The floe was of level ice, and the walking excellent. I cannot tell how long it took us to make the nine miles; for we were in a strange sort of stupor, and had little apprehension of time. It was probably about four hours. We kept ourselves awake by imposing on each other a continued articulation of words; they must have been incoherent enough. I recall these hours as among the most wretched I have ever gone through. We were neither of us in our right senses, and retained a very confused recollection of what preceded our arrival at the tent. We both of us, however, remember a bear, who walked leisurely before us and tore up as he went a jumper that Mr. McGary had improvidently thrown off the day before. He tore it into shreds and rolled it into a ball, but never offered to interfere with our progress. I remember this, and with it a confused sentiment that our tent and buffalo-robes might probably share the same fate. Godfrey, with whom the memory of this day's work may atone for many faults of a later time, had a better eye than myself; and, looking some miles ahead, he could see that our tent was undergoing the same unceremonious treatment. I thought I saw it too, but we were so drunken with cold that we strode on steadily, and, for aught I know, without quickening our pace. Probably our approach saved the contents of the tent; for when we reached it the tent was uninjured, though the bear had overturned it, tossing the buffalo-robes and pemmican into the snow; we missed only a couple of blanket-bags. What we recollect, however, and perhaps all we recollect, is, that we had great difficulty in raising it. We crawled into our reindeer sleeping-bags, without speaking, and for the next three hours slept on in a dreamy but intense slumber. When I awoke, my long beard was a mass of ice, frozen fast to the buffalo-skin. Godfrey had to cut me out with his jack-knife. Four days after our escape, I found my woollen comfortable with a goodly share of my beard still adhering to it. We were able to melt water and get some soup cooked before the rest of our party arrived; it took them but five hours to walk the nine miles. They were doing well, and, considering the circumstances, in wonderful spirits. The day was most providentially windless, with a clear sun. All enjoyed the refreshment we had got ready; the crippled were repacked in their robes, and we sped briskly toward the hummockridges which lay between us and the Pinnacly Berg. The hummocks we had now to meet came properly under the designation of squeezed ice. A great chain of bergs stretching from northwest to southeast, moving with the tides, had compressed the surfacefloes, and, rearing them up on their edges, produced an area more like the volcanic pedragal of the basin of Mexico than anything else I can compare it to. It required desperate efforts to work our way over it-literally desperate, for our strength failed us anew, and we began to lose our self-control. We could not abstain any longer from eating snow: our mouths swelled, and some of us became speechless. Happily the day was warmed by a clear sunshine, and the thermometer rose to -4° in the shade; otherwise we must have frozen. Our halts multiplied, and we fell half-sleeping on the snow. I could not prevent it. Strange to say, it refreshed us. I ventured upon the experiment myself, making Riley wake me at the end of three minutes; and I felt so much benefited by it that I timed the men in the same way. They sat on the runners of the sledge, fell asleep instantly, and were forced to wakefulness when their three minutes were out. By eight in the evening we emerged from the floes. The sight of the Pinnacly Berg revived us. Brandy, an invaluable resource in emergency, had already been served out in tablespoonful doses. We now took a longer rest, and a last but stouter dram, and reached the brig at 1 P. M., we believe without a halt. I say we believe; and here perhaps is the most decided proof of our sufferings. We were quite delirious, and had ceased to entertain a sane apprehension of the circumstances about us. We moved on like men in a dream. Our footmarks seen afterwards showed that we had steered a bee-line for the brig. It must have been by a sort of instinct, for it left no impress on the memory. Bonsall was sent staggering ahead, and reached the brig, God knows how, for he had fallen repeatedly at the track-lines; but he delivered with punctilious accuracy the messages I had sent by him to Dr. Hayes. I thought myself the soundest of all, for I went through all the formula of sanity, and can recall the muttering delirium of my comrades when we got back into the cabin of our brig. Yet I have been told since of some speeches and some orders too of mine, which I should have remembered for their absurdity if my mind had retained its balance. Petersen and Whipple came out to meet us about two miles from the brig. They brought my dog-team, with the restoratives I had sent for by Bonsall. I do not remember their coming. Dr. Hayes entered with judicious energy upon