see such a miserable set of creatures as the old Esquimau women are at
Upernavik?"

"Why, what put _them_, into your head?" inquired Tom laughing.

"Yonder iceberg! Look at it! There's the nose and chin exactly of the
extraordinary hag you gave your silk pocket-handkerchief to at parting.
Now, I never saw such a miserable old woman as that before, did you?"

Tom Singleton's whole demeanour changed, and his dark eyes brightened as
the strongly-marked brows frowned over them, while he replied, "Yes,
Fred, I have seen old women more miserable than that. I have seen women
so old that their tottering limbs could scarcely support them, going
about in the bitterest November winds, with clothing too scant to cover
their wrinkled bodies, and so ragged and filthy that you would have
shrunk from touching it--I have seen such groping about among heaps of
filth that the very dogs looked at and turned away from as if in
disgust."

Fred was inclined to laugh at his friend's sudden change of manner; but
there was something in the young surgeon's character--perhaps its deep
earnestness--that rendered it impossible, at least for his friends, to
be jocular when he was disposed to be serious. Fred became grave as he
spoke.

"Where have you seen such poor wretches, Tom?" he asked, with a look of
interest.

"In the cities, the civilized cities of our own Christian land. If you
have ever walked about the streets of some of these cities before the