are mentioned. The British girl seems just as fond of Tennyson as her Colonial sister, and it is very rare to find a paper from any part of the Empire with no mention of Tennyson either under English classics or under poets. None of the girls answering question 6 seem to have reflected that Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, and Whittier, though classics in a sense, are certainly not English classics, which is all they are asked about.

Whether because bad poetry is to most people far more mortally tedious than bad prose, it is very rarely that an inferior poem-question 8-is mentioned with approval by a girl. The Ancient Mariner has many votes, as have Keats's and Shelley's shorter poems, though Enoch Arden, The Idylls of the King, The Lady of the Lake, Hiawatha, and Evangeline are perhaps most often mentioned. Australians are appealed to by The Man from Snowy River and The Sick Stockrider, and by the somewhat noisy notes of Admirals All and the Recessional. The results, so far as I can judge, are that many girls tend to be better read in poetical than in prose classics.

Miss Low complained greatly of the excessive magazine reading of English girls. This, I should say, was generally not so bad as she thinks. Many girls certainly do seem to read too many rubbishy magazines, and so many girls of sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen read avowedly girls' magazines for which they are really growing much too old; but the Colonial girl seems a more inveterate magazine reader than the British girl, and in this respect the Indian girls are the worst, many of them reading ten to fifteen a month. In the English girls' papers I find very often one, two, three, four, and even "nought" put down as the answer to question 12. Rarely is it seven, nine, twelve. And though great magazine readers may have little to show in the

way of serious reading, this does not always follow. "Any I can get" is not an infrequent answer to question 12. The Colonial girls' most popular magazines are the Strand, and, a very long way after, the Windsor; a very long way after again, Pearson's, the Royal, and the Pall Mall. A certain proportion of the older girls read the Nineteenth Century, Blackwood's, and occasionally the Fortnightly Review. Excepting the Indians, the Colonial girl only reads three to three and a half magazines a month, including the weekly papers mentioned, as against the British girl's two and a half (about).

The answers as to newspaper-reading were among the most interesting. The "Ayes had it," and generally over and over again, whatever part of the British Empire was chosen. "Yes, very much," is not a rare answer, though a few girls, notably some Australians, say they are not allowed to read the papers. It is very curious how many girls say that the war news particularly interests them, especially as at the time these papers were filled in there was no war of any importance going on. Colonials are perhaps rather more warlike than British girls, but the latter tend to take the more interest in politics and Parliamentary news. Births, deaths, and marriages, weddings, and even funerals, are sometimes the chief reasons given for newspaper-reading, but this is mostly in the case of younger girls. Reviews of books are often mentioned by girls as interesting them, but, on the whole, the Colonial girl seems to read the papers for the general news of what is going on, especially on this side of the world. But she by no means neglects the sporting columns, and sometimes in the small, isolated colonies the mail and shipping news chiefly interests her. The "woman's page," be it noted, is hardly mentioned. One very superior New Zealand girl remarks: "I read Punch regularly; we

take no other weekly paper, and beyond political events the daily ones are not worth reading."

"Girls' hobbies" scarcely come under the head of reading, and are only mentioned because the girls were asked what books they read in connection with them. Very often no book is read, but, as before said, girls with artistic tastes read the lives of artists; nature-loving girls read books and periodicals likely to help them; and one or two girls aspiring to authorship are wise enough to read Stevenson's Art of Writing, and any books on the English language and style they can obtain.

Few girls appear to have no hobby, and several have three or four. The Colonial girls' hobbies are so various that, beyond saying that they are more concerned with domestic pursuits than the English girls, no general statement can be made about them. Girls everywhere, however, seem inclined to be very fond of gardening and flowers, and pursuits connected with flowers, such as collecting and pressing them. Old-fashioned folk may be pleased to learn that girls still exist, and very intelligent and widely read ones, too, who number embroidery, needlework, and even fancywork among their hobbies. Reading is often mentioned, and sometimes, as is evident from the rest of the paper, it is not merely reading rubbish.

