ay.

But there they were cooped up behind a stockade, like creatures at the
zoo, to amuse the crowd, and be giggled at and poked toward as if they
were some newly imported breed of monkey. An Eskimo likes as little as
any other human to have fun made of him.

Worst of all, they lived in the white man's houses, and found the four
walls instead of the "wide and starry sky" intolerable. A snow house
has its own kind of stuffiness--the smell of whale-blubber and
seal-oil to Eskimo nostrils is a sweet perfume. To be cooped up in a
bedroom, and expected to sleep on a mattress with pillows, is pure
torture.

While they were on the exhibition stand, in the torrid heat, they had
to wear those heavy clothes of furs and skins which the ladies said
looked so picturesque. They knew how the polar bear felt in his cage
away from his ice-blocks. The food the white man ate with relish was
such queer stuff. They longed for that delicious tidbit, the flipper
of a seal. How good the entrails of a gull, or a fox's stomach would
have tasted! But the white men seemed to think that coffee, and
watermelon and corn on the cob, and ham and eggs, and the pies their
Eskimo mothers never used to make were good enough for them. Except
for the warm blood of the seal, the Eskimo ordinarily has no use for a
hot drink.

Several of the older Eskimo wilted away like flowers, and died. They
were buried and forgotten; and when the dogs died they were buried
and forgotten too: there was about the same lack of ceremony in the
one case as in the other.

But little Pomiuk through thick and thin was the joyous life of the
party. They worked him hard, because he amused the visitors. The
visitors would throw nickels and dimes into the enclosure, and as the
coins flickered in the air Pomiuk would lash out at them with his
thirty-five foot whip. If he nicked the coin it was his. Then he would
laugh--a very musical laugh, that could be heard a long way off. He
was a jolly, friendly little soul, and he wore a smile that hardly
came off even when he slept.

But there came a time when even happy little Pomiuk could not smile.

One day as he leapt high in the air, agile as a Russian dancer, to
bring down one of those spinning coins with his whip, he fell on the
boards, his hip striking a nail that stuck out.

His mother ran to pick him up. His face was twisted with agony.

He tried to stand, for her sake, but the effort was too much for him,
and he sank back i