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It has been great having you on board for atime. I wish you could stay and see someother sections of the work. When you joinedus I hesitated at first, thinking perhaps it wouldbe better to show you the poorer parts of ourcountry, and not the better off—but decided tolet you drop in and drop out again of theordinary routine, and not bother to ‘show yousights.’ Still I am sorry that you did not seesome other sections of the people. There is tome in life always an infinite satisfaction inaccomplishing anything. I don’t care so muchwhat it is. But if it has involved real anxiety,especially as to the possibility of success, italways returns to me a prize worth while.

Well, you have been over some parts, wherethings have somehow materialized. The reindeerexperiment I also estimate an accomplishedsuccess, as it completely demonstratedour predictions, and as it is now in good handsand prospering. The Seamen’s Institute, inhaving become self-supporting and now demandingmore space, has also been a real encouragementto go ahead in other lines. Butthere is one thing better than accomplishment,and that is opportunity; as the problem isbetter than the joy of writing Q. E. D.

So I would have liked to show you WhiteBay as far as La Scie, where our friends arefighting with few assets, and many discouragements.It certainly has left them poor, andoften hungry and naked, but it has made menof them, and they have taught me many lessons;and it would do your viewpoint good tosee how many debts these people place meunder.

If life is the result of stimuli, believe me weought to know what life means in a countrywhere you are called on to create every daysomething, big or small. On the other hand,if life consists of the multitude of things onepossesses, then Labrador should be graded farfrom where I place it, in its relation to Philadelphia.

A thousand thanks for coming so far togive us your good message of brotherlysympathy.

Grenfell and Labrador are namesthat must go down in history together.Of the man and of his sea-beaten,wind-swept “parish” it will be said, as Kiplingwrote of Cecil Rhodes:

Some folk may try to tell us that WilfredThomason Grenfell, C.M.G., gets more creditthan is due him: but while they cavil andinsinuate the Recording Angel smiles andwrites down more golden deeds for this descendantof an Elizabethan sea-dog. SirRichard Grenville, of theRevenge, as Tennysontells us—stood off sixty-three ships ofSpain’s Armada, and was mortally woundedin the fight, crying out as he fell upon thedeck: “I have only done my duty, as a manis bound to do.” That tradition of heroicdevotion to duty, and of service to mankind,is ineradicable from the Grenfell blood.

“We’ve had a hideous winter,” the Doctorsaid, as I clasped hands with him in June atthe office of the Grenfell Association in NewYork. His hair was whiter and his bronzedface more serious than when I last had seenhim; but the unforgettable look in his eyesof resolution and of self-command was thereas of old, intensified by the added years ofwarfare with belligerent nature and sometimesrecalcitrant mankind. For a few momentswhen he talks sentence may link itselfto sentence very gravely, but nobody everknew the Doctor to go long without thatkeen, bright flash of a smile, provoked by aready and a constant sense of fun, thatillumines his face like a pulsation of theNorthern Lights, and—unless you are hard assteel at heart—must make you love him, anddo what he wants you to do.

The Doctor on this occasion was a monthlate for his appointment with the board ofdirectors of the Grenfell Association. Hislittle steamer, theStrathcona, had been frozenin off his base of operations and inspirationsat St. Anthony. So he started afoot forConch to catch a launch that would take himto the railroad. He was three days coveringa distance which in summer would have requiredbut a few hours, in the direction ofWhite Bay on the East Coast. He slept onthe beach in wet clothes. Then he was caughton pans of ice and fired guns to attract thenotice of any chance vessel. Once moreashore, he vainly started five times more fromSt. Anthony harbour. Finally he went northand walked along the coast, cutting acrosswhen he could, eighty miles to Flower’s Cove.In the meantime theStrathcona, with Mrs.Grenfell aboard, was imprisoned in the ice onthe way to Seal Harbour; and it was threeweeks before Mrs. Grenfell, with the aid oftwo motor-boats, reached the railroad by wayof Shoe Cove.

At Flower’s Cove the Doctor rapped at thedoor of Parson Richards. That good manfairly broke into an alleluia to behold him.With beaming face he started to prepare hishero a cup of tea. But there came a cry atthe door: “Abe Gould has shot himself inthe leg!”

Out into the cold and the dark again theDoctor stumbled. He put his hand into theleg and took out the bone and the infectedparts with such instruments as he had. Thenhe sat up all night, feeding his patient sleepingpotions of opium. With the day camethe mail-boat for the south, the Ethie, beatenback from two desperate attempts to penetratethe ice of the Strait to Labrador.

Two months later I rejoined the Doctor atCroucher’s wharf, at Battle Harbour, Labrador.

The littleStrathcona, snuggling against thepiles, was redolent of whalemeat for the dogs,her decks piled high with spruce and fir, whitebirch and juniper, for her insatiable fires.(Coal was then $24 a ton.)

“Where’ve you been all this time?” theDoctor cried, as I flung my belongings to hisdeck from theEthie’s mail-boat, and he heldout both hands with his radiant smile of greeting.“I’m just about to make the rounds ofthe hospital. This is a busy day. We pullout for St. Anthony tonight!” With thathe took me straight to the bedside of hispatients in the little Battle Harbour hospitalthat wears across its battered face the legend:“Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the leastof these my brethren ye did it unto me.”

The first man was recovering from typhoid,and the Doctor, with a smile, was satisfied withhis convalescence.

The next man complained of a pain in theabdomen. Dr. Grenfell inquired about the intensityof the pain, the temperature, the appetiteand the sleep of the patient.

“He has two of the four cardinal symptoms,”said the Doctor, “pain and temperature.Probably it’s an appendical attack.We had a boy who—like this man—lookedall right outwardly, and yet was found to havea bad appendix.”

The Doctor has a way of thinking aloud ashe goes along, and taking others into his confidence—frequentlyby an interrogation whichis flattering in the way in which he imputessuperior knowledge to the one of whom thequestion is asked. It is a liberal education inthe healing craft to go about with him, for heis never secretive or mysterious—he is franklyhuman instead of oracular.

“How about your schooner?” was his nextquestion. “Do you think that they can getalong without you?”

He never forgets that these are fishermen,whose livelihood depends on getting everyhour they can with their cod-traps, and thestages and the flakes where the fish is saltedand spread to dry.

The third patient was a whaler. He hadcaught his hand in a winch. The bones of thesecond and third fingers of the right handwere cracked, and the tips of those fingers hadbeen cut off. The hand lay in a hot bath.

“Dirty work, whaling,” was the Doctor’scomment, as he examined the wound.“Everything is rotten meat and a woundeasily becomes infected.”

Number four was a baffling case of multiplegangrene. This Bonne Bay fisherman had anose and an ear that looked as if they hadturned to black rubber. His toes weresloughing off. The back of his right handwas like raw beef. His left leg was bent atan angle of 90 degrees, and as it could notbear the pressure of the bedclothes a scaffoldinghad been built over it. The teeth weregone, and when the dressings were removedeven the plucking of the small hairs on theleg gave the patient agony.

The Doctor looked out of the window andsaw a dandelion in the rank green grass.“That’s what he ought to have,” was hiscomment.

On the verandah were four out-of-doorpatients to whom fresh air was essential. Onehad a tubercular spine. A roll of plaster hadbeen coming by freight all summer long andwas impatiently awaited. But a delay ofmonths on the Labrador is nothing unusual.Dr. Daly, of Harvard, presented theStrathconawith a searchlight, and it was two yearson the way—most of that time stored in awarehouse at North Sydney.

Around these fresh-air cases the verandahwas netted with rabbit-wire. That was to keepthe dogs from breaking in and possibly eatingthe patients, who are in mortal terror of thedogs.

When the Doctor took a probe from thehand of a trusted assistant he was careful toask if it was sterile ere he used it. He constantlytook his juniors—in this instance,Johns Hopkins doctors—into consultation.“What do you think?” was his frequentquery.

The use of unhallowed patent medicinesgave him distress. “O the stuff the peopleput into themselves!” he exclaimed.

“We’ve been trying to get a chloramine solutionall summer,” answered one of the youngphysicians.

The Doctor made a careful examination ofthe man with the tubercular spine, who wasencased in plaster from the waist up. “Afterall,” was his comment as he rose to his feet,“doctors don’t do anything but keep thingsclean.”

In the women’s ward the Harris Cot, theTorquay Cot, the Northfield Cot, the VictoriaCot, the Kingman Cot, the Exeter Cot werefilled with patient souls whose faces shone asthe Doctor passed. “More fresh air!” heejaculated, and other windows were opened.Those who came from homes hermeticallysealed have not always understood the Doctor’spassion for ozone. One man complainedthat the wind got in his teeth and a girl saidthat the singing on Sundays strained herstomach.

He had a remarkable memory for the historyof each case. “The day after you lefther heart started into fibrillation,” said anassistant. “It was there before we left,”answered the Doctor quietly.

At one bedside where an operation of anovel nature had been performed he remarked,“I simply hate leaving an opening when Idon’t know how to close it.”

He never pretends to know it all: he neversits down with folded hands in the face of adifficulty or “passes the buck” to another.In his running commentary while he looks thepatient over he confesses his perplexities. Yetall that he says confirms rather than shakesthe patient’s confidence in him. Those whomhe serves almost believe that he can all butraise the dead.

“Now this rash,” he said, “might meanthe New World smallpox—but probably itdoesn’t. We’ve only had two deaths from thatmalady on the coast. It ran synchronouslywith the ‘flu.’ In one household wherethere were three children and a man, onechild and the man got it and two childrenescaped it.

“This woman’s ulcers are the sequel tosmallpox. She needs the vegetable salts of afresh diet. How to get green things for heris the problem. And this patient has tubercularcaries of the hip. The X-ray apparatusis across the Straits at St. Anthony, sixty milesaway. If we only had a portable X-rayapparatus of the kind they used in the war!Now you see, no matter what the weather, thiswoman must be taken across the Straits becausewe are entirely without the proper applianceshere.”

Screens were put around the cots as theexamination was made, so that the otherswouldn’t be harrowed by the sight of bloodor pain.

The sick seemed to find comfort merely inbeing able to describe their symptoms to awise, good man. Much of the trouble seemedactually to evaporate as they talked to him.Miss Dohme and the other nurses kept therooms spotlessly clean, and gay bowls ofbuttercups were about.

“I don’t feel nice, Doctor,” said the nextwoman. “Some mornings a kind of dead,dreary feeling seems to come out of me stummickand go right down me laigs. Sometimesit flutters; sometimes it lies down. Thewind’s wonderful strong today, and it’srising.”

Usually the diagnosis is not greatly helpedby the patient, who meekly answers the questionswith “Yes, Doctor,” or “No, Doctor,”or describes the symptoms with such poeticvagueness that a great deal is left to theimagination. It takes patient cross-questioning—inwhich the Doctor is an adept—to elicitthe truth.

Here is a dear little baby, warmly muffled,on the piazza with the elixir of the sun and thepine air. The pustular eczema has beentreated with ammoniate of mercury—but whatwill happen when the infant goes home to theold malnutrition and want of sanitation? Ifonly the Doctor could follow the case!

Bathtubs are a mystery to some of the patients,who after they have been undressedand led to the water’s edge ask plaintively,“What do you want me to do now?”

So many times in this little hospital one wassmitten by the need of green vegetables whichin so many places are not to be had—“greens”(like spinach), lettuce, radishes andthe rest.

As we came away the Doctor spoke of thefeeling that he used to have that wherever abattle for the right was on anywhere he musttake part in it. “But I have learned that theyalso serve who simply do their duty in theirplaces. These dogs hereabouts seem to thinkthey must go to every fight there is, near orfar. But none of us is called upon to do allthere is to do. I often read of happenings indistant parts of the earth and feel as thoughI ought to be there in the thick of things.Then I realize that if we all minded our ownbusiness exactly where we are we’d be doingwell. And when such thoughts come to me Ijust make up my mind to be contented and tobuckle down to my job all the harder.”

That evening Dr. Grenfell spoke inthe little Church of England, taking ashis text the words from the twelfthchapter of John: “The spirit that is ruling inthis world shall be driven out.” Across thetickle the huskies howled at the moon, and oneafter another took up the challenge from eitherbank. But one was no longer conscious of thewailful creatures, and heard only the speaker;and the kerosene lamps lighted one by one inthe gloom of the church became blurred stars,and the woman sitting behind me in a loudwhisper said, “Yes! yes!” as Dr. Grenfell,in the earnest and true words of a manwho speaks for the truth’s sake and not forself’s sake, interpreted the Scriptures that hehas studied with such devotion.

“When I was young,” he said, “I learnedthat man is descended from a monkey, and Iwas told that there is no God.

“When I became older and did my ownthinking I refused to believe that God choseone race of mankind and left the rest to bedamned.

“No one has the whole truth, whether hebe Church of England, Methodist or RomanCatholic.

“The simple truth of Christianity is whatthe world needs. How foolish seem the tinseland trumpery distinctions for which menstruggle! What is the use of being able tostring the alphabet along after your name?Character is all that counts.

“Some say that religion is for the savingof your soul. But it is not a grab for theprizes of this world, and the capital prize ofthe life eternal.

“The things the world holds to be large,Christ tells us, are small. Jesus says thegreatest things are truth and love.

“Suppose a doctor loved all his patients.He wouldn’t be satisfied then to say: ‘Yourleg is better,’ or ‘Here is a pill.’

“Suppose a clergyman loved his people.He wouldn’t say: ‘I wonder how many in thiscongregation are Church of England.’

“God Himself is love and truth. Jesuslived the beautiful things He taught. He wasthem.

“Every man has something in him thatforces him to love what is unselfish and trueand altogether lovely and of good report.

“In the war, in the midst of all the horrorand the terror and the pity of it, a noble spiritwas made manifest among men—a heroicspirit of self-control and a sense of truevalues.

“If I couldn’t have a palace I could havea clean house; if I couldn’t speak foreignlanguages I needn’t speak foul language. Wemay be poor fishermen or poor London doctors:we can serve in our places, and we canlet our lives shine before men. If I havedone my duty where I am, I don’t care aboutthe rest. I shall not care if they leave myold body on the Labrador coast or at the bottomof the Atlantic for the fishes, if I havefought the good fight and finished the course.Having lived well, I shall die contented.”

