papers all finished before he leaves. He is
considered a very "rapid" young man, and looks like it.

Sunday, December sixteenth: We had breakfast today at sunrise (ten in
the morning) and I went for a walk alone upon the ice in a southerly
direction, where the natives were fishing. There was a good trail which
has been made by a horse-team hauling wood from the other shore, and the
air was fine, so that I enjoyed it very much, though my hood was soon
frosty around my face. For a while I watched the natives haul tom-cod up
through the ice holes, but having no place to sit except upon the ice,
as they did, I returned after having been gone two hours, and was soon
dressed for dinner in Sunday suit.

After dinner Mr. H. arrived with the teacher to hold an evening service
in the kitchen, the latter taking Ricka and Mary with her to call upon
some native families, two of whose members were sick. When they returned
Ricka was full of laughter at the way they had entered the native
igloos, especially Mary, who is a large woman and could barely squeeze
in through the small opening called by courtesy a door. Ricka says it
was more like crawling through a hole than anything else, and at one
time Mary was so tightly jammed in that she wondered seriously how she
was ever to get out.

"Ugh!" said Ricka, when Mary related the incident, "that was not the
worst of it. I wanted to keep the good dinner I had eaten, but the smell
of the igloo almost made me lose it then and there, and as I was inside
already, and Mary stuck fast in the door so I could not get out, we were
both in a bad plight. When I tried to help her she would not let me, but
only laughed at me."

"Next time we will send Mrs. Sullivan," said Alma, laughing.

"And you go along with me," said I, knowing that I could stand as long
as Alma the smell of the Eskimo huts and their seal oil. So that was
settled, Miss J., I presume, thinking us all very foolish to make so
much fuss over a little thing like that in Alaska.

This evening, when the kitchen was filled with natives, their service
had begun, and while some of us sat in the sitting-room to leave more
chairs for the others, there came a knock at the door, and in walked the
Commissioner and the young baritone singer, who was persuaded to sing a
few solos after the meeting was through in the kitchen.

Monday, December seventeenth: Mollie is cutting my fur coat for me, but
says I must have one or two more skins to mak