brated with a bowl of punch, preserved fruits, cakes and the doctor's cigars. Last night we were running with the bags for our lives; to-night we are drinking punch and feasting; such are, indeed, the vicissitudes of fate. All this roaring and crashing for the last few days has been, perhaps, a cannonade to celebrate our reaching such a high latitude. If that be so, it must be admitted that the ice has done full honor to the occasion. Well, never mind, let it crash on so long as we only get northward. The Fram will, no doubt, stand it now; she has lifted fully one foot forward and fully six inches aft, and she has slipped a little astern. Moreover, we cannot find so much as a single stanchion in the bulwarks that has started, yet to-night every man will sleep fully prepared to make for the ice.

Monday, January 7th. There was a little jamming of the ice occasionally during the day, but only of slight duration, then all was quiet again. Evidently the ice has not yet settled, and we have perhaps more to expect from our friend to port, whom I would willingly exchange for a better neighbor.

It seems, however, as if the ice-pressure had altered its direction since the wind has changed to south-east. It is now confined to the ridges fore and aft athwart the wind; while our friend to port, lying almost in the line of the wind, has kept somewhat quieter.

Everything has an end, as the boy said when he was in for a birching. Perhaps the growth of this ridge has come to an end now, perhaps not; the one thing is just as likely as the other. To-day the work of extricating the Fram is proceeding; we will at all events get the rails clear of the ice. It presents a most imposing sight by the light of the moon, and, however conscious of one's own strength, one cannot help respecting an antagonist who commands such powers, and who, in a few moments, is capable of putting mighty machinery into action. It is rather an awkward battering-ram to face. The Fram is equal to it, but

an onslaught. In less than an hour this ice will build up a wall alongside us and over us which it might take us a month to get out of, and possibly longer than that. There is something gigantic about it; it is like a struggle between dwarfs and an ogre, in which the pygmies have to resort to cunning and trickery to get out of the clutches of one who so seldom relaxes his grip. The Fram is the ship which the pygmies have built with all their cunning to fight the ogre; and on board this ship they work as busily as ants, while the ogre only thinks it worth while to roll over and twist his body about now and then, but every time he turns over it seems as though the nutshell would be smashed and buried, and would disappear; but the pygmies have built their nutshell SO cleverly that it always keeps afloat, and wriggles itself free from the deadly embrace. The old traditions and legends about giants, about Thor's battles in the Jötunheim, when rocks were split and crags were hurled about, and the valleys were filled with falling boulders, all come back to me when I look at these mighty ridges of ice winding their way far off in the moonlight; and when I see men standing on the iceheap cutting and digging to remove a fraction of it, then they seem to me smaller than pygmies, smaller than ants; but although each ant carries only a single fir-needle, yet in course of time they build an ant-hill, where they can live comfortably, sheltered from storm and winter.

Had this attack on the Fram been planned by the aid of all the wickedness in the world, it could not have been a worse one. The floe, seven feet thick, has borne down on us on the port side, forcing itself up on the ice, in which we are lying, and crushing it down. Thus the Fram was forced down with the ice, while the other floe, packed up on the ice beneath, bore down on her, and took her amidships while she was still frozen fast. As far as I can judge, she could hardly have had a tighter squeeze; it was no won

From "Farthest North." By Dr Fridtjof Nan sen: Two volumes. Price $10.00. Harper & Brothers, Publishers.

HAWTHORNE WITH HIS CHILDREN. In Rockferry, my first remembered home, the personality of my father was the most cheerful element, and the one which we all needed, as the sunshine is needed by an English scene to make its happiness apparent. If he was at all "morbid," my advice would be to adopt morbidness at once. Perhaps he would have been a sad man if he had been an ordinary one. Genius can make charming presences of characters that really are gloomy and savage, being so magical in its transmutation of dry fact. People were glad to be scolded by Carlisle and shot down by Doctor Johnson. But I am persuaded by reason that those who called Hawthorne sad would have complained of the tears of Coriolanus or Othello; and, with Coriolanus, he could say, "It is no little thing to make mine eyes to sweat compassion!" It was the presence of the sorrow of the world which made him silent. Who dares to sneer at that? When I think of my mother,-naturally hopeful, gently merry, ever smiling,-who, while my father lived was so glad a woman that her sparkling glance was never dimmed, and when I have to acknowledge that even she did not fill us children with the zest of content which he brought into the room for us, I must conclude that genius and cheer together made him life-giving; and so

intimate with him, and to many who saw him but for a moment. Dora Golden, my brother's old nurse, has said that when she first came to the family she feared my father was going to be severe, because he had a way of looking at strangers from under bent brows. But the moment he lifted his head his eyes flasned forth beautiful and kindly. She has told me that my mother and she used to think at dusk, when he entered the room before the lamps were lit, that the place was illuminated by his face; his eyes shone, his whole countenance gleamed, and my mother simply called him “our sunlight."

