even tie a horse to, or fish up with a boat hook--that all is weary waste of water where it has been thought there might be picnic grounds--with lemonade stands and pie counters--and with all this can bring back the precious person of Wellman himself, the intrepid explorer will be welcomed with flags, banners and music, will be elected to membership in numerous geographic societies and will be delightfully gorged at banquets.  And he will advise the next Northern explorer to invest in a rubber swimming apparatus and to carry a diver's outfit.
We hang a light betokening "welcome home," even now, on the furthest end of the wharf.