How does it work out?  For ten days I sat round their hospitable fire trying hard for the viewpoint of each member of this Farthest North family of fellow-Canadians.  I have lived under many roof-trees, but never have I seen a more harmonious family, nor a menage of nicer adjustment.  Mrs. Oo-vai-oo-ak the Elder, full of the mellow juice of life, waggish and keen, “quick at the uptak’,” as the Scotch say, presides over her household with dignity, never for a moment relaxing her hold on the situation.  Chief Oo-vai-oo-ak wisely leaves the interior economy of the household in the hands of the women.  He is the quiet, dignified gentleman with an easy manner that courtiers and plenipotentiaries extraordinary might envy.  His six feet two inches of height, magnificent physique and superb carriage would mark him out as a man of distinction at any race-course, polo-meet, or political reception where men of the world forgather.

Observing the small, strong, exquisitely-formed hands and feet of the Oo-vai-oo-aks, the almost-white complexions dashed with ruddy scarlet, the easy grace that even the children have, and, above all, the simple dignity which compels respect, one recognizes here an ancestry harking back to Old World culture and distinction.

[Illustration:  Roxi and the Oo-vai-oo-ak Family]

How does the young wife fit in?  No suffragette need break a lance for her, demanding a ballot, dower-rights, and the rest of it.  She is happy and busy.  All day long she sings and laughs as she prepares the family fish and feast of fat things, she pays deference to her co-wife, romps with the children, and expands like an anemone under the ardent smile of her lord.  When the grave question was under discussion regarding the exchange of her pendant bead-and-shell ear-rings for a pair we had brought from the shops of the white men, the two spouses discussed the matter in all its phases earnestly together, as chummy as two school-girls.

The Oo-vai-oo-ak family was a puzzle to the on-lookers, who sought in vain for some one of the three contracting parties to pity.  They were all so abundantly happy, each in his or her own way, that Walking Delegate could find no crack here for the opening wedge of discord.  If no one is to be pitied, then surely for this new departure in matrimony there must be some one for the virtuous to blame.  But why?

Kipling declares, “There’s never a law of God or man runs north of fifty-three.”  The Eskimo has worked out his life-problem independent quite from the so-called civilisations evolved to the south of him.  He is his own man.

In the rest of America and in Europe we have formulated a rule of “One man, One wife,” allowing an elasticity of the rule in Chicago and elsewhere, so that it may read, “One man, one wife at a time.”  Are we so sure of results that we are in a position to force our rule upon the Eskimo?