A Day's Lodging

"A Day's Lodging" is a short story by the American writer Jack London, collected in the 1906 short-story collection Love of Life and Other Stories, where it is the second of the volume's eight stories. The story is set in the harsh, bitterly cold Yukon. Between the Yukon River and the snow-covered mountains, in weather more than seventy degrees below zero, the prospector John Messner drives his dog team forward alone with difficulty; along the way he finds an uninhabited cabin and stops to rest, build a fire, and make coffee. Soon a man and a woman traveling through knock and come in. The man claims to be a doctor and gives the alias Haythorne (also translated Wumble); the woman is Teresa, Messner's wife, who left him years earlier. Messner does not reveal his identity at first, and the three share the room and eat around the fire. As they talk further, Messner finally tells the truth, and unexpectedly takes control of the situation in a calm, almost ironic way, proposing that the doctor trade gold dust for his departure; the other agrees, but after receiving the gold dust Messner throws it into the river and, with a sense of relief, sets out again on the snowy road. The story displays Jack London's characteristic themes: the test of survival under extreme natural conditions, and the contest between greed, emotion, and self-respect in human nature. The text is short; after an colloquial first-person opening it shifts into cold, restrained narration, and the atmosphere is close and tense. It is often included in selections of Jack London's northern stories.