As soon as the service in the church wasover a meeting was held in the upper room ofthe hospital. The room was filled, and Dr.Grenfell spoke again. Before his addressfamiliar hymns were sung, and—noting thattwo of those present had violins and were accompanyingthe cabinet organ—he referred totheir efforts in his opening words.

“We all have the great duty and privilegeof common human friendliness,” he said.“We may show it in the little things of everyday. For everybody needs help, everywhere.There is no end to the need of human sympathy.It may be shown with a fiddle—orperhaps I ought to say ‘violin’ (apologizingto a Harvard student who was officiating).

“I have always loved Kim in Kipling’s storyof that name. Kim is just a waif. Nobodyknows who his father is; but he is called‘the little friend of all the world.’

“There is a book which has found wideacceptance called ‘Mrs. Wiggs of the CabbagePatch.’ Mrs. Wiggs lived in a humble cottagewith only her cabbage patch, but everybodycame to her for sunshine and healing.She had plenty of troubles of her own, butjust because she had them she knew how tohelp others. Whoever we are, whatever weare, we may wear the shining armour of theknights of God: there is work waiting forour hands to do, there is good cheer for usto spread.”

Dreamer and doer live side by side in amityin Dr. Grenfell’s make-up. At the animateddinner-table of the nurses and the doctors inthe Battle Harbour hospital, after asking ablessing, he was talking eagerly about theLeague of Nations, the industrial situation inEngland and America and the future forRussia while brandishing the knife above themeat pie and letting no plate but his own goneglected.

Dr. Grenfell is happy and his soul is freeat the wheel of theStrathcona. That wheelbears the words, “Jesus saith, Follow me andI will make you fishers of men.” At the peakof the mainmast is likely to be the blue pennantbearing the words, “God is Love.” TheStrathcona is ketch-rigged. Her mainmast,that is to say, is in the foremast’s place; andabove the mainsail is a new oblong topsail thatis the Doctor’s dear delight. The other sailhas above it a topsail of orthodox pattern, andthere are two jibs. So that when she hasher full fuel-saving complement of canvasspread, theStrathcona displays six sails atwork. Could the Doctor always have his way,all the sails would be up whenever a breezestirs. With a good wind the ship is capableof eight knots and even more an hour: fiveknots or so is her average speed under steamalone. In the bow, his paws on the rail, orout on the bowsprit sniffing the air and seeingthings that only he can see, is the incomparabledog Fritz—Fritz of “57 varieties”—brownand black, like toast that was burnedin the making. No one knows the prevailingancestry of Fritz, but a strain of Newfoundlandis suspected. He will take a chance onswimming ashore if we cast anchor withinhalf a mile of it, though the water is nearcongealment, and he knows that a pack of hiswolfish brethren is ready to dispute the shorelinewith him when he clambers out drippingupon the stony beach with seaweed in hishair. When he swims back to the ship againhis seal-like head is barely above the wavesas he paddles about, a mute appeal in hisbrown eyes for a bight of rope to be hitchedabout his body to help him aboard.

Dr. Grenfell keeps unholy hours, anddawn is one of his favourite out-door sports.He may nominally have retired at twelve—whichis likely to mean that he began to reada book at that hour. He may have risen attwo, three and four to see how the wind layand the sea behaved: and perhaps five o’clockwill find him at the wheel, bareheaded,the wind ruffling the silver locks above hisruddy countenance, his grey-brown eyes—whichare like the stone labradorite in thevarying aspects they take on—watching thehorizon, the swaying bowsprit, the compass,and the goodness of God in the heavens.

The Doctor is a great out-of-doorsman. He scorns a hat, and in his ownelement abjures it utterly. He wears a brownsweater, high in the neck, and above it hesmokes a briarwood pipe that is usually rightside up but appears to give him just as muchsatisfaction when the bowl is inverted. Therest of his costume is a symphony of grey orbrown, patched or threadbare but neat always,ending in boots high or low of red rubber orof leather.

You may think that the dog Fritz out onthe bowsprit is enjoying all the morning thereis, but the Doctor is transformed.

“I love these early mornings,” he says—andhe is innocent of pose when he says it:it is not a mere literary emotion. “It’s abeautiful sight in autumn with the ice whenthe banks are red with the little hills clear-cutagainst the sky and the sea a deep, deepblue. Isn’t it a beautiful world to live in?Isn’t it fun to live?”

“A man can’t think just of stomachs allthe time. Sometimes I have to go away fora day or two. But I can’t say when I’veever been tired.

“A great little ship she is. She is veryhuman to me. She has done her bit—shehas carried her load. On that small deck anddown below we once took 56 Finns from thewreck of theViking off Hamilton Inlet. Wehad nothing but biscuit and dry caplin onwhich to feed them. Once we were caught ina storm with seven schooners. We had 60fathoms out on two chains for our anchors.Six of the other seven ships went ashore.Then the seventh overturned—ours was theonly ship that stood. All of a sudden ourmain steampipe burst. We had to use coldsea-water. It was a hard struggle to bringour ship into shallow water at 1½ fathoms.Another time we had to tow 19 small boatsat once.

Then suddenly spying other vessels withtheir sails up, Dr. Grenfell proceeds to studythem for a lesson as to the way his own shipis to take. He calls out to Albert Ash, hispessimistic mate, “She’s well-ballasted, thattwo-master. Have those others tacked?”His talk runs on easily as he swings the shipabout and the sails are bellying with a favouringbreeze. “This wind’ll run out three knots.I’m cheating it up into the wind. We’ll lether go by a bit. This is Chimney Tickle inhere. A beautiful harbour. The tide and thepolar current meet here. It’s always openwater. It’s the place they’re thinking of for atransatlantic harbour. It’s only 1,625 milesfrom here to Galway. The jib and mainsailaren’t doing the work. That man has no ideaof trimming a jib!” He rushes out to thewheelhouse and does most of the work ofsetting the mainsail himself.

“I’m so fond of those words ‘The sea isHis,’ ” he says, coming back to the spokesagain. “I think it runs in the blood. I liketo think of the old sea-dogs—like Frobisherand Drake and Cabot. Shackleton told Mrs.Grenfell that the first ship that came to Labradorwas named theGrenfell.”

“The comings and goings of theStrathconamean much to these people,” said Dr.McConnell. “At Independence a womanmet us on the wharf, the great tears rollingdown her cheeks. She lost her husband andher son in the ‘flu’ epidemic. She told me thather son said to her: ‘Mother, if Dr. Grenfellwere only here, he could save me.’ At SnackCove the people went out on the rocks andcried bitterly when theStrathcona passedthem by—as we learned when to their greatrelief we dropped in upon them a fortnightlater.”

We cast anchor at Pleasure Harbour becauseof rough weather and for a few hourshad one of the Doctor’s all too infrequentplay-times, while waiting for the Strait toabate its fury to permit of a possible crossing.

Here a delicious trout stream tumbled andswirled from sullen, mist-hung uplands into apiratical cove where two small schoonersswung at anchor. Like so many of theseplaces the cove was a complete surprise—youcame round the rock with no hint that it wasthere till you found it, placid as a tarn anddeep and black, with big blue hills stretchingto the northward beyond the fuzzy fringes ofthe nearer trees and the mottled barrens wherethe clouds were poised and the ghosts of themist descended. (A tuneful, sailor-like nameit is that the Eskimoes give to a ghost—the“Yo-ho”: and they say that the NorthernLights are the spirits of the dead at play).

An unhandy person with a rod, I wasallowed by Dr. Grenfell and Dr. McConnellto go ahead and spoil the nicest trout-poolswith my fly. Even though cod fishermen atthe mouth of the stream had unlawfully placeda net to keep the trout from ascending, therewere plenty of trout in the brook, and in thecourse of several hours forty-nine were goodenough to attach themselves to my line. Thebanks were soggy under the long greengrass: the water was acutely cold: and in twoplaces there were small fields of everlastingsnow in angles of the rock. It was an idealtrout-brook, for it was full of swirling blackeddies, rippling rapids, and deep, still pools.The brook began at a lake which was roughenedby a wind blowing steadily toward us.Dr. Grenfell cast against the wind where thelake discharged its contents into the brook,and the line was swept back to his boots.With unwearying patience he cast again andagain, and while I strove in vain to land asingle fish from the lake he caught one monsterafter another, almost at his own feet. Allthe way up the brook he had successfully fishedin the most unpromising places, that we hadgiven over with little effort, and here he wasagain getting by far the best results in the mostdifficult places of all. There seemed to be aparallel here with his medical and spiritualenterprise on the Labrador. He has workedfor poor and humble people, when others haveasked impatiently: “Why do you throwaway your life upon a handful of fishermenround about a bleak and uncomfortable islandwhere people have no business to live anyway?”He could not leave the fishermen’sstage at the mouth of the brook this timewithout being called upon to examine a fishermantroubled by failing eyesight. On therun of a couple of hundred yards in a rowboatto theStrathcona the thunder-clouds rolled up,with lightning, and as we set foot on boardthe deluge came.

Next evening found us at St. Anthony.Doctors and nurses were on the wharfto greet their chief after his absenceof several weeks. Dr. Curtis showed thestranger through the clean and well-appointedhospital, with its piazza for a sun-bath andthe bonny air for the T. B. patients, its X-rayapparatus and its operating room, its smallmuseum of souvenirs of remarkable operations.I saw Dr. Andrews of San Franciscoperform with singular deftness an operationfor congenital cataract, with a docile little girlwho had been blind a long time, and whosesight would probably be completely restored bythe two thrusts made with a needle at thesides of the cornea. Her eyes were bandagedand she was carried away by the nurse,broadly smiling, to await the outcome. Forten years or so this noted oculist, no longeryoung except in the spirit, has crossed thecontinent to spend the summer in volunteerservice at St. Anthony—a fair type of themen that are naturally drawn to the work inwhich the Doctor found his life.

One of the St. Anthony doctors visitingout-patients came upon a woman who wascarefully wrapped in paper. This explanationwas offered: “If us didn’t use he, the bugswould lodge their paws in we.” “Bugs” areflies, and the use of “he” for “it” is characteristic.A skipper will talk about a lighthouseas he, just as he feminizes a ship, andthe nominative case serves also as theobjective.

Another woman had been wrapped by herneighbours in burnt butter and oakum.“Now give her a bath,” was Dr. Grenfell’sadvice after he had made his examination.“You can if you like, Doctor,” the volunteernurse said. “If you do it and she dies weshan’t be blamed.”

In the hospital the Doctor was concernedwith a baby twelve months old whosefeet were twisted over till they were almostupside down. The mother had massaged thefeet with oil for hours at a time. The babycried constantly with pain, and neither thechild nor the mother had known a satisfactorynight’s rest since it was born. When theDoctor said the condition was curable, becauseshe had brought her child in time, thelook of relief in the mother’s face defiedrecording. It is a look often seen with hispatients, and since he scarcely ever asks orreceives a fee worth mentioning, it constitutesa large part of his reward.

The herd of reindeer that the Doctor importedfrom Lapland and installed betweenSt. Anthony and Flower’s Cove with two Lappherders are now flourishing under Canadianauspices in (Canadian) Labrador in thevicinity of the St. Augustine River. TheDoctor himself took a hand in the difficult jobof lassoing them and tying their feet, andstill there were about forty of the animalsthat could not be found. The Doctor saysit was “lots of fun” catching them—but hegives that description to many transactionsthat most of us would consider the hardestkind of hard work.

Next in importance after the hospital,Exhibit A is the spick-and-span orphanage,with thirty-five of the neatest and sweetestchildren, polite and friendly and more thanwilling to learn. The boys who are not namedPeter, James or John are named Wilfred.“Suffer little children to come unto me” isin big letters on the front of the building. Onthe hospital is the inscription: “Faith, hopeand love abide, but the greatest of these islove.” Over the Industrial School standswritten, “Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, asunto the Lord.” Here the beautiful rugs aremade—hooked through canvas—according tolively designs of Eskimoes and seals and polarbears prepared in the main by the Doctor.Even the bird-house has its legend: “Praisethe Lord, ye birds of wing.” There is a thrivingco-operative store, next door to the well-keptlittle inn. A sign of the Doctor’s devisingand painting swings in front of the store. Onone side is a picture of huskies with a komatik(sled) bringing boxes to a settler’s door, andthe inscription is, “Spot cash is always theleader.” On the other side of the sign a shipnamedSpot Cash is seen bravely ploughingthrough mountainous waves and toweringbergs. Underneath it reads: “There’s nosinking her.” “That is a reminiscence,”smiled the Doctor, “of my fights with thetraders. Do you think these signs of mineare cant? I don’t mean them that way. Iwant every one of them to count.”

A school, a laundry, a machine-shop anda big store are other features of the plant atSt. Anthony. The dock is a double-decker,and from it a diminutive tramway with ahand-car sends “feeders” to the variousbuildings and even up the walk to the Doctor’shouse. All the mail-boats now turn in at thisharbour. The captain of a ship like theProspero—which in the summer of 1919brought on four successive trips 70, 70, 60 and50 patients to overflow the hospital—appreciatesthe facilities offered by this modernwharfage.

As the Doctor goes about St. Anthony hedoes not fail to note anything that is new,or to bestow on any worthy achievement aword of praise, for which men and womenwork the harder.

To “The Master of the Inn” he expressedhis satisfaction in the smooth-running, cleanlyhostelry. “He is one of my boys,” he remarkedto me after the conversation. “Hewas trained here at St. Anthony, and then atthe Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.”

Then he meets the electrician. “Did youget your ammeter?” he asks. And then:“How did you make your rheostat?”

He points with satisfaction to a little Jerseybull recently acquired, and then he criticallysurveys the woodland paths that lead from hisdooryard to a tea-house on the hill commandingthe wide vista of the harbour and thebuildings of the industrial colony. “Nothingof this when we came here,” he observes.“The people seem possessed to cut down alltheir trees: we do our best to save ours, and wedote on these winding walks, which are aninnovation.” Then he laughs. “A goodwoman heard me say that lambs were unknownin Labrador, and that we had to speakof seals instead when we were reading theScriptures. She sent me a lamb and somebirds, stuffed, so that the people might understand.She meant well, but in transit thelamb’s head got sadly twisted on one side, andthe birds were decrepit specimens indeed withtheir bedraggled plumage.”

