om their faces."

"True, Benjy, true, but your simile is not perfect, for men's noses
don't always stick out from their faces--witness the nose of Butterface,
which, you know, is well aft of his lips and chin. However, this _may_
be Greenland's nose--who knows? We shall go and find out ere long.
Come, use your whip, Leo. Ho! Chingatok, tell your hairy kinsmen to
clap on all sail and make for the land."

"Hold on, uncle!" cried Alf, "I think I see a splendid specimen of--"

The crack of Leo's whip, and the yelping of the team, drowned the rest
of the sentence, and Alf was whirled away from his splendid specimen,
(whatever it was), for ever!

"It is a piece of great good fortune," said the Captain, as they swept
along over the hard and level snow, "that the Eskimos have left their
boats on this land, for now I shall have two strings to my bow."

"What is the other string?" asked Leo, as he administered a flip to the
flank of a lazy dog.

"Ah, that remains to be seen, lad," replied the Captain.

"Why, what a tyrant you are, uncle!" exclaimed Alf, who had recovered
from his disappointment about the splendid specimen. "You won't tell us
anything, almost. Who ever before heard of the men of an expedition to
the North Pole being kept in ignorance of the means by which they were
to get there?"

The Captain's reply was only a twinkle of the eye.

"Father wants to fill you with bliss, Alf," said Benjy, "according to
your own notions of that sort of thing."

"What do you mean, Ben?"

"Why, have we not all heard you often quote the words:--`Where ignorance
is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise.'"

"Hear, hear! That's it, Benjy," said the Captain, with a nod and a
short laugh, while his son assumed the satisfied gravity of look
appropriate to one who has made a hit; "I won't decrease his bliss by
removing his ignorance yet awhile."

"Hain't Buzzby got nuffin' to say on that 'ere pint?" whispered
Butterface to Benjy, who sat just in front of him.

"Ah! to be sure. I say, Alf," said the boy with an earnest look,
"hasn't your favourite author got something to say about the bliss of
ignorance? I'm almost sure I heard you muttering something in your
dreams on that subject the other day."

"Of course he has. He has a long poem on that subject. Here is a bit
of it."

Alf, whose memory was good, immediately recited the following:

"How sweet is ignorance! How soothing to the mind,
To search for treasures in t