"Make some syrup by boiling three-quarters of a pint of water, 1/2 lb. of castor sugar, and the juice from a tinned pineapple. Lay the pineapple in a glass bowl cut in small slices."--_Weekly Paper_. * * * * * ART IN THE ARCTIC. To know that you can't draw and to be told so by your friends are two very different things. Honnell can't draw, but hates his inseparable Swan to tell him so. Honnell's sketches have hitherto been criticised only by people who also wanted their drawing flattered. Swan learned bluntness on the Yukon. So they are an odd pair to be chumming now in the Arctic circle. They are so friendly that they will tramp together for half a day and exchange scarcely so much as a grunt of conversation. Swan, of course, feels quite at home in North Russia and smiles at the people who call it cold and its distances big. Honnell has lived in Edinburgh, so doesn't notice the temperature, though he misses the tramway system. Both can say about six words--the same--in Russian, and both have bought a pair of moccasins--Swan because he likes them, and Honnell because he would like to. Recently they set off together from Kola on the Murman Coast to try to find a village from which jolly little Laplanders and Laplanderesses come sliding and skidding to market behind their stout-hearted reindeer. They left all their picturesque Arctic gear behind them except their moccasins, Swan being one of those trying people who don't care how they look, if only they "mush" along fast enough. Their provisions consisted of a tin of bully and four edible tiles or army biscuits, with some margarine in a Y.M.C.A. envelope. The story they told on their return--for they did return and in good time for dinner--was mostly Honnell's, but I must admit that Swan could not be got to refute it. As they approached the village--some huts on a white hillside above a frozen lake--a representative of the dog-colony came to meet them, waving his tail with an anti-clockwise circular motion impossible to the dog of temperate zones. Having inspected them he escorted them on their way in a perfectly civilised and even courteous manner. So far from being resisted, their entry was ignored save by the little fur-capped boys, who collected at their heels as if they had formed the vanguard of a circus, and the little brightly-kerchiefed girls, who bolted for cover. All the adult male inhabitants, fiercely-bearded little men like trolls done up in reindeer-skin from top to toe, appeared to be engrossed in the manufacture of sleighs, although the village was already littered and cluttered up with them; and all the ladies were indoors sewing reindeer-skin into trousers or making tea.