The house itself is delightful, and it is onlytoo bad that the Doctor and his wife see solittle of it.

It is a house with a distinct atmosphere.The soul of it is the living-room with a widewindow at the end that opens out upon aprospect of the wild wooded hillside, with anivy-vine growing across the middle, so thatit seems as if there were no glass and one couldstep right out into the clear, pure air. Thereis a big, hearty fireplace; there is a generouslyreceptive sofa; there is an upright Steinwaypiano, where a blind piano-tuner was workingat the time of my visit.

Lupins, the purple monk’s hood and thepink fireweed grow along the paths and aboutthe house. A glass-enclosed porch surroundsit on three sides, and in the porch are antleredheads of reindeer and caribou, coloured viewsof scenery in the British Isles and elsewhere,snowshoes and hunting and fishing paraphernalia,a great hanging pot of lobelias, and—noteworthily—abrass tablet bearing thisinscription:

It is comfortable, but the note of idle luxuryor useless ostentation is absent. There is nodisplay for its own sake. The books bearsigns of being fireside companions. Dr.Grenfell is fond of running a pencil down themargin as he reads. He is very fond of thebooks of his intimate friend Sir FrederickTreves, in whose London hospital he washouse-surgeon. “The Land that is Desolate”was aboard theStrathcona. Millais’ book onNewfoundland was on the writing desk atSt. Anthony, and had been much scored, as,indeed, had many of his other books.

I asked him to name to me his favouritebooks. Offhand he said: “The Bible first,naturally. And I’m very fond of GeorgeBorrow’s ‘The Bible in Spain.’ I admire Borrow’spersistence until he sold a Testament inFinisterre. ‘L’Avengro’ and ‘Romany Rye’are splendid, too. I’m very fond of Kipling’s‘Kim.’ Then I greatly care for the lives ofmen of action. Autobiography is my favouriteform of reading. The ‘Life of Chinese Gordon’—the‘Life of Lord Lawrence’—the‘Life of Havelock.’ You see there is a strongstrain of the Anglo-Indian in my make-up.My family have been much concerned withcolonial administration in India. The storyof Outram I delight in. He was everythingthat is unselfish and active—and a first-classsportsman. Boswell’s ‘Johnson’ is a greatfavourite of mine. I take keen pleasure inFroude’s ‘Seamen of the 16th Century.’ Inthe lighter vein I read every one of W. W.Jacob’s stories. Mark Twain is a great man.What hasn’t he added to the world!

“Then there is ‘Anson’s Voyages.’ It’s acapital book. He describes how he lugged offtwo hundred and ten old Greenwich pensionersto sail his ships, though they frantically fledin every direction to avoid being impressedinto the service. All of them died, and helost all of his ships but the one in which hefought and conquered a Spanish galleon aftera most desperate battle.

“The only man whose picture is in my Bibleis the Rev. Jeremiah Horrox, a farmer’sson. He was the first to observe the transitof Venus. That was in 1640. The pictureshows him watching the phenomenon throughthe telescope. It inspired me to think what apoor lonely clergyman could accomplish. Heand men like him stick to their jobs—that’swhat I like.

“I have in my Bible the words of Pershingto the American Expeditionary Force inFrance in 1917—the passage beginning‘Hardship will be your lot.’ ”

I was privileged to look into that Bible. Itis the Twentieth Century New TestamentThis he likes, he says, because the vernacularis clear, and sheds light on disputed passageswhich are not clear in other versions.

“I care more for clearness than anythingelse,” he declared. “When I read to thefishermen I want them to understand everyword. But I have often read from this versionto sophisticated congregations in the UnitedStates and had persons afterwards ask mewhat it was. Many passages are positivelyincorrect in the King James Version. Forinstance, the eighth chapter of Isaiah, which isthe first lesson for Christmas morning, ismisleading in the Authorized Version.”

We debated the relative merits of the KingJames Version and the Twentieth CenturyVersion for a long time one evening. I washolding out for the old order, in the feeling thatthe revised text deliberately sacrificed much ofthe majestic beauty and poetry of the style ofthe King James Version and that—despite anoccasional archaism—the meaning was clearenough, and the additional accuracy did notjustify putting aside the earlier beloved translation.Dr. Grenfell earnestly insisted thatthe most important thing is to make the meaningof the Scriptures plain to plain people—thatthe sense is the main consideration, andthe truth is more important than a statelycadence of poetic prose.

“I don’t want the language of three hundredyears ago,” he asserted. “I want thelanguage of today.”

It is his custom to crowd the margins of hisBibles with annotations. He fills up one copyafter another—one of these is in the possessionof Mrs. John Markoe of Philadelphia, whoprizes it greatly.

By the name of George Borrow and thepicture of Jeremiah Horrox on the fly-leaf ofthe copy he now uses, he has written “Myinspirers.”

There is much interleaving and all the insertedpages are crowded with trenchantobservations and reflections on the meaningof life.

There is a clipping from theOutlook, ofan article by Lyman Abbott quoting Rooseveltto American troops, June 5, 1917, on thetext from Micah, “What more doth the Lordrequire of thee than to do justly and to lovemercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”

Pages of meditation are given to dreams—service—conversion—goingto the war in 1915with the Harvard Medical Unit—the place ofreligion in daily life—the will—the religionof duty.

Another clipping—in large print—bears thewords: “Not to love, not to serve, is not tolive.”

In the back of the book is pasted an extendeddescription of the death of EdithCavell.

In one place he writes: “I don’t want asquashy credulity weakening my resolutionand condoning incompetency—but just a faithof optimism which is that of youth and makesme do things regardless of the consequences.”

His marginal annotations disclose the profoundand the devoted student of the Bible—theman who without the slightest shred ofmealy-mouthed sanctimoniousness searchesthe Scriptures, and lives close to the spirit ofthe Master. Anyone who sees even a littleof Grenfell in action must realize how faithfulhis life is to the pattern of Christ’s life onearth. There are many passages of Christ’sexperience—as when the crowd pressed inupon Him—or when learned men were supercilious—orwhen He perceived that virtuehad gone out of Him—or when He wasreproached because He let a man die in Hisabsence—that remind one of Grenfell’sthronged and hustled life. Many believe thatGrenfell can all but work a miracle of healing;and the lame, the halt and the blind are broughtto him from near and far, at all times of theday or the night, even as they were brought tothe Master. In his love of children, in hispatience with the doer of good and hisrighteous wrath aflame against the evil-doer, inhis candour and his sunny sweetness and hisunfailing courage Grenfell translates theprecepts of the Book into the action and thespeech of the living way. He cannot live byempty professions of faith; he is happy onlywhen he is putting into vivid practice the creedwhich guides his living.

It was hard to say where the Doctor’sday began or ended. One night he roseseveral times to inspect wind and weatherere deciding to make a start; and at twentyminutes before five he was at the wheel himself.Mrs. Grenfell clipped from “Life” andpinned upon his tiny stateroom mirror apicture of a caterpillar showing to a class ofworms the early bird eating the worm. Thelegend beneath it ran: “Now remember, dearchildren, the lesson for today—the disobedientworm that would persist in getting up too earlyin the morning.”

His books and articles are usually writtenbetween the early hours of five and seveno’clock in the morning. The log of theStrathcona, religiously kept for the informationof the International Grenfell Association,was likely to be pencilled on his kneewhile sitting on a pile of firewood on thereeling deck. Just as Roosevelt wrote hisAfrican game-hunting articles “on safari,”while so wearied with the chase that he couldhardly keep his eyes open, the Doctor hasschooled himself to do his work without consideringhis pulse-beat or his temperature orhis blood pressure. After a driving day afloatand ashore, as surgeon, magistrate, ministerand skipper, he rarely retires before midnight,and often he sits up till the wee small hoursengrossed in the perusal of a book he likes.

When the Doctor enters a harbour unannouncedand drops anchor, within a fewminutes power-boats and rowboats are flockingabout theStrathcona, and the deck fillswith fishermen, their wives and their children,all with their major and minor troubles.Sometimes it requires the whole family tobring a patient. Often after a diagnosis itseems advisable to place a patient in the hospitalat Battle Harbour or St. Anthony, andso the “Torquay Cot” or another in thediminutive hospital on theStrathcona is filled,or perhaps the passenger goes to hob-nob withthe good-natured crew and consume theirvictuals. Many a crying baby, in the limitedspace, makes the narrow quarters below-decksreverberate with the heraldry of the fact thathe is teething or has the tummyache.

The Doctor operates at the foot of thecompanion-ladder leading down into thesaloon, which is dining-room, living-room andeverything else. “I always have a basin ofblood at the foot of the ladder,” he grimlyremarks.

I told him I thought I would call what Iwrote about him “From Topsails to Tonsils,”since with such versatility he passed from theformer to the latter. “That reminds me,” hesaid with a laugh, “of the time I went ashorewith Dr. John Adams, and the first thing wedid was to lay three children out on the tableand remove their tonsils. That was a mightybloody job, I can tell you!”

The hatchway over his head as he operatesis always filled with the heads of so manyspectators—including frequently the Doctor’sdog, Fritz—that the meagre light whichcomes from above is nearly shut off. Oftena lamp is necessary, and as electric flash-lampsare notoriously faithless in a crisis, it is usuallya kerosene lamp. Often an impatient patientstarts to come down before his time, or anover-eager parent or husband thinks he mustaccompany the one that he has brought forthe doctor’s lancet. It is hard to get elbow-roomfor the necessary surgery, and everyoperation is a more or less public clinicaldemonstration.

“Well, we can put on some fresh coal,”was the Doctor’s answer. “How old areyou?”

“A mere child!” the doctor replies, andthe merry twinkle in his eyes brings an answeringsmile to the face of the sufferer.The Doctor himself was fifty-five years old inFebruary, 1920.

So many fishermen get what are called“water-whelps” or “water-pups,”—pustuleson the forearm due to the abrasion of theskin by more or less infected clothing. Cleaningthe cod and cutting up fish produces manyugly cuts and piercings and consequent sores,and there is always plenty of putrefyingmatter about a fishing-stage to infect them.So that a very common phenomenon is a greatswelling on the forearm—and an agonizing,sleep-destroying one it may be—where pushas collected and is throbbing for the lance.It is a joy to witness the immediate relief thatcomes from the cutting, and as the iodine isapplied and deft fingers bandage the woundthe patient tries to find words to tell of histhankfulness.

One afternoon just as the Doctor thoughtthere was a lull in the proceedings fourwomen and a man came over the rail at once.The first woman had a “bad stummick”; thesecond wanted “turble bad” to have her tooth“hauled”; the third had “a sore neck, Miss”(thus addressing Mrs. Grenfell); the fourthwoman had something “too turble to tell”;the man merely wanted to see the Doctor ongeneral principles.

Then the husband put in: “She couldn’t doher work and it overcast her. She overtoppedher mind, sir.”

He was a fine, dignified old fellow, and itwas a real pleasure to see how tender he wastoward his poor fidgety, neurasthenic spouse.She hadn’t any teeth worth mentioning, andher lips were pursed together with a vise-likegrip. I shall not forget how Doctor Grenfellmurmured to me in a humorous aside:“Teeth certainly do add to a lady’s charm!”

When medicine is administered, it is hardto persuade the afflicted one that the prescriptionmeans just what it says.

This lady was told to take three pills, andshe took two. But most of them exceed theirinstruction. To a woman at Trap Cove Dr.Fox gave liniment for her knee. It helped her.Then she took it internally for a stomach-ache,arguing logically enough that a pain is a pain,a medicine is a medicine, and if this linimentwas good for a hurt in the knee it must begood for any bodily affliction. Luckily shelived to tell the tale.

“When I was in the North Sea the sailorsif they got the chance ransacked my medicinecupboard and drank up everything they couldlay their hands on.” Such autobiographicconfessions are often made while the Doctormixes a draught or concocts a lotion. “Hereit is the same way. I have had my customersdrain off the whole bottle of medicine at once,on the theory that if one teaspoonful did yougood, a bottle would be that much better.”His questions, like his lancet, go right tothe root of the trouble. Nothing phases him.He answers every question. He never tellspeople they are fools; his inexhaustible forebearancewith the inept and the obtuse is notthe least Christlike of his attributes.

It is difficult for these men to come to thehospital in summer, for their livelihood dependson their catch, and then on their saltingand spreading the fish: and after the cod-fisheryhas fallen away to zero the herringcome in October, and the cod to some extentreturn with them.

“When I tell them they must go to thehospital, they always say ‘I haven’t time: Iwant to stay and mind my traps.’ ”

The Doctor hates above all things—as Ihave indicated—to leave a wound open, ora malady half-treated, and hustle on. It isthe great drawback and exasperation in hiswork that the interval before he sees thepatient again must be so long. He mournswhenever he has to pull a tooth that might besaved if he could wait to fill it.

He is always working against time, againstthe sea, against ignorance, against a want ofcharity on the part of nominal Christians whoought to help him instead of carping anddenouncing.

But he is working with all honest andsincere men, all who are true to the highpriesthood of science, all who are on the sideof the angels.

One man thus describes his affliction, lettingthe Doctor draw his own deductions:

“Like a little round ball the pain will start,sir; then it will full me inside; and the onlyrest I get is to crumple meself down.”

An unhappy woman reciting the history ofher complaint declared: “The last doctorsaid I had an impression of the stomach andwas full of glams.”

“Bless God!” exclaimed another, speakingof her children. “There’s nothing the matterwith ’em. They be’s off carrying wood. Theyjust coughs and heaves, that’s all.”

One mother, asked what treatment she wasadministering to her infant replied: “Oh, Igive ’er nothing now. Just plenty of coldwater and salts and spruce beer; ne’er dropo’ grease.”

When there is no doctor to be had theservices of the seventh son of a seventh sonare in demand.

Elemental human misery made itself heardin the dolorous accents of a corpulent lady offifty. “I works in punishment on account ofmy eyes. Sometimes I piles two or three fishon top of each other and I has to do it over.I cries a good deal about it.” Her gratificationas she was fitted to a pair of “plus”glasses that greatly improved her sight wasworth a long journey to witness. Many pairsof glasses were put on her nose en route to thediscovery of the most satisfactory pair, andeach time she would say “Lovely! Beautiful!”with crescendo of fervour.

