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Another Splendid Volume Added to the Growing List of Memoirs

Note: The reading public of to-day adores memoirs. The publishers report that volumes of memoirs still continue to be among the best sellers. Readers apparently will take an intense interest in anything, provided it is put before them as something that somebody remembers. I understand that among the forthcoming volumes are to be “The Memoirs of a Boy Scout,” “Memoirs of a Girl Guide,” “Memoirs of a Bootlegger,” and many other fascinating volumes.

In anticipation of these, I venture to present here in brief outline some very striking selections from a work that will probably break all records as soon as published in full, “The Memoirs of an Iceman.”

My people came from Iceland. At least I have always heard my father say that his grandfather York Larfitorf had come from Iceland. His great uncle was one of the Henry Fjords of Norway. I understand that my grandfather settled first in Labrador, but, finding it too warm there, he moved to New England and thence to New York.

My father, however, was by nature a cold man and seldom spoke of his past.

My earliest recollections as a child go back to the Spanish-American War, which I suppose few people now alive can recall. It was fought between the United States and Spain. My father, who had a keen grasp of international politics though only a workingman, told us that he thought that the United States would win. I can distinctly recall the outbreak of the war and how my father came home after his work and laid his ice on the table and said there was going to be a war. My mother took the ice and put it away for breakfast, but said nothing.

My memory, which is still excellent, although I am nearly thirty-five, brings back to me distinctly the New York of those early days. My readers will realize that it was before the days of the motor cars, and that before the days of the motor cars there were no motors.

I distinctly recall that when I got my first regular job in an ice-house I had to walk from Brooklyn to Yonkers every day to my work. But we thought nothing of it in those days.

Life was very much simpler and quieter in those days, as there were only four million people in New York then, while such places as Jersey City and Newark were mere suburbs with less than half a million people in them. The highest buildings in the little metropolis of those days were only thirty stories high, though we already called them “skyscrapers.”

Looking back now on this, I am compelled to smile at it, which I suppose few people could do. I remember how, when the first thirty-story building was built, my father—who though a workingman was a man of great natural shrewdness—said he’d hate to fall off the top of it.

Work began with me early in life and has been more or less continuous, which is a matter I do not regret, as I consider that it is largely owing to an active life of work that at thirty-five I still have all or nearly all my faculties and my mind is at least as bright as it ever was.

My father’s influence secured me a position shoveling sawdust in an ice house, where my own industry gradually raised me to the top. As it is possible that some of my readers do not understand the technique of an ice-house, I may explain that our work in shoveling sawdust was of a highly specialized character demanding not only bodily strength, but skill, courage, and morality.

In the winter when the ice was put in, it was our duty to shovel the sawdust on top of each layer of ice, so that for every layer of ice there was above it a layer of sawdust.

Perhaps I can make my meaning clearer if I explain that the ice and the sawdust were laid in alternate layers; a good way to understand what I mean is to grasp the idea that the ice was covered with the sawdust and that the sawdust was over the ice. I am afraid that I cannot state it more simply than that, and the reader must either get it or miss it.

This was our work in the winter. In summer our task was reversed so that we shoveled the sawdust off and shoveled the ice out again, which lent a very pleasing variety to our work and prevented it from being monotonous. We thus rose and fell each winter and summer.

I recall very clearly the memory of some of my friends and fellow workers, such as John Smith, William Jones, Jim Thompson, and Joe Miller. I mention their names here not because the reader would know them, but because they are just as good as any other names and they help to fill up the memoirs.

I can very distinctly remember the presidential election of 1908. Excitement ran high, as it was felt that one or the other of the candidates was practically certain to win. My father took no part in it. He always claimed that a man delivering ice ought to keep away from the heat of political partisanship. He himself said that he would just as soon hand the ice to a Democrat as to a Republican.

With only a slight effort of memory I can bring back the recollection of the beginning of the great war. At the time I was only twenty years old, but even at that age my mind was nearly as developed as it is now, and I understood that if war began there would certainly be fighting.

My father, who followed closely all that was in the papers, was greatly excited over the war and was convinced that Belgium could easily beat France, though it turned out that he was mistaken. He himself was able to keep in touch with the war situation, as he was engaged in loading ice on the meat-ships that left almost daily for Europe. Added to this, his own European descent gave him a sort of inherited insight into European politics and he felt sure that in the end Norway and Sweden would come out ahead.

All this seems many years ago, and those days have drifted so far into the past that few can remember them. The war came to an end at last and was succeeded by Prohibition, and Aerial Navigation and other things. On these I must not touch, as I am now getting within living memory. Indeed, it was shortly after the war that my failing strength at the shovel necessitated my retirement from active shoveling.

The partial collapse of my mind, which happened at the same time, led me to undertake, on the advice of my medical attendant, the writing of these memoirs. It was his opinion that my mental powers had reached a state of decline, which would guarantee their success. My publishers assure me that this prediction has been amply justified.