Our conversation naturally enough ran upon the affairs of the big world on the other side of the Arctic Circle,--upon its politics and literature and science and art, passing lightly from one to the other, lingering now and then over some book which we had mutually fancied. I found my companion perfectly posted up to within a year, and inquired how he managed so well. "Ah! you must know," answered he, "that is a clever little illusion of mine. I'm always precisely one year behind the rest of the world. The Danish ship brings me a file of papers for the past twelve months, the principal reviews and periodicals, the latest maps, such books as I have sent for the year previous, and, beside this, the bookseller and my other home friends make me up an assortment of what they think will please me. Now, you see, in devouring this, I pursue an absolute method. The books, of course, I take up as the fancy pleases me; but the reviews, periodicals, and newspapers I turn over to Sophy, and the faithful creature places on my breakfast-table every morning exactly what was published that day one year before. Clever, isn't it? You see I get every day the news, and go through the drama of the year with perhaps quite as much satisfaction as they who live the passing days in the midst of the occurring events. Each day's paper opens a new act in the play, and what matters it that the 'news' is one year old? It is none the less news to me; and, besides, are not Gibbon, Shakespeare, and Mother Goose still more ancient?" I could but smile at this ingenious device; and the Doctor, seeing plainly that I was deeply interested in his novel mode of life, loosened a tongue which, in truth, needed little encouragement, and rattled away over the rough and smooth of his Greenland experiences, with an enjoyment on his part perhaps scarcely less than mine; for it was easy to see that his love of wild adventure kept pace with his love of comfort, and that he heartily enjoyed the exposures of his career and the reputation which his hardihood had acquired for him. I perceived, too, that he possessed a warm and vivid imagination, and that, clothing everything he saw and everything he did with a fitting sentiment of strength or beauty, he had blended wild nature and his own strange life into a romantic scheme which completely filled his fancy,--apparently, at least, leaving nothing unsupplied,--and this he enjoyed to the very bottom of his soul.