But this is not a history of the geographical distribution of men; it is to be the story of an Eskimo who went astray according to the moral ideals of his immediate tribesmen.

Once upon a time there lived in this northland of which we have been speaking a young native who had mysteriously arrived at the conclusion that the life of an Eskimo was a very narrow and fruitless existence indeed, and that the conditions under which they lived were totally inadequate to supply the demands of a twentieth century human being.  In the midst of the other members of the family he assumed an attitude of weariness and contempt for his associates and environs.  “One may as well associate with a polar bear,” he soliloquized.  “Man was made to accomplish things; the Eskimo is no further advanced in the scale of living, organic beings, to all intent and purpose, than the polar bear, or the walrus.  He is born, lives, eats, sleeps, hunts, kills, dies, and is buried in the cold frozen earth, if he does not fall through a hole in the ice into the bottomless sea.  To the south of us is a great healthy world where men live; where they have discovered all that the world has to give, and where they enjoy those things to the utmost; where they read and write and take records of their doings.  Me for the south!” he shouted, and he made up his mind to migrate at the first opportunity and be in the swim with men.  “I must learn to read and write and think, even if I have to forget my own language,” he declared.

Now, it came to pass that as he was soliloquizing as above one morning, a girl appeared before him.  She was so muffled up in furs that only an Eskimo could distinguish whether the bundle was male or female.  She sat down beside him and placed her short, stubby, muffled arm as far around his neck as it would go, and in this attitude she coaxed, and begged, and prayed, and argued with him, thinking that she might resurrect him to himself again.  But when she found that his mania was for the south, she wept as only woman can weep the whole world over, even in the far north where the tears are in danger of freezing to her cheeks.  But he, in his brutish, advanced-thought sort of way, pushed her from him.

“If you love me you will help me to go,” he said.  “If you love me you will stay,” she responded.

He rose and moved towards his igloo; she followed.  He crawled like a bear through the thirty feet or more of narrow tunnel which led into the hut proper.  She did likewise.  In the igloo he threw himself down on the ice floor among the squalor and quantities of bear meat in various stages of decomposition.  The smell from the whale-oil lamp almost choked him.  The girl sat down and continued to cling to him.