SEALSKIN CLOTHES AND BOOTS 



begins, and I hope that every new comer has the 

 same good advice that I received from my friend 

 the missionary " Be wise in time : wear Eskimo 

 clothes." I had done my little bit of skating in my 

 English boots, but they had long since proved too 

 cold for my walks on the hills, and the change to 

 native clothes and boots was a welcome one. Mr. 

 Simon said that he would arrange things for me ; 

 accordingly the village " tailor," a square-faced, brisk 

 little Eskimo woman, came in one day like a minia- 

 ture hurricane. 



There was no awe, no aloofness about her she 

 had made clothes for too many successive mission- 

 aries to feel anything but business-like ; so she stood 

 me up, and looked at me, and measured me with 

 her arms, and bolted out satisfied. "A bit taller 

 than my husband, and not so fat " was her com- 

 ment ; and the outcome of it all was that after a 

 few days she turned up again with a big bundle, 

 and I found myself the possessor of a "dicky" 

 (blanket smock) and a complete suit of sealskins just 

 like those the Eskimos wear, and all for the outlay 

 of a modest sum in return for the good woman's 

 excellent needlework. Meanwhile I had got several 

 women to work at making boots. Their method 

 of measuring was much the same as Juliana the 

 tailor's : they came in, gazed at my feet, and went 

 out ! I was quite unable to see the sense in this, 

 so I laboriously made paper patterns with the aid 

 of the store-keeper and his stock of boots. I gave 

 them to the next woman who came to measure me 

 for boots, and she accepted them with a smile 

 but the boots she made from them were either 

 too big or too small, and desperately ugly. I confess 



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