I heard a fond father tell the Doctor thatthere was a “rale squick (real squeak) bawlingon the inside of” his offspring.

A man who climbed down the companionway with an aching side, a rupture, and ahypertrophic growth on his finger, was askedwhat he did for his ribs.

The Doctor is always on the lookout forthe “first flag of warning”—as he calls it—ofthe dreaded “T. B.” which is responsiblefor one death in every four in Newfoundland.Much of his talk with a patient has to do withfresh air and fresh vegetables. The Eskimoesmay know better than some native Newfoundlanders.“I like air. I push my whiphandlethrough the roof,” said one of the Eskimoes.

Here is a typical excerpt, from a conversationwith a young man who to the laymanlooked very robust.

“That’s good. You must eat plenty ofthem. You must have good food. As goodas you can afford. I’m sorry it’s so hardwhere you live to get anything fresh. Do yousleep well?”

“That’s right. That’s very important. Dopeople spit around you?” (The Doctor isalways on the war-path against this disgustingand dangerous habit.)

“You mustn’t get wet without changingyour clothes. Now, when you eat potatoes Iwant you to eat them baked, with the skinson. I don’t mean eat the skins. But the partright under the skins is very important.”

As one listens to such catechizing it becomesclear that the Doctor lays great stresson fresh air and fresh food as medicines,“Cold is your friend and heat is your enemy”is his oft-reiterated dictum to consumptives.

Once he said to me, “I attach great importanceto the sun-bath. I believe in exposingthe naked body to all it can get of the air.”In the nipping cold of the early morning ontheStrathcona I emerged from beneath fourdouble blankets to hear the Doctor joyfullycry: “I’ve just had my bucket on deck. Youcould have had one too, but I lost the bucketoverboard.” It has been a pastime of his torow with a boatload of doctors and nurses toan iceberg and go in swimming from the platformat the base of the berg.

Here is a pencilled missive from an oldwoman who evidently got a kindly neighbourto write it for her, for the signature is misspelled:

“Pleas ducker grandlield would you helpme with a little clothing I am a wodow 85 yarsof age.”

“Grandlield” is not further from the namethan a great many have come. Here are someother common variants:

From a village in White Bay, where thefishing was woefully poor in 1919, comes thispathetic plea:

“To Dr. and Mrs. Grenfell: Dear Friends:I am writing to see if you will help me a little.—Myhusband got about 1 qtl of fish (1 quintal—pronouncedkental—of 112 pounds,worth at most $11.20) this summer, and I havefour children, 15, 13, 11, 6 years, and hisFather, and we are all naked as birds with noways or means to get anything. What can Ido; if you can do anything for me I hopeGod will bless you. It is pretty hard to lookat a house full of naked children.”

Mrs. Grenfell visited White Bay in July andin two villages found a number of people allbut utterly destitute. They were living on“loaf” (bread) and tea. They had icefieldsinstead of fish. Six of the breadwinners gota job at St. Anthony. The villagers had fewpairs of shoes among them, In several instancesthe foot-gear was fashioned of thesides of rubber boots tied over the feet withpieces of string. The people of this neighbourhoodare folk of the highest character, andrichly deserving, though poverty-stricken.

“Dr. dear sir. please send two roals fielt(rolls of felt) one Roal Ruber Hide (rubberoid)one ten Patent for Paenting MoterBoat some glass for the bearn (barn) thanksveary mutch for the food you sent me. Gladtwo have James Home and his Leg so wellyou made a splended Cut of it this time Iwill all way Pray for you while I Live Potatoesgrowing well on the Farm Large Enoughtwo Eaght all redey. But I loast my CabbagesPlants wit the Big falls rain and snow i thefirst of the summer, but I have lotes of turnipsPlants I have all the Caplen (a small fish)I wants two Put on the farm this summer.

In a fisherman’s house in an interval betweenexaminations of children for tonsils andadenoids the Doctor related this incident to aspellbound group. He never has any troubleholding an audience with stories that grow outof his work, and the fishermen delight as hedoes in his informal chats with them and withtheir families.

“We had a long hunt for a starving familyof which we had been told by the Hudson BayCompany agent, on an island at HamiltonInlet in Labrador. The father was halfEskimo. He had a single-barrelled shotgunwith which he had brought down one gull.With his wife and his five naked children hewas living under a sail. The children, thoughthey had nothing on, were blue in the facewith eating the blueberries, and they were fatas butter. The mate took two of the little ones,as if they were codfish, one under each arm,and carried them aboard. There were tearsin his eyes, for he had seven little ones of hisown, and he was very fond of children. Bothwere carefully brought up at our Childrens’Home and one of them, who can now bothread and write, is aboard at present as a memberof the crew of theStrathcona.”

After evening prayers on Sunday, at whichthe Doctor has spoken, he has treated as manyas forty persons.

In one place after removing a man’s tonsilsit was a case of eyeglasses to be fitted, thencame one who clamoured to have three teethextracted. The teeth were “hauled” and abad condition of ankylosis at the roots wasrevealed. Then a girl had a throat abscesslanced, and she was followed by a boy witha dubious rash and a tubercular inheritance.The Doctor is ever on the lookout for the“New World” smallpox: but the stethoscopedetected a pleuritic attack, and strong supportingbandages were wound about the lower partof his chest.

1. An operation on a child’s tonsils. Alocal anaesthetic was given—10 per cent. cocaine.A tooth was also removed. The totalcharge was $1.00.

3. An eight months old infant was broughtin, blind in the right eye. This conditionmight have been obviated had boric acid beenapplied at the time of the baby’s birth. Themother said that only a little warm water hadbeen used.

So many, though they may not say so, appearto believe with Mary when she said toJesus, “Lord, if thou hadst been here mybrother had not died.” They think the Doctorhas something like supernatural powers.

With the utmost care he prepared to administernovocaine and treat the wound of aman who had run a splinter into his left handbetween the first and second fingers, leavingan unhealed sinus. “Wonderful stuff, thisnovocaine!” he remarked, as he put on a pairof rubber gloves, washed them in alcohol, andthen gave his knives a bath in a soup-plateof alcohol.

“In the inflamed parts none of these localanaesthetics work very well,” was his nextcomment.

But the patient scarcely felt it when he rana probe through the hand till it all but protrudedthrough the skin on the inner side.

The bad blood was spooned out, and thenthe deep cavity swallowed about six inches ofiodoform gauze. When the wound had beencarefully packed the hand was bandaged. Fornearly an hour’s work requiring the exercise ofrare skill and the utmost caution the chargewas—a dollar. And that included a pair ofcanvas gloves and another pair of rubber mitts,of the Doctor’s own devising, drawn over thebandages and tied so that the man might continueat his work without getting salt-wateror any contaminating substance in the woundand so infecting it badly.

These two importunate telegrams arrivedwhile he was paying a flying visit to headquartersat St. Anthony:

A second telegram arriving almost simultaneouslyfrom the same man read: “Pleasecome as fast as you can to operate me in thethroat and save my life.”

Captain Coté is the keeper of the GreenlyIsland Lighthouse, near Blanc Sablon. It isa very important station.

The Doctor, true to form, at once made uphis mind to go. Greenly Island is about 100miles from St. Anthony, and on the oppositeside of the Straits, on the Canadian side ofthe line that divides Canadian Labrador fromNewfoundland Labrador. The short cut tookus through Carpoon (Quirpon) Tickle, andthere we spent the night, for much as the Doctorwanted to push ahead the wind made theStrait so rough that—having it against us—theStrathcona could not have made headway.“I remember,” said the Doctor with a smile,“that once we steamed all night in BonavistaBay, full speed ahead, and in the morningfound ourselves exactly where we were thenight before. Coal is too scarce now.” Onone occasion theStrathcona distinguished herselfby going ashore with all sails set.

By the earliest light of morning we wereunder way. The tendency of a land-lubber atthe wheel off this cruel coast was naturally togive the jagged and fearsome spines of rockas wide a berth as possible. In the blue distancemight be seen a number of bergs, largeand small, just as a reminder of what the icecan do to navigation when it chooses; and inthe foreground were fishermen’s skiffs bobbingabout and taking their chances of crossing thetrack of our doughty little steamer. But theDoctor called in at the door of the wheelhouse:“Run her so close to those rocks thatyou almost skin her!” He was thinking notof his ship, not of himself, but of the necessityof getting to the lonely lighthouse-keeper atthe earliest possible moment, to perform thatoperation for a subtonsillar abscess. Therewas a picture in his mind of the valiant FrenchCanadian engineer gasping for breath as theorifice dwindled, and now he was burning notthe firewood but coal—a semi-precious stonein these waters in this year of grace. TheStrathcona labours and staggers; Fritz the doggoes to the bowsprit and sniffs the sun by dayand the moon by night; the ship is carryingall the bellying sails she has; and the Doctormounts to the crow’s-nest to make sure thathis beloved new topsail is doing its full share.He tools theStrathcona—when he is at thewheel—as if she were a taxicab. So the longdiagonal across the Strait is cut down, seethingmile by mile, till between Flower’s Coveand Forteau—where the Strait is at thenarrowest, and the shores are nine miles andthree-quarters apart—it almost seems as if anhour’s swim on either hand would take oneto the eternal crags where the iris blows andthe buttercup spreads her cloth of gold.

We drew near Blanc Sablon (pronouncedSablow) with Grant’s Wharf by the river.West of that river for several hundred yardsit is no man’s land between the two Labradors—thatis to say, between Canada and Newfoundland.A man stood up in a jouncingpower-boat and waved an oar, and then—hisovercoat buttoned up to his ears—our patient,Captain Coté, stood up beside him. They hadcome out to meet us to save every moment ofprecious time. It was a weak and pale andshaky man that came aboard—but he was aman every bit of him, and he did not wincewhen the Doctor, in the crypt-like gloom oftheStrathcona’s saloon, while the tin lamp washeld in front of the Captain’s mouth, reachedinto the throat with his attenuated tongs andscissors and made the necessary incision aftergiving him several doses of the novocaine solutionas a local anaesthetic.

“Then the Captain sat back white and gaspingon the settle, and—with a strong CanadianFrench flavour in his speech—told us a littleof his lonely vigil of the summer.

“In eighteen days, Doctor, I never saw aship for the fog: but I kept the light burning—twothousand gallons of kerosene shetook.

“All summer long it was fog—fog—fog.I show you by the book I keep. Ever sincethe ice went out we have the fog. Five dayswe have in July when it was clear—but neversuch a clear day as we have now. Comeashore with me on Greenly Island and youshall have the only motor car ride it would bepossible for you to have in Labrador.”

We accepted the invitation. At the head ofthe wharf were men spreading the fish todry—grey-white acres of them on the flakeslike a field of everlastings. In the lee of ahill they had a few potato-plants, fenced awayfrom the dogs. In a dwelling house with“Please wipe your feet” chalked on the doorwe found a spotless kitchen and two fresh-cheeked,white-aproned women cooking. Itwas a fine thing to know that they were upholdingso high a standard of cleanliness andsanitation in that lonely outpost—as faithfulas the keeper of the light in his storm-defyingtower.

From the fish-flakes of the ancient “room”over half a mile of cinderpath and plankingwe rode on the chassis of a Ford car, whichthe keeper uses to convey supplies.

“The first joy-ride I ever had in Labrador,”said the Doctor, and the Captain grinned andlet out another link to the roaring wind thatflattened the grass and threatened to lift hiscabbage-plants out of their paddock under hiswhite housewalls.

Safe in his living-room, with wife and children,two violins, a talking-machine, anancient Underwood typewriter and even atelephone that connected him with the wharf,Captain Coté pulled out his wallet, selectedthree ten-dollar bills and offered them to theDoctor, saying: “I will pay you as much moreas you like.”

The Captain, mindful of his promise aboutthe coal, said, “How much coal do youwant?”

“On the understanding that the CanadianGovernment supplies it,” answered the Doctor,“I will let you put aboard theStrathconajust the amount we used in coming here—5½tons.”

The Captain went to the telephone andtalked with a man at the wharf. Then heturned away from the transmitter and said:“He tells me that he can’t put the coal onboard today, because it would blow away whilethey were taking it out to theStrathcona onthe skiff. We have no sacks to put it in.”

“Very well,” returned the Doctor, “whenit’s convenient you might store it at Forteau.They will need it there this winter at SisterBailey’s nursing station.” Then he dismissedthe subject of the fee and the fuel-supplyto tell us how pleased he was to findthat Mackenzie King, author of “Industry andHumanity,” had become the Liberal leader inCanada. King is a Harvard Doctor ofPhilosophy, a man of thought and action ofthe type by nature and training in sympathywith Grenfell’s work. It is a great thing forCanada that a man of his calibre and scholarlydistinction has been raised to the place heholds.

From the site of the lighthouse there areobserved most singular wide shelves of smoothbrown rock presenting their edges to the furyof the surf, and over the broad brown expanseare scattered huge boulders that lookas though the Druids who left the memorialsat Stonehenge might have put them there.Captain Coté said the winter ice-pack tossedthese great stones about as if it were a child’sgame with marbles.

A happy man he thought himself to have hischildren with him. The lighthouse-keeper atBelle Isle lost six of his family on their wayto join him; another at Flower’s Cove lostfive. As a remorseless graveyard of the deepthe region is a rival of the dreaded SableIsland off Newfoundland’s south shore.

A wire rope indicates the pathway of twohundred yards between the light and the foghorn:and in winter the way could not befound without it. The foghorn gave a soloperformance for our benefit, at the instigationof either member of a pair of Fairbanks-Morse15 horse-power gasoline engines.We were ten feet from it, but it can be heardten miles and more.

A “keeper of the light” like Captain Coté,or Peter Bourque, who tended the Bird Rockbeacon for twenty-eight years, is a man afterGrenfell’s own heart. For Grenfell himselflets his light shine before men, and knows theneed of keeping the flame lambent and bright,through thick and thin.

Dr. Grenfell in his battles withprofiteering traders has incurred theirenmity, of course—but he has beenthe people’s friend. The favourite chargeof those who fight him is that he is amassingwealth for himself by barter on the side, andcollecting big sums in other lands from whichhe diverts a golden stream for his own uses.The infamous accusation is too pitifully lameand silly to be worth denying. The most unselfishof men, he has sometimes worked hisheart out for an ingrate who bit the hand thatfed him. His enterprise, whose reach alwaysexceeds his grasp, is money-losing rather thanmoney-making.