To sum up. The British girls' papers that I examined by no means always bore out Miss Low's rather dismal conclusions. The Colonial girls' papers, at least in the case of those living in long-civilized colonies, and not in the "backwoods," bore them out still less. The inferior results as to the Colonial girls' favorite authors are due to so many country and Indian girls being included, and to their being generally a good deal younger than the British girls. Miss Low complains that girls negThe Nineteenth Century and After.

lected standard authors for such writers as Edna Lyall, Merriman, Anthony Hope, and, next to these, Marie Corelli, L. T. Meade, and E. E. Green. Girls certainly do read Edna Lyall very much. "All Edna Lyall" is mentioned several times; but, then, SO is "all Dickens," and "all," or "nearly all Scott," and even "all Jane Austen." With the girls belonging to certain British schools Merriman is absolutely the most popular novelist, but if a general average of votes is taken in all the British schools which sent in papers (many of them very well-known schools in very different parts of Great Britain), it must be admitted that Edna Lyall comes first. Careful counting and recounting of the most frequently mentioned writers gave the following results:

Upon the moderate swell rolling into the ice-formed bay from the open Arctic Sea the Thorgrim lay and swung in a sullen fashion, her ninety feet of dingy-green hull dipping into the gray water till the scuppers gurgled. Across her narrow deck the clammy mist was blown like smoke, while the bitter wind drew long-sustained tenor notes from her slim ochre funnel. To starboard, the shape of a small berg, perhaps thirty feet in height at its highest point, was dimly visible, and Sigurd, the mate in the steering-box of the Thorgrim, found no other object as he slowly turned his keen eyes round the limited circle which the fog left to them. Yet less than five hundred yards away rose the sound of breakers, the rhythmic crash of the surf against the edge of the ice, the moaning echo from the icy waste that stretched through scores of miles to Greenland. The moaning echo is a weird thing, but Sigurd the mate was used to it. He listened for nigh a minute, then sharply jerked the cord of the foghorn.

S--s--poop! cried the horn shortly, and the ice gave back echoes innumerable.

Almost immediately the captain appeared at the door of the tiny deckhouse above the cabin, and made his way to the steering-box. He received his mate's report, verified it by listening for himself, and nodded. The mate took the wheel, and called down the speaking-tube to the engineer. For five minutes the Thorgrim moved slowly ahead, then came to rest and resumed her rolling.

"Tell Ové to take your place, and come you to the cabin," said the captain as he descended the perpendicular steps to the deck. "Tell Hansen to

bring coffee," he added. "We shall soon have work to do. The weather will clear within an hour."

"In an hour, kaptan!" exclaimed the mate, staring; but the other was already entering the deck-house.

The time was two o'clock on the last afternoon of August, and the Thorgrim had lain in and cautiously dodged about the ice-bay since the evening of the 23rd. Storm had forced her to seek that precarious shelter; fog had helped to imprison her there. She was about seventy miles north of the mouth of Isafjord, the great indentation in the great north-west promontory of Iceland-so the captain guessed, and the mate hoped he was right. The business of the Thorgrim and the eleven Norwegians on board her was to chase, kill, and capture finner-whales, and tow the carcasses to the company's station, with its flensing-slips and oil-factory, in Isafjord. But the hunting season, which begins in mid-April or early May, was now at its fag-end. Indeed, the 15th of August had seen its close so far as the majority of the competing companies were concerned.

When Sigurd the mate came into the cabin, which was heated to a high temperature by the almost red-hot stove, he flung himself without a word on the port locker, loosened his muffler, set his pipe going, and began to read a Norsk illustrated journal, ragged and stained and four months old. Kaptan Svendsen did not like to be disturbed when he was playing "patience," for he gained inspiration as well as mere amusement from his well-thumbed pack of cards. Now his strong, steady hand laid down card after card, while his fine blue-gray eyes-under their heavy, almost white, brows-watched each one as if for some important de

velopment. Presently Sigurd threw aside the journal, every word of which he had read twenty times, and began to watch also, resting his forearms on the edge of the small triangular table, with its peg-holes for use in rough weather.

A puff of cold air rushed into the cabin, and the cook came cautiously down the steep and narrow stair bearing a tray.

"Coffee, kaptan," he said, handing a large mug half-filled with the fluid to the card-player.

"Tak!" briefly returned the old man. -"Sigurd!" he said without looking up. The mate took the mug, laid it within reach of the captain's hand, and secured it on the table with four wooden pegs which he found on the ledge of the bunk at his back. Then be took in turn his own mug, a basin of sugar, and a tin of condensed milk from the tray, pegging each to the swaying table.

"Biscuits," murmured the captain, holding out an impatient hand.

"The fine biscuits are finished, kaptan. I have nothing but these," said Hansen, laying a wooden bowl of ordinary ship's biscuits on the table.

"What?"

"We have been at the sea twelve days. It is not usual," replied Hansen sulkily. "The milk also is finishedall but what is in that tin. There is also but little beef left, and you cannot have any more sweet soup-nothing but brown bean, and the beans also will soon be done."

But Kaptan Svendsen had gone back to his cards.

