ne of their large huts, that all the persons of their
society may be impartial spectators of their contest. When they are thus
convened, the champion, who by agreement is to begin, steps forward into
the middle of the circle, and entertains them with a song or speech,
which he has before meditated. In this performance he generally
contrives to throw all the ridicule he is able upon his antagonist, and
his satire is applauded by his own party, and excites universal
merriment among the audience. When he has sung or declaimed himself out
of breath, it is the turn of his rival to begin, who goes on in the same
manner, answering all the satire that has been thrown upon him, and
endeavouring to win the laughter over to his own side. In this manner do
the combatants go on, alternately reciting their compositions against
each other, till the memory or invention of one of them fails, and he is
obliged to yield the victory to his rival. After this public spectacle
of their ingenuity, the two champions generally forget all their
animosities, and are cordially reconciled. "This," added Mr Barlow,
"appears to me to be a much better method of answering ridicule, than by
giving way to passion and resentment, and beating those that displease
us; and one of these honest Greenlanders would be as much ashamed of
such a sudden transport of anger as a Kamtschatkan traveller would be of
managing his dogs as ill as you did yesterday."

CHAPTER VII.

Tommy and Harry visit Home--The Fashionable Guests--Miss Simmons
takes notice of Harry--Harry's Troubles--Master Compton and
Mash--Estrangement of Tommy--Visit to the Theatre--Misbehaviour
there--Card Playing--The Ball--Harry Dancing a Minuet--Story of Sir
Philip Sidney--Master Mash insults Harry--The Fight in the
Drawing-room--The Bull-baiting--Tommy strikes Harry--Master Mash's
Combat with Harry--Tommy's Narrow Escape from the Bull--The
Grateful Black.

And now the time arrived when Tommy was by appointment to go home and
spend some time with his parents. Mr Barlow had been long afraid of
this visit, as he knew he would meet a great deal of company there, who
would give him impressions of a very different nature from what he had
with much assiduity been labouring to excite. However, the visit was
unavoidable, and Mr Merton sent so pressing an invitation for Harry to
accompany his friend, after having obtained the consent of his father,
that Mr B