our

My sister's girlish letters are evidence of the enthusiasm of the family for my father's companionship, and of our staunch hatred of the consulate because it took him away from us SO much. He read aloud, as he always had done, in the easiest, clearest, most genial way, as if he had been born only to let his voice enunciate an endless procession of words. He read "The Lady of the Lake" aloud about this time, and Una wrote expressing delight in his personality over and above that in his usefulness: "Papa has gone to dine in Liverpool, so we shall not hear 'Don Quixote' this evening, or have papa either." Little references to him show how he was always weaving golden threads into the woof of daily monotony. Julian, seven years old, writes to his grandfather, "Papa has taught Una and me to make paper boats, and the bureau in my room is covered with paper steamers and boats." I can see him folding them now, as if it were yesterday, and how intricate the newspapers became which he made into hulls, decks and sails. At one time Una burst out, in recognition of the unbroken peace and good-will in the home, "It will certainly be my own fault if I am not pretty good when I grow up, for I have had both example and precept."

The nurse to whom I have just referred has said that when Julian was about four, sometimes he would an

no

noy her while she was sewing; and if his father was in the room she would tell Julian to go to him and ask him to read about Robbie, who was Robinson Crusoe. He would sit quietly all the time his father read to him, matter for how long. But her master finally told Dora not to send Julian to him in this way to hear "Robinson Crusoe," because he was "tired of reading it to him." The nurse was a bit of a genius herself, in her way, and not to be easily suppressed, and when her charge became fidgety, and she was in a hurry, she made one more experiment with Robbie. Her master turned round in his chair and for the first time in four years she saw an angry look on his face, and he commanded her "never to do it again." At three years of age Julian played pranks on his father without trepidation. There was a "boudoir" in the house which had a large, pleasant window, and was therefore thought to be agreeable enough to be used as a prison-house for Una and Julian when they were naughty. Julian conveyed his father into the boudoir, and shut the door on him adroitly. It had no handle on the inner side, purposely, and the astonished parent was caged. "You cannot come out," said Julian, "until you have promised to be a good boy."

The next letter is of later date, having been written while the rest of the family were in Manchester:

"My dear little Pessima:-I am very glad that mamma is going to take you to see "Tom Thump;' and I think it is much better to call him Thump than Thumb, and I always mean to call him so from this time forward. It is a very nice name, is Tom Thump. I hope you will call him Tom Thump to his face when you see him, and thump him well if he finds fault with it. Do you still thump dear mamma, and Fanny, and Una, and Julian, as you did when I saw you last? If you do, I shall call you little Rose Thump, and then people will think that you are Tom Thump's wife. And now I shall stop thumping on this subject.

Your friend little Frank Hallet is at Mrs. Blodget's. Do you remember how you used to play with him at Southport, and how he sometimes beat you? He seems to be a better little boy than he was then, but still he is not so good as he might be. This morning he had some very nice breakfast on his plate, but he would not eat it because his mamma refused to give him something that was not good for him; and so, all breakfast-time, this foolish little boy refused to eat a mouthful, though I could see that he was very hungry, and would have eaten it all up if he could have got it into his mouth without anybody seeing. Was not he a silly child? Little Pessima never behaved so,-oh no!

There are two or three very nice little girls at Mrs. Blodget's, and also a nice large dog, who is very kind and gentle, and never bites anybody; and also a tabby cat, who very often comes to me and mews for something to eat, so you see we have a very pleasant family, but for all that, I would rather be at home.

And now I have written you such a long letter that my head is quite tired out, and so I shall leave off, and amuse myself with looking at some pages of figures.

Be a good little girl, and do not tease mamma, nor trouble Fanny, nor quarrel with Una and Julian; and when I come home I will call you little Pessima (because I am very sure you will deserve that name) and shall kiss you more than once. N. H."

If he said a few kind words to me, my father gave me a sense of having a strong ally among the great ones of life; and if I were ill, I was roused by his standing beside me to defy the illness. When I was seriously indisposed, at the age of three, he brought me a black doll, which I heard my mother say she thought would alarm me, as it was very ugly, and I had never seen a negro. I remember the much-knowing smile with which my father's face was indefinitely lighted up as he stood looking at me, while I, half unconscious to most of the things