to discuss his difficulties
with us. He has been treated with great unfairness in one of the
northern towns. They gave him a fine mouthful of promises when he went
there, but they gave him nothing else. They failed to pay their
subscriptions and their advertisements, so that he had to leave the
place naked and ashamed. Some day, he is going to write a story in an
American magazine and describe this town as a real-estate office in a
muskeg. It will be marrow to his bones, and he will let the magazine
have the story for nothing.

Or, worse still, he will tell the truth about all the leading citizens;
he will set it down without equivocation or shadow of turning.

"But you wouldn't do this latter," I argue; "only a man with ink for
blood could do so terrible a thing."

"On the contrary, lady," snaps he, "I shall take blood for ink, that is
what I will do."

"But," said I, "you must expect to be beat a few times in your life,
little man, if you live such a life as a man ought to live, let you be
as strong and healthy as you may." This was quite a clever answer, and
I wish Charles Kingsley had not said it first, then it would have been
original with me.

This young editor talks with so much vigor and so many gesticulations
one might think he was acting a picture for a biograph machine. It is
a pity his political heroes do not avail themselves of his services.
As a fighter, the dear lad would have a fine genius if properly
incited; also, he has a marvellous vocabulary of flaming adjectives.

There is an Indian woman on the ship who is married to a white man, who
seems most kind to her. The northern woman who interpreted the Toa
Song for me, says this man believes the world well lost for love, his
heart being very full and his head very empty. You will observe that
this northern woman is a philosopher, probably owing to the fact that
she has had little to read and plenty of time to think. She was born
in this country over fifty years ago but was educated in the South. At
the age of sixteen, she married a Factor of the Hudson's Bay Company,
and is now his widow. This year agone she has been in Europe, but has
returned once more to her native North with its hidden wilds and yet
unhappened things. I tell you that some secret presage lies upon this
land, and one who has sensed it must come back again and again to its
intangible allurement. It may be the strong, austere spirit of the
land that holds one; or the