alebone, so, tightly coiled,
and another piece of blubber is fitted over the whale-bone. After that
it is put outside where it freezes into a little round ball. The bear
swallows the little round ball, the blubber melts, the whalebone with its
sharp ends stands out straight, the bear gets sick, and when the bear is
very sick, why, you kill him with a spear. It is quite simple."

And Ugh-Gluk said "Oh!" and Klosh-Kwan said "Ah!" And each said
something after his own manner, and all understood.

And this is the story of Keesh, who lived long ago on the rim of the
polar sea. Because he exercised headcraft and not witchcraft, he rose
from the meanest _igloo_ to be head man of his village, and through all
the years that he lived, it is related, his tribe was prosperous, and
neither widow nor weak one cried aloud in the night because there was no
meat.

THE UNEXPECTED

It is a simple matter to see the obvious, to do the expected. The
tendency of the individual life is to be static rather than dynamic, and
this tendency is made into a propulsion by civilization, where the
obvious only is seen, and the unexpected rarely happens. When the
unexpected does happen, however, and when it is of sufficiently grave
import, the unfit perish. They do not see what is not obvious, are
unable to do the unexpected, are incapable of adjusting their
well-grooved lives to other and strange grooves. In short, when they
come to the end of their own groove, they die.

On the other hand, there are those that make toward survival, the fit
individuals who escape from the rule of the obvious and the expected and
adjust their lives to no matter what strange grooves they may stray into,
or into which they may be forced. Such an individual was Edith
Whittlesey. She was born in a rural district of England, where life
proceeds by rule of thumb and the unexpected is so very unexpected that
when it happens it is looked upon as an immorality. She went into
service early, and while yet a young woman, by rule-of-thumb progression,
she became a lady's maid.

The effect of civilization is to impose human law upon environment until
it becomes machine-like in its regularity. The objectionable is
eliminated, the inevitable is foreseen. One is not even made wet by the
rain nor cold by the frost; while death, instead of stalking about
grewsome and accidental, becomes a prearranged pageant, moving along a
well-oiled groove to the family vaul