474 THE FEAST. 
tall, black cylinder, such as I have seen in the Baltic 
cities, standing like a column in the corner : the next, 
a platoon of tobacco-pipes paraded against the wall : 
the next — let me be honest, it was the first — a table, 
with a clean white cloth, and plates, knives, and forks, 
all equally clean. Overhead hang beams as heavy 
as the carlines of a ship's cabin : below is an uncov- 
ered floor of scrupulous polish : the windows are re- 
cessed, glazed in small squares, and opening, door-like, 
behind muslin curtains : the walls canvas, painted, 
and decorated with a few prints altogether remarkable 
for intensity of color. The looking-glass ; I reserve it 
for more special mention. It was not very large, but 
it was the first we had encountered since we came 
into the regions of ice. " To see ourselves as others 
see us" is not always the prayer of an intelligent self- 
love. Sharp-visaged, staring, weather-beaten old men, 
wrinkle-marked, tawny-bearded, haggard-looking : the 
boys of Uppernavik are better bred than the New York- 
ers, or they would have mobbed us. 
The ladies — ^they were ladies, they knew no superi- 
ors ; they were self-possessed, hospitable ; they wore 
frocks, and they did not laugh at us — the ladies spread 
the meal, coffee, loons' eggs, brown bread, and a wel- 
come. "We ate like j ail-birds. At last came the crown- 
ing act of hospitality ; on the bottom of a blue saucer, 
radiating like the spokes of a wheel or the sticks of a 
Delaware's camp-fire, crisp, pale, yet blushing at their 
tips, and crowned each with its little verdant tuft — 
ten radishes! Talk of the mango of Luzon and the 
mangostine of Borneo, the oherimoya of Peru, the pine 
of Sumatra, the seckel-pear of Schuylkill meadows ; 
but the palate must cease to have a memory before I 
yield a place to any of them alongside the ten radishes 
of Uppernavik. 