The International Grenfell Association hasnever participated in the trading business. Dr.Grenfell, however, started several stores withhis own money and took it out after a timewith no interest. He delights in the successof those whose aim is no more than a justprofit, who buy from the fisherman at a fairprice and sell to him in equity. There is aco-operative store of his original inspirationand engineering at Flower’s Cove, and anotheris the one at Cape Charles, which in five yearsreturned 100 per cent. on the investment with5 per cent. interest.

Accusations of graft he is accustomed toface, and a commission appointed by the NewfoundlandLegislature investigated him,travelled with him on theStrathcona, and completelyexonerated him. Some persons hadeven gone so far as to accuse him of makingmoney out of the old clothes business aboardwhat they were pleased to term his “yacht.”They descended to such petty false witness asto swear that he had taken a woman’s dresswith $12 in it. It is wearisome to have todignify such charges by noticing them. Theyare about on a par with the letter of a bishopwho wrote to him: “I should like to knowhow you can reconcile with your consciencereading a prayer in the morning againstheresy and schism, and then preaching at adissenting meeting-house in the afternoon.”

A vestryman objected to his preaching inthe church at a diminutive and forlorn settlementbecause “he talks about trade.”

The Doctor is never embittered by his traducers.He knows the meaning of J. L.Garvin’s saying, “He who is bitter is beaten.”Nothing beclouds for long his sunny temperament,but his unfailing good-humournever dulls the fighting edge of his courage.

“I bought a boat for a worthy soul, to sethim on his feet,” the Doctor told me. “Shehad been driven ashore in North Labrador. Ihad to buy everything separately—and thetotal came to $500. The boat was to workout the payment. This she did—Alas! lateron she went ashore on Brehat (‘Braw’)Shoals. Only her lifeboat came ashore, withthe name—Pendragon—upon it.”

The Doctor put $1,000 of his money intothe co-operative store at Flower’s Cove, andwhen the enterprise was fairly launched andthe Grenfell Association decided to abstainfrom lending help to trade he drew it out, andasked no interest. That store in its last fiscalyear sold goods to the value of more than$200,000, paying fair prices and selling at afair profit. It had three ships in the summerof 1919 carrying fish abroad—“foreigners.”The proprietor bought for $50 a schooner thatwent ashore at Forteau, dressed it in a newsuit of sails worth $1,250, and now has acraft worth $8,000 to him. Dr. Grenfell haspersonally great affection for some of thetraders—it is the “truck system” he hates.“Trading in the old days,” the Doctor observes,“was like a pond at the top of a hill.It got drained right out. The money was notset in circulation here on the soil of Newfoundland.The traders in two months tookaway the money that should have been on thecoast. 1919 was the first year in which theco-operative stores themselves sent fish to theother side. A vessel from Iceland came hereto the Flower’s Cove store; another was aNorwegian; a third came from Cadiz withsalt; and today a small vessel is preparing togo across.”

At Red Bay is another store to whichDr. Grenfell loaned money, which he drewout, sans interest, when it was prosperous. Ithas saved the people there, as every soul inthe harbour will testify.

The fishermen on the West Coast in 1919enjoyed something like affluence as comparedwith their brethren on the East Coast, wherethe fish were scarce.

Where there were lobsters, they weregetting $35.50 or $35.00 per case of 48 one-poundcans. For cod, $11.20 a quintal of 112pounds was paid. In 1918 over $15 per quintalwas paid.

On the other hand, with pork at $100 abarrel, coal at $24 a ton, and gasoline at 70cents a gallon, the big prices for fish werematched by an alarming cost of the necessariesof life.

Some fishermen make but $200 a year; afew make as much as $2,000 and even more.The merchant princes as a rule are the store-keeperswho deal with the fishermen. Therewere two big bank failures in St. John’s yearsago, and since that time many persons havehidden their money in the ground. Onefisherman of whose case I heard had but $35in cash as the result of his season’s effort, andhe had eight to support besides himself. Thesmall amount of ready money on which peoplecan live with a house, a vegetable garden, anda supply of firewood at their backs in thetimbered hillsides is unbelievable. If a manwas fortunate enough to possess any grassland,he might get as much as $65 a ton forhis hay in 1919, if he could spare it from hisown cows and sheep. It is too bad that forthe sake of the sheep the noble Newfoundlanddog that chased them has had to perish. Itis almost impossible today to find a pure-breedexample of the dog that spread the name ofthe island to the ends of the earth. Such dogsas there are are remarkably intelligent andmake excellent messengers between a man atwork and his house.

The “Southerners” go to the Grand Banksfor their fishing; the others go to the Labrador.The three classes of fishermen are the shorefishermen, the “bankers,” and the “floaters”—thoseof the Labrador. Ordinarily thecatch is reckoned by quintals (pronouncedkentals) of 112 pounds. Those who live onthe Labrador coast the winter through areknown as the “liveyers”—the live-heres—andthose who come regularly to the fishing are“stationers” or “planters.”

During the war big prices have been realizedfor the fish, and unprecedented prosperity hascome to the fishermen. The growth in thenumber of motor-boats is an index of thiscondition, though with gasoline at 70 cents agallon on the Labrador (for the imperialgallon, slightly larger than ours), the questionof fuel has been a disturbing one to many. Oflate much of the fish has been marketed onfavourable terms in the United States andCanada, but before this the preferred marketsin order have been Spain and Portugal, Braziland the West Indies. The three gradesrecognized, from the best to the lowest, are“merchantable,” “Madeira,” and “West Indies”(“West Injies”), the last-named forthe negroes.

An industry of growing importance to thefuture of the Grenfell mission is the manufactureand sale of “hooked” rugs by thewomen trained at the industrial school at St.Anthony. Large department stores in theUnited States have begun to buy these rugsin considerable quantities, and the demand islively and increasing.

The Doctor’s delightful sense of humourcomes to the fore in his designs for theserugs, made of rags worked through canvas.The dyes are vivid green, blue, red, black,brown—the white rivals the driven snow, andthe workmanship is of the best. A favouritepattern shows the dogs harnessed to thekomatik eager to be off, turning in the tracesas if to ask questions of the driver, their attitudealert and alive, while their two mastersstanding by the baggage on the komatik, inhoods and heavy parkas (blouses) rimmedwith red and blue, are discussing the route totake and pointing with their mittened hands.Or the design may show Eskimoes stealthilystalking polar bears upon an ice-pan of awondrous green at the edges. There is aglorious Turnerian sunset in the background;the sea bristles with bergs arched and pinnacled.The wary hunters approach theirhapless quarry in a kyak. One is paddlingand the other has the rifle across his knees,and the polar bears are nervously pacing theice-pan as though conscious of the fate impending.Another motif in these divertingrugs—which are often used for wall adornmentsinstead of floor-covering—is a statelyprocession of three bears uphill past the solemngreen sentinels of pagoda-like fir trees. Whatan improvement these designs are over theformer rugs which showed meaninglessblotches of pink and green that might havebeen thrown at one another, as if a mason’strowel had splashed them there!

Since the Labrador is innocent in mostplaces of anything like a store where you cango to the counter, lay down your money andask for what you want, the nearest thing thewomen know to the luxury of a shopping-expeditionor a bargain-sale is a chance to exchangefirewood or fish for the old clothingcarried on her missionary journeys by theStrathcona.

The object of the mission is not to pauperize,and the pride of the people themselvesin most cases forbids the acceptance of anoutright gift.

To preserve self-respect by the exchange ofaquid pro quo, some of the clothing contributedby friends in the States and elsewhereis allocated to the fishermen’s families in returnfor the supplies of firewood. The valuevaries according to the place where the woodis cut and piled. It may be worth $7 a cordon a certain point or $3 at the bottom of abay. (Cutting the wood is called “cleavingthe splits.”) The payment must be verycarefully apportioned, so that Mrs. B. shallnot have more or better than Mrs. A.—or elsethere will be wailing and gnashing and heart-burningafter the boat weighs anchor.

Before making the rounds of the Straits orof White Bay, or going on the long trail downNorth, or wherever else theStrathcona maybe faring on her mission, the big boxes ofwearables are opened on the deck and stored ina pinched triangular stateroom forward of thesaloon. There are quantities of clothing formen—overcoats, sweaters of priceless wool,reefers, peajackets, shooting-coats, dressing-gowns,underwear—some of it brand new andmost of it thick and good; there are woolensocks excellently made by many loving hands,shoes joined by the laces or buttoned together,trousers, jackets, whole suits more or less indisrepair but capable of conversion to all sortsof useful ends. Generally the Doctor andMrs. Grenfell find a pretext for giving someof the clothing to a needy family even whenthe fiction of payment in kind is not maintained.Rarely does the article offered—letus say a hooked rug in garish colours—meetthe value of the garments that are given. Butthe important thing is that the recipient ismade to feel that he pays for what he getsand is not a pauper.

There is ever a want of clothing for thewomen and children. Few complete dressesfor women find their way to theStrathcona’sstoreroom. There are not nearly enoughgarments for babies or suits for little boys.Women’s underclothing is badly needed. Butmost of those who come aboard in quest ofclothing are grateful for whatever is giventhem and make no fuss. They will ingeniouslyadapt a shirt into a dress for Susy, andcut a big man’s trousers in twain for her twosmall brothers. The Northern housewifelearns to make much of little in the way oftextile materials. A barrel of magazines andcards and picture scrap-books shielded withcanvas, stands at the head of the companionway. Bless whoever pasted in the stories andpictures on the strong sheets of brown cartridge-paper!Those will be pored over bylamp-light from cottage to cottage till theyfall apart, just as the wooden boxes of bookscarried aboard for circulating libraries willprovide most of the life intellectual all winterlong for many a village. Many of the fishermen’sfamilies from the father down areunlettered, but those who can read and writemake up for it by their intellectual activity,and even the little boys sometimes display animbleness of wit and fancy altogether delightful.They will sing you a song or tellyou a fairy-tale with a naïveté foreign to theAmerican small boy.

A woman came aboard with her husband—pale,thin, forlorn she was—and asked forclothing for him. She held each garmentcritically to the light, and somewhat disdainfullyrejected any that showed signs of mending.Finally I said: “You’re not takinganything for yourself. Don’t you needsomething?” I knew the pitiful huddle offishermen’s houses ashore from which shecame—the entire population of the settlementwas 141, not counting the vociferous array ofEskimo dogs that greeted us when we landed.

I thought of the straggling path amid therocks where the dogs growled and bristled,but I did not smile. For I realized what thischance to go shopping meant to her isolatedlife. In the city she would have had hugewarerooms and piled counters from which tomake a choice. Here two bunks, a barrel anda canvas bag held the whole stock in trade.

She rejected a sleeveless ball gown ofburgundy. “I must have black,” she said—“welost a son in the war.”

The husband began to apologize for thetrouble they caused. But we were more thanever bound to please them now. All the newskirts were found to be too short or too longor too gay or too youthful or something else,and the upshot of the dickering was that twopairs of golfer’s breeches were given in lieuof proper habiliments for a poor, lonelywoman in Labrador. They could be cut down,she explained, for her boys.

There isn’t much for a woman, in most ofthese places, but cooking and scrubbing thefloor and minding the baby—something likethe Kaiser’s ideal of feminine existence. Andwhen the floor is clean, booted fishermencome in and spit upon it even though the whiteplague is plainly written in the children’sfaces.

A new chapter in the industrial history ofthe Labrador will be written when it becomespossible to utilize the vast supply of news-printavailable from the pulp-wood of the Labrador“hinterland,” even as Northcliffe is gettingpaper for his many publications from the plantat Grand Falls in Northern Newfoundland.The difficulty, of course, will be to get thetimber away from the coast in the short seasonwhen the land is released from the grip of theice-pack. But the great demand for news-printwhich leads to anxious examination andutilization of the supplies of Alaska and Finlandcannot much longer neglect the availableresources so near at hand on the coast of theNorth Atlantic.

At Humbermouth it was my good fortuneto encounter Captain Daniel Owen, of AnnapolisRoyal, Nova Scotia, Captain of the H. V.Greene Labrador Aerial Expedition. Thelittle vesselMiranda had limped in on her wayto Halifax, to get her boiler mended.

Captain Owen, himself, deserves more thanpassing mention. A member of the RoyalFlying Corps, he had his left eye shot out incombat with five German planes that broughthim to the ground 60 miles within their lines.The observer’s leg was shattered in nine placesby their fire. There followed a sojourn ofseven months in three German prison-camps.The chivalrous surgeon who was first tooperate on Captain Owen’s comrade amusedhimself and the nurses by twisting bits of boneabout in the leg, laughing, while the nurseslaughed too, at the patient’s agony.

Flying at a height of 2,000 to 8,700 feet,Captain Owen’s party in Labrador added tothe industrial map 1,500,000 acres (about2,300 square miles) of land timbered with firsand spruces suitable for pulp-wood, the propertylying on the Alexis, St. Louis and GilbertRivers about 15 miles north of Battle Harbour.This tract will, it is estimated, produce asmuch as 115 cords to the acre for a maximum,and on the average 40 to 50 cords. 15,000photographs were taken, and moving picturesalso were made. The aerodrome was 28 milesup the Alexis River, and according to CaptainOwen it was an extremely serious matter tofind the way back to it each time after a flightfor there was no other suitable place to landanywhere in the neighbourhood. “I never feltso anxious for the return of an aeroplane inthe Western Front as I felt for the safety ofours,” he said.

The flying took place on five different days—andin that time as much was accomplishedas might have been done in from six to tenyears of the usual land cruising which—insample areas—was used to check up the resultsof the airmen.

The propeller of the Curtiss biplane was amass of blood from the flies it sucked in. Dr.Murdock Graham, second in command, keptsome of these flies in a bottle as souvenirs, andthey were portentous insects.

“We enjoyed nothing more,” said Dr.Graham, “than an evening spent with Dr.Grenfell at Battle Harbour where, lolling atease in corduroy and his old Queen’s Collegeblazer with the insignia over the left breast-pocket,pulling a corn-cob pipe, he spun oneyarn after another of the life at the Frontwith the Harvard contingent in 1915-16.

