play we were at home in the States
again, and so she spread the breakfast table daintily in the
sitting-room, with white cover, pretty embroidered centre-piece, and
snowy napkins, bringing real comfort to our hearts, accustomed as we had
been for so many months to bare necessities and none of the luxuries. A
fashionable breakfast hour for Sunday in the States was also affected in
order to make the plan complete, and because the mornings, growing
darker as they are continually doing, nobody felt in haste to leave
their beds. Of course every one wore his Sunday clothes and I put on my
very best waist of olive green satin with a good black skirt, which had
a little train, thereby effectively hiding my uncouth feet, still clad
as they are in the ungainly muckluks.

The ice is moving in the bay, and we hear that still another steamer may
come in, so we can send mail out to Nome, and write to have in
readiness. There have been no church services today, as Mr. H. is away
at the Home, but we had music and singing frequently, and Swedish hymns
all evening, which I play, but do not understand.

Monday, October twenty-ninth: This has been a bright, sunny morning
until a little after noon, when it grew cloudy, as it often does. Miss
E. was still very lame from her long tramp of last Saturday, and Ricka
and I assisted in the kitchen. Alma has cut out a pretty brown cloth
dress for Miss J. and is making it. Miss L.'s throat is better, and she
is out of her room again, after a siege of severe suffering with
quinsy, which caused a gathering. About nine in the evening Mr. H. came
in from the Home, having walked the whole distance, a boat being now
unsafe in the floating ice. After drinking some hot coffee, he related
to us his adventure of Friday night in the Peterborough canoe. He had
left us quite late in the afternoon of that day to go to the Home, and
it was already beginning to grow dark. For a while, he said, he found
open water, and made good time at the paddle, but presently found
himself alongside of and soon after crowded by floating ice.

It was young ice, and he did not have much fear of it. He kept on
paddling, but finally found himself entirely surrounded, and manage as
he would, he could not free his canoe. A breeze came up from the north,
which pushed him along with the ice out toward sea, for he was near the
mouth of the bay. There was nothing to do but wait. For an hour he
waited.

It was well on towards midnight,