home friends make me up an assortment of
what they think will please me. Now, you see, in devouring this, I
pursue an absolute method. The books, of course, I take up as the fancy
pleases me; but the reviews, periodicals, and newspapers I turn over to
Sophy, and the faithful creature places on my breakfast-table every
morning exactly what was published that day one year before. Clever,
isn't it? You see I get every day the news, and go through the drama of
the year with perhaps quite as much satisfaction as they who live the
passing days in the midst of the occurring events. Each day's paper
opens a new act in the play, and what matters it that the 'news' is one
year old? It is none the less news to me; and, besides, are not Gibbon,
Shakespeare, and Mother Goose still more ancient?"

I could but smile at this ingenious device; and the Doctor, seeing
plainly that I was deeply interested in his novel mode of life, loosened
a tongue which, in truth, needed little encouragement, and rattled away
over the rough and smooth of his Greenland experiences, with an
enjoyment on his part perhaps scarcely less than mine; for it was easy
to see that his love of wild adventure kept pace with his love of
comfort, and that he heartily enjoyed the exposures of his career and
the reputation which his hardihood had acquired for him. I perceived,
too, that he possessed a warm and vivid imagination, and that, clothing
everything he saw and everything he did with a fitting sentiment of
strength or beauty, he had blended wild nature and his own strange life
into a romantic scheme which completely filled his fancy,--apparently,
at least, leaving nothing unsupplied,--and this he enjoyed to the very
bottom of his soul.

The hours glided swiftly away as we sat sipping our punch and smoking
our cigars in that quaint study of the Doctor's, chatting of this and of
that; and a novel feature of the evening was, that, as we talked on and
on, the light grew not dim with the passing hours; for when the hand of
a Danish clock which ticked above the mantel told nine, and ten, and
eleven o'clock, it was still broad day; and then in the full blaze of
sunshine the clock rang out the "witching hour" of midnight. The sun,
low down upon the northern horizon, poured his bright rays over the
hills and sea, throwing the dark shadow of the mountains over the town,
but illuminating everything to right and left with that soft and
pleasant light which we so often see a