“Murphy, the mail-man from Battle Harbour,friend of the Grenfell mission, friend ofeverybody, is a man worth knowing. I canhear now his genial ‘Does ye smoke, boy?Has ye any on ye? Does ye mind, boy?’ Hesaid to one of our Greene Expedition doctors,‘Doctor, are all the Americans like ye? Yehas a kind word for everybody. Has ye anytobacco?’ ‘By gorry, that’s fine,’ he said ofthe aeroplane. ‘How do it do it?’ He wasas modest as he was plucky. ‘I don’t want togo and eat with all those gentlemen, with theirfine clothes on,’ he would say. Of one of theyoung ‘liveyeres’ he remarked: ‘If he hadthe learn there’d be a fine job for him’—whichalas! is true of so many on the Labrador.

“No member of our expedition heard anyswearing from the forty men we employed—withthe exception of a single Newfoundlander.I asked one of the men how they cameto be so clean of profanity, and he answeredsimply: ‘We doesn’t make a practice of that,we doesn’t.’

“At Williams Harbour on the Alexis Riverthere was three weeks’ schooling by a visitingteacher from the Grenfell mission. In twofamilies with a joint membership of eighteenone person could read and write.

“They have had no minister since the warand in the winter the bottom falls out of everything.The people on the rivers have no doctorfor a year and a half and two years at atime. At Williams Harbour they swarmed toDr. Twiss and Dr. MacDonald. One womanin desperation had been treating pneumoniawith salt-water, snow and white moss.

“Dr. Grenfell and his people have morethan they can do. We all of us realize todayas we never understood before the meaning tothe people of the North of the presence ofGrenfell and his people among them. Wecaught the spirit of the work inevitably, andtried to do what good we could while we werethere.

“The folk of the Alexis and the St. LouisRiver districts, as a rule, can’t afford the priceof gas to go to Battle Harbour. It’s a day’srun, and there’s nobody to mind their cod-trapswhen they’re away. So one can imaginehow completely they’d be shut out of the worldbut for the contacts which the mission provideseven at such long intervals.

“William Russell is the grand old man ofWilliams Harbour. He is the most-travelledand the best-educated man of those parts, andhe represents the finest type of patriarch. Henever saw a horse or a cow or an automobile;he has never been south of Battle Harbour,though he has visited that diminutive settlementfour times. He was dumfounded at ouraeroplane.

“In his family the father’s word was lawto the twelve children. They never thoughtof questioning his authority. They were thebest behaved and most dutiful children I haveever seen. Their obedience was absolute, andtheir manner to strangers was deferential.They always said ‘Yes, sir,’ and ‘No, sir,’most politely.

“At his house thirty-one gathered to hearthe gramophone—for the first time. Theywere packed in as tight as could be, chokingthe room with their tobacco-smoke. The firstnight they were silent. The next night theywere excited, and on the third they becamehilarious.

“As I said, following the Grenfell example,we did what doctoring we could on the side.The constant diet of bread and tea, tea andbread is hard on the teeth. There is muchpyorrhea due to this diet, to limestone in thewater, and to failure to clean the teeth. AtBlanc Sablon we treated a little boy who hadsuffered for three weeks with the toothache.It was a simple case of congested pulp. Therelief was immediate. It is a joy and a rewardto behold the gratitude of those who arehelped.

“I tell you if these people who question thevalue of Grenfell’s work, or wonder why hechooses to spend his life in bleak and barrenplaces, could just see his ‘parishioners’and know their gratitude toward their benefactors,they would understand.

“There was a picturesque soul at BlancSablon who asked for tobacco, which we gavehim. He was never off the coast. I don’tknow where he had heard a violin. But tomake some return to us for the smoke, he gaveus an imitation of a man first tuning and thenplaying a violin, which was perfect in its way.”

As we were coming off to theStrathconaone evening, the Doctor, bareheaded,pulling at the oars with the zest of aschoolboy on a holiday, and every oar-dipmaking a running flame of phosphorescence,said: “At college we worshipped at the shrineof athletics. Of course that wasn’t right, butit did establish a standard—it did teach a manthat he must keep his body under if he wouldbe physically fit. I realized that if I wantedto win I couldn’t afford to lose an ounce, andso I was a rigid Spartan with myself. Theothers sometimes laughed at me as a goody-goody,but they saw that I could do thingsthat couldn’t be done by those who indulgedin wild flings of dissipation.

“My schooling before Oxford I now feelwas wretched. They didn’t teach me how tolearn. The teachers themselves were mediocre.They may have had a smattering of the classics—butthat doesn’t constitute fitness to teach.Have you read the chapter on education inH. G. Well’s ‘Joan and Peter’? That strikesme as true.

“I’m glad my orphan children at St. Anthonyare getting the right kind of trainingfrom those who understand their business.”

The Doctor still cherishes the insignia ofrowing and athletic clubs to which he wasattached while at Oxford. One of his pet coatswears the initials “O. U. R. F. C.” for theOxford University Rugby Football Club. Healso stroked theTorpid crew, and the crewof the London Hospital.

He hates—in fact, he refuses, like PeterPan—to grow up or to grow old. “Isn’t it toobad that just when our minds have struck theirstride and are doing their best work we shouldhave to end it all?” Not that he has the leastfear of Death. In the country of his lovinglabour, the fisher-folk face Death so often intheir lawful occasions, for the sake of you andme who enjoy the savour of the codfish and thelobster, that when Death finally comes hecomes not as a dark and awful figure but asa familiar and a friend.

The conflict of elemental forces in naturefinds at once an echo in the breast of him whohas met “with a frolic heart” every mood andtense of sky and sea “down north.” AtPleasure Harbour the sunset amid dark purpleclouds edged with a rosy fleece brought “vitalfeelings of delight”: and when we camenearest the Dominion’s northern tip the Doctorsaid: “I wish you could see the strait ice andthe Atlantic ice fight at Cape Bauld. They goat each other hammer and tongs, with a roaringand rending like huge wild animals,rampant and foaming and clashing theirtusks.”

On a foggy, super-saturated day, the sailsand the deck beaded and dripping, he willfairly rub his hands in ecstasy and exclaim:“Oh, what a fine day!” Or he will thrust hisruddy countenance out of his chart-room doorto call: “Isn’t it great to be alive?”

Off Cape Norman, when the foghorn wasblaspheming and the sea ran high, I tried to getthe Doctor to concede that it was half a gale,but he would only admit that it was a “nicebreeze.” The new topsail stubbornly declinedto blossom out as it should, though the fiveother sails were in full bloom. “We’ll burstit out,” said the Doctor. The offending sailwas forthwith hauled down and stretched likea sick man on the deck; then it was tied inthree places with tarry cords, the Doctorscurried up the mast, the sail was raised intoplace by means of the clanking winch, andthen, with violent tugs of the fierce wind likea fish plucking at a tempting bait the threeconfining strings snapped in explosive successionand like a flag unfurling the sail sprangout to the breeze. We raised a cheer asthe perceptible lift of the additional sail-cloththrilled the timbers underfoot.

You’d hear him trotting about the deck inthe cool dawn inquiring about steam or tideand humming softly (or lifting with thefervour of a sailor’s chantey), that favouriteNewfoundland hymn, written by a Newfoundlander,“We love the place, O God, whereinthine honour dwells.”

In the wheelhouse as he looks out over thesea and guides the prow, as if it were a sculptor’schisel, through calm or storm, there comesinto his eyes a look as of communing with afar country: his soul has gone to a secret,distant coast where no man and but onewoman can follow.

Sometimes of an evening the Doctor broughtout the chessboard and I saw another phaseof his versatile entity—his fondness for an indoorgame that is of science and not blindchance. The red and white ivory chessmen,in deference to the staggering ship, had sea-legsin the shape of pegs attaching them to theboard. Two missing pawns—“prawns,” theDoctor humorously styled them—had as substitutesbits of a red birthday candle, and twoof the rooks were made of green modelling-wax(plasticine).

“I love to attack,” said the Doctor, and histactics proved that he meant what he said. Hehas what Lord Northcliffe once named to meas the capital secret of success—concentration.

When he has once moved a piece forward healmost never moves it back again. He likesto go ahead. He seeks to get his pieces out andinto action, and a defensive, waiting game—thestrategy of Fabius the Cunctator—is notfor him.

Once in a while he defers sufficiently to theconventions to move out the King’s pawn atthe start, but often his initial move is that ofa pawn at the side of the board. He worksthe pawns hard and gives them a new significance.His delight is to march a little platoonof them against the enemy—preferably againstthe bishops. Somehow the bishops seem tolose their heads when confronted by theseminor adversaries.

If you get him into a tight corner, the oppositionstiffens—the greater the odds the morevertebral his attitude.

“I make it a rule to go ahead if I possiblycan, and not to be driven back.” This remarkof his over the board of the mimic fray appliesjust as well to his constant strife with the seato get where he is wanted—as on the presentoccasion when we were threading the needle’seye of the rocky outlet at Carpoon.

The Doctor has the real chess mind—themind that surveys and weighs and analyzes—withthe uncanny faculty of looking manymoves ahead, of balancing all the alternatives,of remembering the disposal of the forces ata previous stage of the game. He becomesso completely immersed in the playing—thoughhe rarely finds an antagonist—that itis a real rest to him after the teeming day,where many a man would only find it a culminantexhaustion. “Isn’t it queer,” he observed,“that most men who are good at thisgame aren’t good for much else?”

His use of the pawns in chess is like his useof the weaker reeds among men in his day’swork. Since he cannot always get the best(though his hand-picked helpers at St. Anthony,Battle Harbour and elsewhere are as arule exceptionally able), he learns to use theinferior and the lesser, and with exemplarygentleness and patience he keeps his temper andlets them think they are assisting though theymay be all but hindering. He gives you tofeel that if you hold a basin or sharpen a knifeor fetch a bottle or bring him a chair you areof real value in the performance of an operation—evenif the basin was upset and the knifewas dull and the bottle wasn’t the one and thechair had a broken leg.

“Christ used ordinary men,” he remarked.“He was a carpenter, and I try to teach peoplethat he was a good sportsman.”

All through his chess games, too, runs theOxford principle of sport for its own sake:he wins, but the strife is more than the victory.He is never vainglorious when the checkmatecomes; he is neither unduly elated by successnor depressed by adversity—indeed, his enjoymentis keenest when he is beset. He showsthen the same strain that comes out when theship is anchored and Mate Albert Ash pokeshis head in and says: “If she drags, we’ve gotbut one chain out!” Then he will say nothing,or with a humorous twinkle he will cry inmock despair: “All is lost!” or “if you knewhow little water there was under her you wouldbe scared!”—and then he will go on withwhat he is doing. Whether it is the chessboardor life’s battlefield, he plays the game.

On the end of a hackmatack (juniper) loglying on the deck for firewood I pencilled forfun: “The Log of theStrathcona.” TheDoctor saw it, laughed, and got a buck-saw.Two fishermen clambered over the rail betweenhim and the woodpile, to get zinc ointmentand advice. When he had “fixed themup” he sawed off the log-end, and drew a pictureof theStrathcona—an entirely correctpicture, of course, as far as it went—and thenput his signature (à la Whistler butterfly) inthe form of a roly-poly elf, as rotund as adollar. “I like to draw myself stout andround,” he laughed. The strange gnome hedrew was the very antithesis of his own lithe,spare, close-knit figure.

So good a playmate and so firm a master—sorare a combination of gentleness andstrength, of self-respect and rollicking fun isdifficult to match in real life or in biographicliterature.

Were one to seek a historic parallel forGrenfell one might not go far wrong in pickingXenophon. Xenophon was a leader whopointed the way not from the rear but fromthe head of the column, and asked of his mennothing that he would not do himself. Thereader of the “Anabasis” will remember thatXenophon awoke in the night and asked himself“Why do I lie here? For the night goesforward. And with the morn it is probablethat the enemy will come.” Even so, Grenfellfeels that he must do the works of the Masterwhile it is yet day, for all too soon the nightcometh when no man can work.

Xenophon had sedition on his hands, andhis men would not go out into the snows ofthe mountains of Armenia and cut the wood.So he left his tent and seized an ax and hewedso valorously that they were shamed intofollowing suit. That is just what WilfredGrenfell would have done: it is what his forbearSir Richard Grenville would have done.In such ways as this when the hour strikesthe born leader of men asserts himself andtakes command.

The Doctor admires certain of hisscientific colleagues greatly: he iscandidly a hero-worshipper. “I loveCushing and Finney,” he says outspokenly ofthe noted Harvard and Johns Hopkins surgeons.A clinic by Dr. George de Schweinitzor an operation by Dr. John B. Deaver is arare treat to him. Sir Frederick Treves, thegreat English surgeon, has been among hisclosest friends since Grenfell served under himin a London hospital: he has leaned on himalways for perceptive advice and sympathy unfailing.It is one of the paramount satisfactionsof his life to meet other minds in hisprofession that stimulate his own. In theceaseless round of his activities little time isleft him to read books: but if he could hewould enjoy no pastime more than to browsein a well-chosen library. The victories ofscience hold for him the fascination ofromance.

The discovery of the electron, in his opinion,might make it possible to have an entire cityin which every material substance should beinvisible. “There is no reason why the forcesin action should make a visible city. We believetoday in the unity of matter. It hasalmost been demonstrated that we can turnsoda into copper. Uranium passes intoradium. Carrel is growing living protoplasmoutside the body. Adami has shown how anelectric stimulus applied to the ovum of frogsproduces twins. The electron is the manifestationof force.

“It is almost certain that there is no suchthing as physical life. No matter could existwithout movement—the sort of movement youbehold when the spinthariscope throws theradiations from bromide of radium on afluorescent screen. If there is no physical life,there is no death. So many things exist thatwe do not see. We cannot see ether or weighit, but we know that it exists. There is aphysical explanation of the resurrection. Thewhole universe is incessant motion, just assound is vibration—the ordinary C with 256vibrations, the octave with 512, the next octavewith 1,024 vibrations to the second.

“Tin is a mass of whirling electrons. Goldis composed of a different number of electrons.That’s why we can’t cross from one to theother.”

