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 he 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, coftee, 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 cherimoya 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. 