"It is all right, Hansen," he said pleasantly, without looking up. "We shall be at the station in time for dinner to-morrow. It will be clear weather in less than one hour."

The cook took his own mug of coffee and a biscuit, and seated himself on the locker beside the mate.

"So, kaptan?" he said. "But if we leave in an hour we shall be at the station in time for breakfast." He spoke as if the captain required to be humored. "For breakfast, kaptan,” he repeated.

Sigurd nudged him to be silent. The old man appeared to be making a calculation from the rows of cards in front of him.

At last he looked up and bundled the cards together, laughing as he did So. He put sugar in his coffee, added milk from the jagged hole punched in the top edge of the tin, and took a long draught of the almost cool mixture.

"For dinner, Hansen," he said quietly. "The Thorgrim will have a whale in tow."

"Kaptan," said Hansen, respectfully enough, "we saw no whales all the four days before we came into the ice. Are not all the whales gone south by now? Besides, it is ill weather for hunting. And-and the food grows Ten-eleven days-it is unusual. I-I was not warned." Sigurd nudged him admonishingly; but Kaptan Svendsen took his cook's remarks calmly.

scarce.

"You have food for all for eight days yet, according to the rules of the company," he said. "Have you not?"

Hansen began to stammer. He had known that this was to be the last trip of the season. He had been led to understand, also, that it was to be a run to the ice and back, only one day to be allowed for looking for whales. He had considered one-half of the usual stores more than sufficient. He said a great deal more, but all to the same effect.

The old man let him finish.

"So!" he said, and turned to the mate: "Sigurd, go on deck, and bring me word of the weather."

"Ja, kaptan," answered Sigurd, and, knotting his muffler, left the cabin. "Hansen," said the captain, gazing

earnestly at the sullen middle-aged man opposite him, "do you sail on a whale-steamer next year?"

"Unless anybody prevents me," muttered Hansen.

"I will not prevent you, but I require your promise-your oath-that you will never again break the rules of the company. You promise? You swear! Good! I know you will not fail again."

"I am sorry, kaptan," murmured the cook, honest regret in his voice and expression.

"That is finished, Hansen. We speak of it no more. It is our last trip together."

"Ah! You do not come again to Iceland, kaptan?"

"Nej. I retire," answered the old man, smiling. "I stay at home with my children and grandchildren in Sandefjord. I kill no more whales-but one. One more. My Well, Sigurd?"

The mate entered quickly, beaming. "The weather clears, the wind falls, kaptan!"

Svendsen nodded with a pleased air. "I shall soon kill my last whale -my thousandth whale! May he be a great bull-a king blaa-hval!"

should force a return to the station ere the thousandth whale could be captured?

"Have I not told you that I will kill my whale before night?" said the old man, still holding out his hand.

Shamefacedly, Hansen took it. "I have plenty of flour. I will bake extra bread now," he muttered as he rose.

"If you like, Hansen-if you like. But it will not be required."

For a moment the cook looked at the mate. Then he saluted the captain and left the cabin.

"Let us go on deck," said Svendsen five minutes later. "You and I will load the gun. Do you get forward the new harpoon that we took on board last week. I will not use an old one on my thousandth whale."

The wind had dropped, and the sun was already piercing the mist, which was thinning so rapidly that bergs and sheets of ice came into view like objects on a photographic plate in the developing-bath. The crew appeared on deck smiling; but the smiles vanished when they saw the preparations for loading the gun. They had counted on a quick run back to Isafjord.

Kaptan Svendsen, fondling a cotton

"Nine hundred and ninety-nine have

I killed for my company," said the old man proudly. "Shall I go home to rest and tell my grandchildren of my life before I kill the thousandth-SigurdHansen?"

He held out his great hand.

Sigurd shook it, laughing. "The glory will be mine also, kaptan. I have told you so before."

"Ah, yes, you knew it was to be the thousandth whale this trip, my Sigurd. -But you, Hansen-you will wish me luck?"

But the cook smote his hand on the table and cursed himself. What if his carelessness in the matter of provisions

powder, nodded pleasantly as he passed them on his way to the bows. To two of them he gave instructions to remove the tarpaulins from the powerful double-winch immediately abaft the foremast, and to see that its machinery was in perfect working order.

Sigurd was already waiting on the foot-high platform in the bows beside the short, thick-set, scarlet-painted cannon, the horrible harpoon on his left shoulder, a ramrod and a supply of wads in his right hand. Kaptan Svendsen examined the harpoon-every inch of its five-foot slotted shaft, in which ran the ring for carrying the cable; each one of the four hinged barbs, now lying against the shaft, but