he soliloquized "Physician, heal thyself!" Honestly he endeavored to obey the injunction, by imagining himself burrowing in a whole bale of Mackinaw blankets, as he had once done in the far west when smitten by an ague, but the warmth was as imperceptible in the former case as in the latter. The night wore on, to the extent of two or three thousand hours, and reduced the chilling Cook at last to a single desire:--he wished that before he froze to death he might have a thermometer, a pencil and paper, and record for the benefit of coming canoeists this terrible temperature--if, indeed, the thermometer could indicate it before the mercury itself would freeze. Then came that mysterious hour of the night in which night, itself still regnant, trembles at the prospect of its own dissolution. It was the hour in which sick men who are foredoomed to die generally accept the inevitable: it was also the hour in which the Commodore, in his home capacity of Editor, always left the office of the "Daily Tocsin," and walked home with a sedative cigar for company. The force of habit being strong in the Commodore, he rustled uneasily under his blankets, and finally emerged from the tent, filling a pipe as he came. "Just the man!" exclaimed the Cook. "_I_ want to smoke, but I hadn't the heart to awake any one to beg a dry match." Both pipes lighted, the Cook remarked, "D-d-don't you think it would be more cheerful to smoke by a f-f-fire?" And the Commodore, with a very perceptible flavor of irony in his tones, replied, "I d-d-don't know but I d-d-do."