QQ REPORT ON THE INTRODUCTION OF 



assistant stand off to one side enjoying- the sport as much as the 

 Eskimos. 



The most tantalizing incident of the session was my frantic efforts to 

 get them to repeat after me the letters of the alphabet in concert. 1 

 bad learned that "Far mart ko" meant "all." I thought, of course, if 

 I said "Far mart ko," they would understand that I wanted them all 

 to respond together, but when I got everything in readiness and said 

 "Far mart ko," they sat as dumb as oysters, and although I brought 

 the stick I used as a pointer down to the floor in very much the same 

 manner a major does his baton when he wants the band to play, it had 

 no more effect on them than if I had asked them in French to repeat 

 the Lord's prayer. When I did finally get them to repeat the letters, 

 they came out with about as much regularity as the shots from an army 

 of infantry firing from their intrenchments. 



Exercises of this kind were continued for some little time, when by 

 some hook or crook one of the more intelligent of them got an idea of 

 what I wanted, and soon we ran up and down the alphabet in splendid 

 order. 



I now began to feel encouraged and selected from the chart a word 

 of but three letters, and it spelled "cat." Another word on the same 

 sheet spelled " dog." After I had drilled them on these and pointed 

 to the picture representing each until I thought they must know it by 

 heart, they, when called upon to pronounce each one after spelling it, 

 got so tangled up that I could hardly tell a cat from a dog myself. 



My patience by this time was well nigh exhausted, and I tried to 

 think of something for a change. Sudddenly I espied hanging on the 

 wall, the sides of which were covered with everything from a mink 

 skin to a woodsaw, a set of boxing gloves which the captain of a ves- 

 sel that had spent the previous winter in the Arctic had left with us, 

 and my first impulse was to put them on and knock some Eskimo out 

 physically, as they had done me figuratively. I concluded, however, 

 this would hardly be in keeping with the dignity I should assume as 

 the superintendent of the Reindeer Station. It was nearly time, how- 

 ever, to close school, and thinking that in "In the sweet by and by" 

 there was a moral for me, selected it as a closing song, which the 

 pupils sang with a spirit that fairly made the rafters ot the building 

 ring. 



In a few days, however, order came out of chaos, and soon we were 

 drifting along as serenely as many a school of white children Avouldbe. 



It was a difficult matter to get them to understand that they should 

 observe pro per decorum, and this can not be wondered at,for the Eskimo 

 are more easily provoked to laughter, and among themselves are exceed- 

 ingly talkative. We could not get them to understand that it was not 

 quite in keeping with good etiquette for one to take off his shirt in pres- 

 ence of the opposite sex, and this rule was sometimes permitted to be 

 infringed upon, when the. heat in the room was too oppressive. This 



