the
rooms resemble huge snowdrifts. Seven maids with seven mops sweeping
for half a year could never get it clear. The building heaves so much
with the frost that the doors constantly refuse to work, because the
floors have risen, and if they are planed, when the frost disappears,
a yawning chasm confronts you. Our storeroom is so cold in winter that
we put on Arctic furs to fetch in the food, and in summer it is
flooded so that we swim from barrel to barrel as Alice floated in her
pool of tears. But far above all these minor discomforts is the one
overwhelming desire not to have to refuse "one of these little ones."

One's heart aches when one remembers all the money and effort and love
expended on a single child at home, that he may lack nothing to be
prepared in body and spirit to meet the vicissitudes of his coming
life journey. But in this land are hundreds of children, our own blood
and kin, who must face their crushing problems often with bodies
stunted from insufficient nourishment in childhood, and minds unopened
and undeveloped, not through lack of natural ability, but because
opportunity has never come to them. As one looks ahead one sees
clearly what a contribution these eager children could offer their
"day" if only their cousins at home had "the eyes of their
understanding purged to behold things invisible and unseen."

_March 10_

The seals are in! That to you doubtless does not seem the most
engrossing item of news that could be communicated, but that merely
proves what a long road you have to travel. Before the break of day
every man capable of carrying a weapon is out on the ice to try and
get his share of the spoils.

They carry every conceivable sort of gun, but the six-foot
muzzle-loaders are the favourites. These ancient weapons have been
handed down from father to son for generations, and locally go by the
somewhat misleading soubriquet of the "little darlints."

The people call the seals "swiles." There is an old story about a
foreigner who once asked, "How do you spell 'swile'?" The answer the
fisherman gave him was, "We don't spell [carry] 'em. We mostly hauls
'em."

Sea-birds have also come in the "swatches" of open water between the
pans. A gale of wind and sea has broken up the ice, and driven it out
of St. Mien's Bay, which is just round the corner from us. Thousands
of "turr" are there, and the men are reaping many a banquet. A man's
wealth is now gauged by the number of