"I call this my study," said the Doctor; "but in truth there is the real shop";--and he led me into a little room adjoining, in which there was but one window, one table, one chair, no shelves, a great number of books, lying about in every direction, and great quantities of paper. On the wall hung about two dozen pipes of various shapes and sizes, and a fine assortment of guns and rifles and all the paraphernalia of a practised sportsman. It was easy to see that there was one place where the native-born Sophy did not come. The chamber of this singular Greenland recluse was in keeping with his study. The walls were painted light blue, a blue carpet adorned the floor, blue curtains softened the light which stole through the windows, and blue hangings cast a pleasant hue over a snowy pillow. Although small, there was indeed nothing wanting, not even a well-arranged bath-room,--nothing that the most fastidious taste could covet or desire. "And now," said my entertainer, when we had got seated in the study, "does this present attractions sufficient to tempt you from your narrow bunk on shipboard? You are most heartily welcome to that blue den which you admire so much, and which I am heartily sick of, while I can make for myself a capital 'shake-down' here, or _vice versa_. If neither of these will suit you, then cast your eyes out of the window, and you will observe snow enough to build a more truly Arctic lodging." I stepped to the window, and there, sure enough, piled up beneath it and against the house, was a great bank of snow, which the summer's sun had not yet dissolved; and as I saw this, and then looked beyond it over the wretched little village, and the desolate waste of rocks on which it stood, and then on up the craggy steeps to the great white-topped mountains, I could but wonder what strange occurrence had sent this luxury-loving man, with books only for companions, into such a howling wilderness. Was it his own fancy? or was it some cruel necessity? In truth, the surprise was so great that I found myself suddenly turning from the scene outside to that within, not indeed without an impulse that the whole thing might have vanished in the interval, as the palace of Aladdin in the Arabian tale. My host was watching me attentively, no doubt reading my thoughts, for as I turned round he asked if I "liked the contrast." To be quite candid, I was forced to own myself greatly wondering "that a den so well fitted for the latitude of Paris should be stumbled upon away up here so near the Pole." "Hardly in keeping with 'the eternal fitness of things,' eh?" "Precisely so." "You think, then, because a fellow chooses to live in barbarous Greenland, he must needs turn barbarian?" "Not exactly that, but we are in the habit of associating the appreciation of comfort and luxury with the desire for social intercourse,--certainly not with banishment like this."