2o6 Musiiigs by Camp- Fire and Wayside 



put his spoon to his ear; but I watched Dr. Jackson 

 and Captain Jarvis, and took notes. Manifestly 

 great progress has been made in this important 

 department of human activity in the past eighteen 

 years. Jackson was nicely balancing his tureen in 

 his hand. When the ship had made her dive and 

 was balancing for an instant, then Jackson made 

 his. At each dive of the Bear I noticed a marked 

 subsidence of the soup in Jackson's tureen, until, 

 at last, dry land appeared in the whole concavity of 

 crockery. I am not going to theorize whether this 

 concurrent action of ship and soup was coincidence, 

 or cause and effect; nor, if the latter, which was 

 which; but the result was satisfactory to all con- 

 cerned. 



This revenue cutter Bear is the most famous ship 

 now in the service, excepting the Oregon, though 

 for very different reasons. She was built in Green- 

 ock, Scotland, in 1881, for private parties in the 

 Labrador sealing fishery, and bought by the United 

 States for use in the rescue of the Greeley arctic 

 explorers, which she accomplished. Originally 

 built with a view to conflict with the ice, she has 

 been further strongly protected with iron and teak. 

 After rescuing Greeley she was sent to the Pacific 

 to protect the seals and rescue whalers, and do 

 general police duty. Her second heroic act of res- 

 cue was last year, when the present Captain Jarvis 

 led the rescuing party across the ice — of which 

 more anon. 



