g us to release her. It seems they were
engaged to be married when they left Sweden; but, being of thrifty
natures, they had agreed to work each a year before settling down in
marriage. The constant sight of her charms proved too much for him, and
they decided that all they needed to begin life together was their
wealth of affection and their exuberant health and spirits.

Her size may be imagined, when I mention that her lover brought up six
rings in succession, to try to find one big enough to go over her
finger. Finally he squeezed on the largest one he could obtain, as an
absolutely essential ceremony to bind them together, and smiled with
delight to see that it could never be taken off.

The only help we could find in her place, at such short notice, was a
Russian boy, lately arrived from Kodiac. When we first saw him, we were
quite disheartened at his appearance, his mouth and eyes were so like
those of a fish, and he seemed so terribly uncivilized. I attempted to
intimate that I thought we could not undertake to do any thing with him.
He seemed to suspect what I thought,--although he could not understand
my words,--and took up a piece of paper, and wrote some Russian words on
it. I asked him what they meant; and he said, "Jesus Christ, he dead; he
get up again; men and devils he take them all up." I supposed the most
civilized person he had ever seen was the priest; and, as the priest had
taught him that, he thought it was a kind of introduction for him, and
that I should feel it to be a bond of union between us. I did not feel
quite so much as if he were a fish or a seal afterward. All the time,
even over the hot cooking-stove, he kept his rough fur cap on his head.
His great staring eyes rolled round in every direction; and he looked so
utterly uncouth and so bewildered, that I doubted very much if he could
ever be adapted to our needs.

To my great surprise, however, he learned very fast, stimulated by his
curiosity to know about every thing. What made him appear so very
stupid at first was, that he felt so strongly the newness of all his
surroundings. After he learned to talk with us, he interested us very
much with accounts of his own country, and with the letters he read us
from his father, an old man of ninety, who had spent his life in charge
of convicts in Siberia. He wrote his father that he was homesick; and
the old man replied: "You homesick--work! work by and by make you
strong!" His letters were d