the treatment our condition called for, administering morphine freely, after the usual frictions. He reported none of our brain-symptoms as serious, referring them properly to the class of those indications of exhausted power which yield to generous diet and Mr. Ohlsen suffered some time from strabismus and blindness: two others underwent amputation of parts of the foot, without unpleas ant consequences; and two died in spite of all our efforts. This rescue party had been out for seventy-two hours. We had halted in all eight hours, half of our number sleeping at a time. We travelled between eighty and ninety miles, most of the way dragging a heavy sledge. The mean temperature of the whole time, including the warmest hours of three days, was at 41°.2. We had no water except at our two halts, and were at no time able to intermit vigorous exercise without freezing. April 4, Tuesday.-Four days have passed, and I am again at my record of failures, sound but aching still in every joint. The rescued men are not out of danger, but their gratitude is very touching. Pray God that they may live!" Anne Charlotte Lynch Botta. BORN in Bennington, Vt., 1820. DIED in New York, N. Y., 1891. ར LARGESS. [Poems. 1881.] Go forth in life, o friend, not seeking love; A mendicant, that with imploring eye Thy generous spirit should not stoop and wait, And be thy heart like the exhaustless sea, Christian Restell Bovee. BORN in New York, N. Y., 1820. SOME THOUGHTS WORTH THINKING. [Intuitions and Summaries of Thought. 1862.] AN actor who cannot forget his audience will never enchant it. And so of authors. A book that is not written in forgetfulness of the public, is not likely to be worthy of it. The first condition of a writer's success is, to keep his mind free from a too anxious hope or fear about it. He must abandon himself to his genius, or be abandoned by it. Perfect success is only to be achieved through perfect liberty. Three things principally determine the quality of a man: the leading object he proposes to himself in life; the manner in which he sets about accomplishing it; and the effect which success or failure has upon him. And still again: a character is to be judged by its best performance. It is in this that it attains to its clearest expression; and to this, and beyond this, its aspiration tends. The reveries of the dreamer advance his hopes, but not their realization. One good hour of earnest work is worth them all. Emphatic always, forcible never. Whenever it devolves upon small capacities to carry forward great enterprises, they do not so much labor in their behalf as tinker upon them. Between the man of talent and much information, and the man of genius, there is much the same difference as between a full tank and an unfailing fountain. The mind of the first is a receptacle of valuable facts, and possibly of rich and generous ideas, susceptible, however, of being exhausted; that of the latter is an original source of wisdom, which suffers no diminution by what it imparts. Genius makes its observations in short-hand; talent writes them out at length. There is a philosophy that lifts all beauty from the face of things, and that imbues all objects with a coloring of sadness; such is his philosophy who looks too much to the negative of things. Only the optimist looks wisely on life. Though the actual world is not to his liking, it is the happiness of the optimist to carry a nobler in his thought. Let us study the good in things, to the same extent that attention is given to the ills of life, and reverence, religion, and happiness will be greatly promoted. No one was probably ever injured by having his good qualities made the subject of judicious praise. The virtues, like plants, reward the attention bestowed upon them by growing more and more thrifty. A lad who is often told that he is a good boy will in time grow ashamed to exhibit the qualities of a bad one. Words of praise, indeed, are almost as necessary to warm a child into a genial life as acts of kindness and affection. Judicious praise is to children what the sun is to flowers. Any other than a cheerful theology is worse than none. Its essential element is disbelief in God's goodness. It is more to be deplored than scepticism, for while this only doubts the generally received, the other affirms the false. In general, inquiry ceases when we adopt a theory. After that, we overlook whatever makes against it, and see and think, and talk and write, only in its favor. Indeed, when we have a snug, comfortable theory, to which we are much attached, they appear to us as a very mean set of facts that will not square with it. Anson Davies Fitz-Randolph. BORN in Woodbridge, N. J., 1820. HOPEFULLY WAITING. [Verses, by Anson D. F. Randolph. 1855.] OT as you meant, O learned man and good, NOT Do I accept thy words of hope and rest; I shall go to the Father's House and see Him and the Elder Brother face to face,- If for a time some loved one goes away Nay, if we love and honor, we shall make The absence brief by doing well our task,- |