136 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE 



And this was the hut where blind Juliana lived 

 the hut where she was sitting when the heathen 

 woman offered to lead her to church ; the hut where 

 the poor and the feeble were used to come to find 

 a scrap of food and hear the wisdom of blind 

 Juliana's talk. 



Juliana was one of the people who always stayed 

 in the village. The news of codfish in the bay sent 

 most of the people post-haste to the fishing ; there 

 were but very few who stayed at home. But the 

 ones who stayed were well worth meeting ; you 

 could almost count them on your hand. First, the 

 old widows who hammered the blubber to make oil 

 for the market and who packed the trout in brine. 

 You might have met one or the other of them on 

 the village path, smiling-faced old people, dressed 

 in sacks all smeared with grease, going to and fro 

 in their workaday garb, and perfectly happy in their 

 queer task. One is old Karitas, who blows the 

 organ in church, for which occasion she changes 

 her sack-cloth for a fine white smock all fringed 

 with embroidery ; another is old Henrietta, who 

 stacks the firewood and waters the gardens, and 

 covers up the potato plants from the ever ready 

 frosts and the marauding mice ; another is old 

 Verona, the mother of a family of fine and hand- 

 some daughters. And then there are the two who 

 are too feeble to go : poor Ernestina, the cripple 

 girl, and my old friend Juliana. 



I opened the door of Juliana's house one morning 

 in the early summer, and I heard the sound of some- 

 one reading. I could not see at first, for the hut 



