JOHN BUZZBY’S OPPINYUNS O’ THINGS IN GIN’RAL.

Mr. Editer,—­As you was so good as to ax from me a contribootion to your waluable peeryoddical, I beg heer to stait that this heer article is intended as a gin’ral summery o’ the noos wots agoin’.  Your reeders will be glad to no that of late the wether’s bin gittin’ colder, but they’ll be better pleased to no that before the middle o’ nixt sumer it’s likely to git a, long chawk warmer.  There’s a gin’ral complaint heer that Mivins has bin eatin’ the shuger in the pantry, an’ that’s wots makin’ it needfull to put us on short allowance.  Davie Summers sais he seed him at it, an’ it’s a dooty the guvermint owes to the publik to have the matter investigated.  It’s gin’rally expected, howsever, that the guvermint won’t trubble its hed with the matter.  There’s bin an onusual swarmin’ o’ rats in the ship of late, an’ Davie Summers has had a riglar hunt after them.  The lad has becum more than ornar expert with his bow an’ arrow, for he niver misses now—­exceptin’, always, when he dusn’t hit—­an’ for the most part takes them on the pint on the snowt with his blunt-heded arow, which he drives in—­the snowt, not the arow.  There’s a gin’ral wish among the crew to no whether the north pole is a pole or a dot.  Mizzle sais it’s a dot, and O’Riley swears (no, he don’t do that, for we’ve gin up swearin’ in the fog-sail), but he sais that it’s a real post, ‘bout as thick again as the main-mast, an’ nine or ten times as hy.  Grim sais it’s nother wun thing nor anuther, but a hydeear that is sumhow or other a fact, but yit don’t exist at all.  Tom Green wants to no if there’s any conexshun between it an’ the pole that’s conected with elections.  In fact, we’re all at sea, in a riglar muz abut this, an’ as Dr. Singleton’s a syentiffick man, praps he’ll give us a leadin’ article in your nixt—­so no more at present from—­ Yours to command,

JOHN BUZZBY.

This contribution was accompanied with an outline illustration of Mivins eating sugar with a ladle in the pantry, and Davie Summers peeping in at the door—­both likenesses being excellent.

Some of the articles in the Arctic Sun were grave and some were gay, but all of them were profitable, for Fred took care that they should be charged either with matter of interest or matter provocative of mirth.  And, assuredly, no newspaper of similar calibre was ever looked forward to with such expectation, or read and re-read with such avidity.  It was one of the expedients that lasted longest in keeping up the spirits of the men.

The rat-hunting referred to in the foregoing “summary” was not a mere fiction of Buzzby’s brain.  It was a veritable fact.  Notwithstanding the extreme cold of this inhospitable climate, the rats in the ship increased to such a degree that at last they became a perfect nuisance.  Nothing was safe from their attacks—­whether substances were edible or not, they were gnawed through and ruined—­and