It is not quite fair to put down these randomremarks, on an extremely abstruse matter—thrownover the Doctor’s shoulder as he flitsabout a village, the dogs at his heels—withoutquoting his more deliberate formulation of hisideas in an article in “Toilers of the Deep.”In that article he writes:

“If chemistry of today has made it certainthat there is no such thing in the human bodyas a transcendental entity called ‘life,’ andevery function and every organ of the bodycan be chemically or physically accounted for,then it is obvious that we have no reason toweep for it. More infinitely marvellous themore we learn of it, so marvellous that no onecan begin to appreciate it but the man ofscience, it helps us to realize how easily Hewho clothed us with it can provide anotherequally well adapted to the needs of that whichawaits us when we go ‘home.’ We havelearned to enlarge our physical capacities, our‘selves,’ the microscope, the ultramicroscope,the spectroscope, the electroscope, the spinthariscope,the ophthalmoscope, the fluoroscope,the telescope, and other man-made machineshave made the natural range of theeye of man a mere bagatelle compared withwhat it now commands and reveals. Themicrophone, the megaphone, the audophone,the wireless and other machinery have asgreatly enlarged our command of the field ofsound. Space has been largely conquered byelectric devices for telephoning, telegraphing,and motor power. On the land, under thesea, in the air, man is rapidly acquiring amastery that is miraculous.

“The marvels of manufacture are miracles.Machinery can now do anything, even talkand sing far beyond the powers of normal humancapacities. The plants and animals ofnormal nature can be improved beyondrecognition. The old deserts are being forcedto blossom like roses; the most potent governingagencies of the life of the body, likeadrenalin, can be made from coal tar. Seasare linked by broad water pathways, countriesare united by passages through mountains andunder the water. We can see through solidbodies, we can weigh the stars in balances, wecan tell their composition without seeingthem. We can describe the nature and placeof unseen heavenly bodies, and know the existenceand properties of elements never seenor heard of. We know that movement is nota characteristic of life, unless we are to believethat the very rocks are alive, for we can seethat it is movement alone that holds theirultimate atoms together.

“The mere ‘Me,’ the resultant of all pastand present influences on the ‘I,’ is so marvellous,that we must find it ever increasinglyimpossible to conceive that we are the productsof blind chance, or the sport of a cruelty sohorrible as to make the end one inconceivabletragedy.

“No, if science teaches that there is noentity called ‘life,’ and it seems to do so, Ifor my part gladly accept it as yet anothertribute at the feet of the Master Builder whomade and gave my spirit—mine, if you please—aspirit so insignificant, so unworthy, suchan unspeakable gift as that of a body withcapacities such as this one, to be the mechanicaltemple and temporary garment of my spirit,and to offer me a chance to do my share tohelp this wonderful world. ‘No life,’ saysscience, ‘there is no life.’ But a knowledgemore reliable than current knowledge, thatentered the world with the advent of man, andthat has everywhere in every race of mankindbeen in the past his actually most valuedpossession, replies ‘Yes, and there is no deatheither.’ ”

One day his morning greeting was:“Nitrogen is gone!” “Too bad!” I said.“You can search me. I haven’t got it.” “Imean,” he explained, “that here in this copyof the ‘Journal of the Royal Astronomical Societyof Canada’ Sir Ernest Rutherford setsforth the theory that the molecule of nitrogenis a helium universe with hydrogen for itssatellites and helium as the sun.” He was almostas much interested in the discovery as if itwere a hole in the bottom of his boat.

“I’ve just been reading a magazine article onthe subject of psychic research by Booth Tarkington,”he added presently. “It’s well writtenand exceedingly interesting. Most men ofscience have been convinced of the reality of thespiritual body.”

He is an artist of no slight attainment and inhis home at St. Anthony specimens of hishandicraft abound, but not obtrusively. Dr.Grenfell never puts anything that he is or hasdone on view to be admired.

He is a keen ornithologist, and even whenhe is at top speed to get back to his boat andweigh anchor he will pause to note the friendlygrackles hopping about a wharf or the unfetteredgrace of the gyrations of the creakinggulls. He is a collector of butterflies. “Iwas out driving with a man who didn’t seethe butterflies and had no interest in them.Just think what such a man misses in his life!”

He also collects birds’ eggs, flowering plants(many of which have been named at Cambridge),seaweed and shells. The great bookhe wrote and edited on Labrador gives a clearidea of his interest in the geology as well asthe fauna and flora of the region.

I found him the last thing at night at St.Anthony trying to discover why one of a pairof box kites he had made wouldn’t remainaloft as it should.

He is perpetually acquisitive and inquisitive:the diversity of his interests rivals the appetiteof Roosevelt for every sort of information.Sir Frederick Treves mourned that a greatsurgeon was lost to London when Grenfellembarked on the North Sea to the healing andhelping of fishermen. But Grenfell has becomemuch more than a great surgeon. Withall that he is and does, he gives to every partof his almost boundless field of interests acareful, methodical, analytic intellect. Hasteand the constant pressure of his over-drivenlife have not made him superficial. He sets asail with the same care he gives to the settingof a compound fracture: he is of the numberof those who believe that there is but one rightway to do everything. Of such is the kingdomof science and of inestimable service.

In his capacity as magistrate, the Doctornever sidesteps trouble. Law in his partof the world is a matter not merely of theletter but of the spirit—not of the statutealone but of shrewd common sense. His decisionsare luminous with a Lincolnian lightof acumen and sympathy at once. He lets thejot and tittle—the mint, anise-seed and cummin—takecare of themselves, and considers thereal significance of the situation and theessential nature of the offence. Red tape isnot the important thing, and the imaginarydignity of an invisible judicial ermine is notbesmirched because Magistrate Grenfell discussesthe case with a culprit as a father mighttalk things over with a son, and makes it plainwhy wrong was done—if it was done—andwhy there must henceforth be a differentcourse on the part of the offender. He “laysdown the law” not as if it were a Mosaicdispensation from a beclouded mountain top,but as if it were the simple and discreet wayto walk for God-fearing and reasonable mankind.To him, forever, a man’s own soul isa matter more important than an ordinance,and he spares no pains to make his meaning soplain that the dullest apprehension cannot failto grasp it. You will see Grenfell at his bestwhen—in a whipping wind, bareheaded,sweatered, rubber-booted—he stands in theclear glitter of a bracing sunny day on thebeach with the dogs aprowl around him, painstakinglyexplaining to a fisherman why it isright to do thus and reprehensible to do otherwise.And now and then a hearty laugh ora timely anecdote—Lincoln’s trait again—clearsthe atmosphere. Sometimes there aremore formidable leets and law courts heldamong the whalemeat barrels and the firewoodon theStrathcona: but more often it is a plainmatter of a tête-à-tête while Grenfell is on hisrambling rounds of a hamlet with his dilapidatedleather bag of instruments and medicines.

Forteau offered its own problems to Dr.Grenfell, the Magistrate. There is an isle notfar away where that sometimes toothsome birdthe puffin makes his home. Fishermen fromForteau, hard put to it to secure anti-scorbuticfresh meat, might now and then shoot one ofthe birds, and the duty of the faithful lighthouse-keeper,Captain Coté, an appointedgame-warden, was to see that the law’s majestymade itself respected. One day Coté caughta hunter red-handed. “By what warrant doyou arrest me?” said the man behind the gun.“By this!” said Coté, flourishing a revolver.Is a magistrate to blame if he believes thatcommon sense should differentiate between apoor fisherman desperate with hunger, and apot-hunter who commits wholesale murderamong the eider-ducks sitting on their nests?Usually it is the poor fisherman who is finedand made to give up his gun, because hepleads “guilty,” while the pot-hunter who unblushinglypleads “not guilty” goes scot-free.A fisherman at Flower’s Cove told me thata late lamented coast magistrate—who got halfof the fines he imposed—was making “bigmoney” from his calling. He fined one man$100 for importing a second-hand stove withoutpaying customs duties. When theStrathconahove in sight, bearing Dr. Grenfell, thisprofiteering magistrate weighed anchor inhaste, and in a heavy beam sea and shallowwater made his “get-away.”

There are always disputes between tradersand fishermen to be adjudicated. Two menwithin an hour of each other clambered overthe rail of theStrathcona to display direwritten threats of wrath to come from thesame West Coast merchant, in a court summonsserved by a constable. This document,accompanying a bill of particulars, says thatif they don’t pay at once the balance duethey’ll have to go to St. John’s at a cost offifty dollars in addition to whatever theamount may be which the law assesses againstthem. It isn’t just the amount of the ticketto St. John’s, or the board while they arethere: it’s the loss of time from the traps thatis exacerbating.

The trader isn’t in the wrong just becausehe is a trader. The fisherman hasn’t all theright on his side by the fact of being a fisherman,but the bookkeeping of these tradersseemed to be at very loose ends indeed. Longafter the debtor thought he had paid all hisdebt, in cash or in kind, the trader unearthedon the books items of 1915, 1916 or 1917which he forgot to charge for. Here they bobup like a bay seal, to the consternation of theman who thought the slate had been spongedoff clean “far away and long ago.”

One of the two who brought their presentperplexity to the Doctor had had the misfortuneto lose his house by fire, and all thetrader’s receipts therein, so that he had nowritten line to show against the trader’s bill.

I found out later that the trader’s daughterskept the books—in fact, I saw them behind thecounter at their father’s store—and they weresaid to be indifferent and slovenly misses indeed,who used their thumbs for erasures andmade as many mistakes in a day’s work asthere are blueberries on Blomidon. Perhapsthey were in love—but their hit-or-miss accountancymeant a terrible worriment for sea-faringmen two hundred miles distant, and apother of trouble for Dr. Grenfell and a St.John’s lawyer—a friend of the Doctor’s whobefriends those who cannot afford or do notknow how to obtain legal advice.

In his formal addresses Dr. Grenfell exemplifiesthe homely, pithy eloquence thatcomes from speaking directly “to men’sbusiness and bosoms” out of the fulness ofthe heart: but those who have heard him inthe little, informal, offhand talks he givesamong his own people in his own bailiwickappreciate them even more than what he hasto say to a congregation of strangers in agreat city far from the Labrador.

It must be understood that the quotationsthat follow are merely extemporaneous, unrevisedsentences taken down without the Doctor’sknowledge, and of a nature wholly casualand unpremeditated.

At a service held in the tiny saloon of theStrathcona for the crew and the patients whohappened to be with us, the Doctor said:

“We so often think that religion is boundto be dull and solemn and monotonous: wedon’t follow the example of Christ who spreadlight and joy wherever he went. None of usis perfect, but God doesn’t denounce Dr. Grenfelland Will Sims and Albert Ash (namingmembers of the crew) for their shortcomings.That isn’t his way. He knows us as we are,with all our weaknesses. He loved David—hesaid that David was a man after his ownheart. Yet David was a bad man—he was anadulterer and incidentally a murderer, and hegot his people into trouble that lost thousandsof their lives. But God loved him in spiteof his human frailties, because he did such alot of good in the world.

“It doesn’t do to take a single text. Forinstance—we read ‘The world is establishedso that it cannot be moved,’ but we know thatit is all movement: we know that it moves ata pace six times as fast as the fastest aeroplane.But the Church looked at that verseand said that he who denied it was denyingthe truth. I was reading this morning aboutCopernicus, who insisted that this world isround. Up to his time men had insisted thatit was flat and that you might fall off theedge. Then there was Galileo, who said thatit moved: and they put him under the thumbscrews,and when he came out he said, ‘andstill it does move.’

“So often Christian people think it’s theirduty to forbid and to repress and to bringgloom with a long face where they go. Butthat wasn’t Christ’s way and it isn’t God’sway. If religious people do these things peoplebegin to suppose that religion is somethingto destroy the joy of living. But that isn’twhat it’s for. It’s to make us kinder tofathers and mothers and sisters and friends,and true to the duty nearest our hand.

“I love to think of David as the mastermusician who went about scattering good anddispelling the clouds of heaviness. We oughtto follow his example. Sometimes we say‘Oh, they’ve all been so mean to me I’ll takeit out on them by being sour and dull andjealous and bitter!’ Here in this crew weget to know one another almost as well asGod knows us, and we see one another’sfaults. It’s so easy to spy out faults whenwe’re so close together, day after day. Butwe should be blind to some things—like Nelsonat Copenhagen. You remember whenthey gave the signal to retreat he put his blindeye to the telescope.

“If God looked for the faults in us, whocould stand before Him? None of us is perfect.Let us judge not that we be not judged,and mercifully learn to make allowances. Iknew a man who had been the cause of aloss of $20,000 to his employer, throughcostly litigation that was the result of hismistakes. His master, nevertheless, gave hima second chance, with an even better job.Later I asked him if the man was makinggood. He replied, ‘He is the best servant Ihave.’ Even so we ought to learn to be long-sufferingwith others, as God is lenient untilseventy times seven with us.”

In the little church at Flower’s Cove theDoctor spoke on the meaning of the words ofChrist in Mark 8, 34, as given in the vernacularversion: “If any man wishes to walk inmy steps, let him renounce self, take up hiscross, and follow me.”

“When I was here early in the spring therewas a man who was in a serious way. I toldhim he should come to the hospital at St. Anthonyfor an operation. He said he must gethis traps and his twine ready. Then when Icame again in June I saw that he was worse,and I again gave him warning that in sixmonths at most the results might be fatal.Still he said that he could not go. When Icame ashore today I learned that he was dead.The twine was ready—but he was gone. Thatis the way with so many of us. We say weare too busy—we can always give that excuse—andthen death finds us, grasping ourmaterial possessions, perhaps, but with thegreat ends of life unwon. Its only a stage thatwe cross for a brief transit, coming in at thisdoor and going out at that. It won’t do toplay our part just as we are making ourexit—we must play it while we are in themiddle of the stage.

“At Sandwich Bay we followed a stream andthe two men on the other side called my attentionto the tracks of a bear: and when wecame back to the boat the men aboard saidthey had seen two bears wandering about. Thebears were unable to hide their tracks, and evenso you and I cannot conceal the traces ofour footsteps where we went. Captain Cotéat the Greenly Island Light showed us themodel of a steamship—made with a motorcosting a dollar and a half that ran it in astraight line for an hour. It had no volitionof its own. Man is not like that soullessboat: he has a mind of his own. We aresurrounded by amazing discoveries: greatscientists are ever toiling on the problem ofcommunication with the dead. Men laughedat the alchemists of old: we laugh no longerat the idea of changing one substance intoanother. We can change water with electricityand change one frog’s egg into twins. Wecan fly from St. John’s to England in a day.We can see through solid substances—come toSt Anthony and I will show it to you withthe X-ray apparatus. What fools we are todeny immortality and the resurrection! Whatare realized values as compared with thespiritual? There was the shipRoyal Charterfor Australia that went ashore at Moidra inWales. A sailor wrapped himself in gold andit drowned him. Would you say that he hadthe gold or that the gold had him?

