which I am very fond; for at this hour the repose which you here see is
frequently repeated; and, to compare big things with little, it might be
likened to some huge lion sleeping over his prey, which he is not yet
prepared to eat, quick to catch the first sound of movement. There is
something truly terrible in this untamed nature. Man's struggle here
gives him something to rejoice in; and I would not barter it for the
effeminate life to which I should be destined at home, on any account
whatever. Perhaps, if I should there be compelled absolutely to earn my
daily bread, the case might be different, for enforced occupation is
quite too sober an affair to give time for much reflection; but I should
most likely lead an idle sort of life there, and should simply live
without--so far as I can see--a motive. I should encounter few perils,
have few sorrows, fewer disappointments, and want for nothing,--nothing,
indeed, but temptation to exert myself, or prove my own manhood in its
strength, or enjoy the luxury of risking the precious breath of life,
which is so little worth, and which is so easily knocked away. You have
seen one side of me,--how I live. Well, I enjoy life and make the most
of it, after my own fashion, as everybody should do. If it is a
luxurious fashion, as you are pleased to say, it but gives me a keener
relish for the opposite; and that it does not unfit me for encountering
the hardships of the field is proved by the reputation for endurance
which I have among the natives. If I sleep between well-aired sheets one
night, I can coil myself up among my dogs on the ice-fields the next,
and sleep there as well,--I care not if it's as cold as the frigid
circle of Lucifer. If I have a _penchant_ for Burgundy, and like to
drink it out of French glass, I can drink train-oil out of a tin cup
when I am cold and hungry, and never murmur. I like well-fitting
clothes, but rough furs suit me just as well in season. Why, it would
make you laugh fit to kill yourself to see these Danish workingmen,--the
laborers, you know, with whom I sometimes travel,--fellows that can't
read nor write, poor mechanics, rough sailors, 'hewers of wood and
drawers of water' generally for this poor settlement,--who never tasted
Burgundy in all their lives, and would rather have one keg of corn
brandy than a tun of it, and who never took their frugal fare off
anything more tempting than tin. Do you think that these people can,
under any circumstan