n beings. He said his family consumed about three a day all the
year round, counting holidays and Sundays. He was a light eater
himself, he said, on account of gitting dyspepsia from a tough
Australian that he et in 1847, but the girls and the old woman, so he
said, were very hearty eaters, and it kept him busy prowling around
after human beings to satisfy 'em. The old woman, he said, rather
preferred to eat babies, on account of her teeth being poor, but the
girls could eat the grizzliest sailor that ever went aboard ship."

_S_. "This is frightful."

_Capt_. "And the chief said sometimes the supply was scarce, but
lately they had begun to depend more on imported goods than on the
home products. And they were better, anyhow, for all the folks
preferred white meat. He said the missionary societies were shipping
them some nice lots of provender, and the tears came in his eyes when
he said how good they were to the poor friendless savage away on a
distant island. He said he liked a missionary not too old or too
young. But let's see; what's your age, did you say?"

[Illustration: MR. SPOONER IS ALARMED]

_S_. "I am twenty-eight."

_Capt._ "I think he mentioned twenty-seven; but howsomedever, he liked
'em old enough to be solid and young enough to be tender. And he said
he liked missionaries because they never used rum or tobacco and
always kept their flavor. I know I seen one young fellow who came out
there from Boston. He got up a camp-meeting in the woods; and while
he was giving out the hymn, one of the congregation banged him on the
head with a club, and in less than no time he was sizzling over a fire
right in front of the pulpit. They lit the fire with his hymn-book and
kept her going with his sermons. He was a man just about your build--a
little leaner'n you, maybe. And they like a man to be stoutish. He
eats more tender."

_S_. "I had no idea that such awful practices existed."

_Capt_. "I haven't told you half, for I don't want to discourage you.
I know you mean well, and maybe they'll let you alone. But I remember,
when I told the chief that there was a whole lot of you chaps studying
to be missionaries, he laughed and rubbed his hands, and ordered the
old woman to plant more horseradish and onions the following year. He
was a forehanded kind of a man for a mere pagan. He said that if they
would only give his tribe time, if they would send him along the
supplies regular, so's not to glut the market, they