“The story tells itself, does it not?  The news of the magic potion spread.  It was too marvellous for utterance.  Tongues could tell but a tithe of the miracles it performed.  It eased pain, gave surcease to sorrow, brought back old memories, dead faces, and forgotten dreams.  It was a fire that ate through all the blood, and, burning, burned not.  It stoutened the heart, stiffened the back, and made men more than men.  It revealed the future, and gave visions and prophecy.  It brimmed with wisdom and unfolded secrets.  There was no end of the things it could do, and soon there was a clamouring on all hands to sleep with the gods.  They brought their warmest furs, their strongest dogs, their best meats; but I sold the hooch with discretion, and only those were favoured that brought flour and molasses and sugar.  And such stores poured in that I set Moosu to build a cache to hold them, for there was soon no space in the igloo.  Ere three days had passed Tummasook had gone bankrupt.  The shaman, who was never more than half drunk after the first night, watched me closely and hung on for the better part of the week.  But before ten days were gone, even the woman Ipsukuk exhausted her provisions, and went home weak and tottery.

“But Moosu complained.  ‘O master,’ he said, ’we have laid by great wealth in molasses and sugar and flour, but our shack is yet mean, our clothes thin, and our sleeping furs mangy.  There is a call of the belly for meat the stench of which offends not the stars, and for tea such as Tummasook guzzles, and there is a great yearning for the tobacco of Neewak, who is shaman and who plans to destroy us.  I have flour until I am sick, and sugar and molasses without stint, yet is the heart of Moosu sore and his bed empty.’

“‘Peace!’ I answered, ’thou art weak of understanding and a fool.  Walk softly and wait, and we will grasp it all.  But grasp now, and we grasp little, and in the end it will be nothing.  Thou art a child in the way of the white man’s wisdom.  Hold thy tongue and watch, and I will show you the way my brothers do overseas, and, so doing, gather to themselves the riches of the earth.  It is what is called “business,” and what dost thou know about business?’

“But the next day he came in breathless.  ’O master, a strange thing happeneth in the igloo of Neewak, the shaman; wherefore we are lost, and we have neither worn the warm furs nor tasted the good tobacco, what of your madness for the molasses and flour.  Go thou and witness whilst I watch by the brew.’

“So I went to the igloo of Neewak.  And behold, he had made his own still, fashioned cunningly after mine.  And as he beheld me he could ill conceal his triumph.  For he was a man of parts, and his sleep with the gods when in my igloo had not been sound.

“But I was not disturbed, for I knew what I knew, and when I returned to my own igloo, I descanted to Moosu, and said:  ’Happily the property right obtains amongst this people, who otherwise have been blessed with but few of the institutions of men.  And because of this respect for property shall you and I wax fat, and, further, we shall introduce amongst them new institutions that other peoples have worked out through great travail and suffering.’