My First Summer 



welfare is concerned, in the lives of people 

 of other climes. The Eskimo, for example, 

 gets a living far north of the wheat line, 

 from oily seals and whales. Meat, berries, 

 bitter weeds, and blubber, or only the last, 

 for months at a time; and yet these people 

 all around the frozen shores of our conti- 

 nent are said to be hearty, jolly, stout, and 

 brave. We hear, too, of fish-eaters, carniv- 

 orous as spiders, yet well enough as far as 

 stomachs are concerned, while we are so 

 ridiculously helpless, making wry faces over 

 our fare, looking sheepish in digestive dis- 

 tress amid rumbling, grumbling sounds that 

 might well pass for smothered baas. We 

 have a large supply of sugar, and this evening 

 it occurred to me that these belligerent 

 stomachs might possibly, like complaining 

 children, be coaxed with candy. Accord- 

 ingly the frying-pan was cleansed, and a 

 lot of sugar cooked in it to a sort of wax, 

 but this stuff only made matters worse. 

 Man seems to be the only animal whose 



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