ience of all those who had
laboured for the uplifting of savage people. Indeed, how should it be
otherwise? Until quite lately there was almost promiscuous use of women.
A man receiving a traveller in his dwelling overnight proffered his wife
as a part of his hospitality; the temporary interchange of wives was
common; young men and young women gratified themselves without rebuke;
children were valuable however come by, and there was no special
distinction between legitimate and illegitimate offspring. As one
reflects on these conditions and then looks back upon conditions amongst
white people, it would seem that all the civilised races have done is to
set up a double standard of sexual morality as against the single
standard of the savage. It can hardly be claimed that the average white
man is continent, or even much more continent than the average Esquimau,
but he has forced continence upon the greater part of his women,
reserving a dishonoured remnant for his own irresponsible use. And there
are signs that some of those who nowadays inveigh against the white
man's double standard are in reality desirous of substituting, not the
single standard of the Christian ideal, but the single standard of the
savage. In the mining camps the prostitute has a sort of
half-way-recognised social position, and in polite parlance is referred
to as a "sporting lady"--surely the most horribly incongruous phrase
ever coined; she often marries a miner who will tell you that she is as
good as he is, and she is received afterwards by all but a few as a
"respectable married woman."

There had been some trouble of this sort at this mission. The great
northern gold seekers' wave of '97 and '98 threw a numerous band of
prospectors up the Kobuk as well as up the Koyukuk. The wave had receded
and left on the Kobuk but one little pool behind it, a handful of men
who found something better than "pay" on the Shungnak, a few miles away.
And there was much criticism of the missionary's methods amongst them.
Word of the arrival of strangers had brought some of them to Long Beach,
and on Sunday night I had opportunity of addressing them, with a view to
enlisting their sympathy, if possible. What if mistakes were made, what
if some of the methods employed were open to question? Here was a man
who beyond doubt was earnestly labouring in the best way he knew for the
improvement of these natives. Such an effort demanded the co-operation
of every right-feelin