“The carol of good King Wenceslaus tellsus of the blessings that came to the little ladwho followed in the footsteps of the king.Even so, better things than any temporal benefitscome to us if we walk in the steps ofChrist.

“Some of the soldiers of the war returningto this country are not acting as soldiersshould. They are importing foreign vices. Ihave seen lately horrible examples of the sufferingof the innocents as a result of their misdeeds.There are more communicable diseasesin the present year than we have ever had beforeon this coast. A man has no right to thetitle of a soldier who does not walk in Christ’ssteps—he has no right to the name, when hepleases self and damns his country and hisfellow-men and fellow-women.

“We have among us the deplorable spectacleof many weak sectarian schools—and it isa wicked thing that we do not combine themin strong undenominational ones. So manythings cry out for changing. Today I visiteda family and found the father had tuberculosis.The mother?—tuberculosis. The children?—tuberculosis.Then I saw a babywhose head was not filled up, whose arms werepuny, whose shoulders were constricted.From what? From rickets. The rickets camefrom bad feeding due to ignorance. I sawanother child with the same complaint fromthe same cause.

“American bank-notes are made of paperthat comes from Dalton, Massachusetts. Thefinest quality of paper is made of rags. Theycan use old rags and dirty rags—but they cannotuse red ones. In explaining the manufactureto children I heard the manager speakof the rags as being ‘willing’ or ‘unwilling.’The red ones were the ‘unwilling’ ones, andone of the children afterward said she’d ratherbe a willing rag. We may be poor and sorryobjects—we may be rags—but there is somethingto be made of us if only we are willingrags.

“I came to a paralyzed boy. He said,‘What can I do, Dr. Grenfell?’ I said, ‘Youcan smile upon all those who minister to youor come where you are. You can spread thespirit of good cheer even from your bedside.’ ”

“I was present at Pilley’s Island when asoldier came home who had won the V. C.What a welcome he received! There was atriumphal arch and the town turned out to dohonour to its hero. He was the right sort ofsoldier.”

Norman Duncan wrote a delightful bookcalled “Doctor Luke of the Labrador” whichvery faithfully mirrors the atmosphere of Dr.Grenfell’s days and doings. But the book isnot to be taken as faithful biographyverbatimet literatim, in the passages relating to thetitular hero.

The Doctor has nothing in the open bookof his past life for which he needs to makeamends; but the hero of “Doctor Luke” hassomething mysterious to live down, the precisenature of which is not divulged. In many admirablequalities the portrait of “DoctorLuke” is a faithful likeness of Dr. Grenfell,and that is why there is a danger thatthe reader will think that in all particulars thebook man and the real man correspond. “DoctorLuke” goes to the Labrador to flee fromhis own shadow—a man pursued by bittermemories of what he has done, and by mockingwraiths of sin, their fingers pointed athim. Dr. Grenfell went to the Labrador becausethe spirit moved him to go to the helpof men whose lives were as cold as the iceand as hard as the rock that hemmed them in.He went not as one who sorrows overmisspent years but as one who rejoices in thebelief that his work has the smile of Godupon it. Dr. Grenfell has the spirit of anyfirst-rate missionary—he will not admit thathe has elected a life of brain-fag, bodily travailand spiritual torment. His joy in doingand giving is unaffected. When he invitesthe rest of us to find life beautiful and bountifulhe does not pose nor prate. He walks inthe steps and in the name of Christ with achild’s humility, a man’s strength, an almostfeminine tenderness and never a breath of thatmaudlin, unctuous sanctimoniousness whichalways must repel the virile and vertebratefibre of the Thomas Hughes brand of “muscularChristianity.” Dr. Grenfell likes gospelhymns where some prefer sonatas and concertos,but he likes them when they carry aplain and pointed message from the heart tothe heart, and build up a consciousness of ourhuman interdependence: he would not carefor them if they merely blew into flame theemotional fire-in-straw that burns itself outuselessly because of the want of substantialfuel.

To the humble millionaire or the haughtyworkingman his manner is the same. Heknows what it means “to walk with kings norlose the common touch.” Nor is he easilyfooled. “Though I give my body to beburned, and have not charity, it profiteth menothing.”

“I talked with Mr. A.,” he told me, referringto his visit with a Croesus of NewYork who to certain ends has given largely,“and I felt somehow that, with all his giving,he had not given himself!”

That is the secret, it seems to me, of Dr.Grenfell’s own cogent power upon otherlives—that he goes and does in his own energeticperson. He does not stand at a distanceissuing commands. He is entirely willing tohelp anybody, anywhere. He holds backnothing that he can bestow, and he neverdespairs. His ruddy optimism is a matter ofactual daily practice and not of a cloisteredphilosophy. You never could persuade himthat with all the heavy burden that he bears,the myriad interruptions and vexations thatoccur, he is not having a grand good time. Hewould be entirely ready to say with Stevenson:

I should like to write a whole bookabout his helpers. He is not a man whoseeks to shine by surrounding himselfwith mediocrities. He would be ready to saywith Charles M. Schwab: “I want you towork not for me but with me.” His presenceis quickening and engenders loyalty. It is funto be wherever Dr. Grenfell is because somethingis always going on.

His helpers never are given to feel that theyare ciphers while he is the integer. Some ofthe ablest surgeons of America and of Europehave ministered to the patients at Battle Harbour,Indian Harbour and St. Anthony andon theStrathcona. There is an utter absenceof “side” and “swank” in this the goodphysician, and he never decks himself out inthe borrowed plumage of another’s virtue.He delights to see a thing well done, and isthe first to bestow the word of earned praiseon the doer. Conversely, he is not happy if ajob is put through in a bungling, half-hearted,messy fashion; but he keeps his breath to coolhis porridge, and never wastes it by mere“blowing off” when the mischief is done andpalaver will not mend matters.

Human beings are not angels, and eventhose who are upheld by a sense of righteousendeavour may get tired and short-temperedand disheartened and lonely. Those who attachthemselves to this enterprise for the weeksof summer sunlight only do not have muchtime to develop nostalgia. But “there ain’tno busses runnin’ from the bank to Mandalay,”and the Labrador has no theatres, nopicnics, no ball games and few dances. Thinkof the large-hearted Moravian Brethren ofthe Labrador whose missions are linked withLondon by one visit a year from their missionship theHarmony. Think of the man (Mr.Stewart) who sticks it out by himself atUngava round the chill promontory of CapeChidley in Ungava Bay. Think of the agentsof the Hudson Bay and other companies dealingwith the “silent, smoky Indian” in thevast reaches of the North. Whoever essays toserve God and man in this country must haulhis own weight and bear others’ burdens too.He must lay aside hindrances—he must forfeitlove of home and kindred—he must learnto keep normal and cheerful in the achingsolitudes.

Many are with the Doctor for a season orso. Some like Dr. Little, Dr. Paddon and Dr.Andrews and certain others who deserve tobe namedhonoris causa—have stood by himyear after year. But by this time there is asmall army of short-term or long-term Grenfellgraduates—men and women—who had“their souls in the work of their hands” andwhose precious memories are of the days theyspent in assuaging the torment, physical orspiritual, of plain fisher-folk. It is not possibleto separate in this case the care of bodiesfrom the cure of souls. The “wops” whobrought the schoonerGeorge B. Cluett fromBoston year after year, laden with lumber andsupplies, and then went ashore to be plumbersand carpenters and jacks-of-all-trades for loveand not for hire have their own stories totell of “simple service simply given to theirown kind in their human need.” Most ofthem knew just what they would be up against;they knew it would not be a glorified house-party;but they accepted the isolation and thecrudeness and the cold and the unremittingtoil, and in the spirit of good sportsmanshipwhich is the ruling spirit of the Grenfell undertakingthey played the game, and what theydid is graven deep in the Doctor’s gratefulmemory.

The Doctor wins and keeps the enthusiasticloyalty of his colleagues because he is so readywith the word of emphatic praise for whatthey do when it is the right thing to do. Heis fearless to condemn, but he would rathercommend, and the flush of pleasure in theface of the one praised tells how much hisapproval has meant to the recipient. Heknows how many persons in this human,fallible world of ours travel faster for a patthan for a kick or a blow.

A halt was called at Forteau for a fewhours’ conference with one of the remarkablewomen who have put their shoulders underthe load of the Labrador—Sister Bailey, oncea co-worker with Edith Cavell. At Forteaushe has a house that holds an immaculatehospital-ward and an up-to-date dispensary.For twelve years—except for two visits inEngland—she has held the fort here withoutthe company of her peers, except at long intervals.She has kept herself surrounded withbooks and flowers, and her geraniums are exquisite.Sister Bailey’s cow, bought for $40in a bargain at Bonne Esperance (“Bony,”)is a wonder, and I took pains to stroke thenose of this “friendly cow” and praise herlife-giving endeavours. For each day at thecrack of dawn there is a line-up of people withall sorts of containers to get the milk. Thedogs, of course, would cheerfully kill theanimal if they could pull her down, but shefights them off with her horns, and they havelearned a wholesome fear. She is not like thecow at Bonne Esperance today, which has sufferedthe loss of part of its hind quarters becauseit was too gentle.

Under Sister Bailey’s roof three maids, aged12, 13 and 22, are being educated in householdmanagement. She has a garden with the dogsfenced out, and there is a skirmish with theweeds all through the summer into which winterbreaks so suddenly. There is no spring;there is no fall; flowers, vegetables and weedsappear almost explosively together.

Artificial flowers are beautifully made—withdyes from Paris—by the girls of ForteauCove, under Sister Bailey’s supervision. Thehues are remarkably close to the original andthe imitation of petal and leaf is so close asto be startling.

No description of Dr. Grenfell’s “parish,”as Norman Duncan aptly styled it, could becomplete without mention—that would bemuch more extended did she permit—of thepart Mrs. Grenfell fills in all that the Doctordoes. Mrs. Grenfell was Miss Anna MacClanahan,of Chicago, and she is a graduateof Bryn Mawr. The Doctor went to theLabrador years before his marriage, but sinceshe took her place at his side with her tact, herhumour, her common sense, her sound judgmentand her broad sympathies, she has beena tower of strength, a well-spring of solaceand of healing, and altogether an indispensablefactor in her husband’s enterprise.

She is his secretary, and the number of lettersto be written, of patients’ records to bekept, of manuscripts to be prepared for thepress is enormous. The Doctor pencils amemorandum when and where he can—perhapssitting atop of a woodpile on the reelingdeck of theStrathcona; and then Mrs. Grenfelltames the rebellious punctuation or suppliesthe missing links of predicates or prepositionsand evolves a manuscript that need notfear to face the printer.

The letters of appeal are almost innumerable,of protest occasional, of sympathy andfriendship—with or without subscriptions—verynumerous, and Mrs. Grenfell has thehappy gift of saying “thank you” in suchwarm and gracious, individualizing terms thatthe donor is enlisted in a lifelong friendshipfor the Grenfell idea.

Mrs. Grenfell is “the life of the party”wherever she goes. Like the Doctor, she refusesto grow tired of the great game of living,and it is a game they play together in acompletely understanding and sympatheticcopartnership.

General “Chinese” Gordon once gave asthe reason for not marrying the fact that hehad never found the woman who would followhim anywhere. Dr. Grenfell has beenmore fortunate. A friend of theirs tells methat Dr. Grenfell proposed on shipboard, almostthe minute he met his wife. Astoundedby his precipitancy, she said: “But, Doctor,you don’t even know my name!” “Thatdoesn’t make any difference; I know what it’sgoing to be,” is said to have been his characteristicanswer.

Mrs. Grenfell was translated from a lifethat might have been one of ease and pleasureand social preoccupation into a life of unremittingtoil and no small measure of actualhardship, and she meets the day and whateverit brings in the same high-hearted mood thather husband carries to the various phases ofhis crowded existence. She is his mentor—withoutbeing a tormentor; she is his businessmemory and a deal of his common sense andsocial conscience: but she never lets her fine,keen mind, her quick wit and her readily diviningintuition become absorbed in the mechanicphases of the regulation of householdor boatload business. She has the happyfaculty of instant transplantation from thepractical task to the ideal atmosphere. Sheis the Doctor’s workmate, playmate and helpmate:the complete and inspiring counterpart.She knows better than anybody else that shehas a great man for a husband, but she neverlets that consciousness become oppressive, andshe knows that it is good for them both toyield to the playful spirit of rollicking nonsenseand absurd horseplay now and then. Soyou needn’t be surprised if you should find thepair chasing each other about the deck pretendinga mortal combat with billets of birch-wood,while the distracted Fritz the dog cannotmake up his mind whether he is in dutybound to bite his mistress or his master. Youneedn’t be surprised if the Doctor goes througha mighty pantomime of barricading his chart-roomas though his better half had no businessin it, or hides some one of her cherished Laresand Penates and assumes an innocent ignoranceof its whereabouts. When he is at play Dr.Grenfell is not a bit older than the youngestof his three delightful children whose combinedages cannot be much more than fifteenyears. He is the same sort of amusing anddevoted father as the mourned and belovedhead of the household at Sagamore Hill, whoto Dr. Grenfell—of course—is the pattern ofall that the head of a family and the soul ofa nation should be.

The family life of the Grenfells and theperfect mutuality of thought and feeling betweenDr. Grenfell and his wife stand out inclear-cut lines as an example to those whonever have known the meaning of the completecommunity of ideals in the family lifeand in the relationship of wife and husband.It stands in rebuke to the sorrowful travestythe modern marriage so often exhibits. Itshows how the strength of either partner in themarriage of true minds is multiplied tenfoldand how the yoke is easy and the burden islight when love has entered in⁠—

In few places are the dogs so numerous andso noisy as at Forteau, and Sister Bailey’steam held the primacy for speed and conditionand obedience to command—yet sheruled them by moral suasion and not by kicksand curses. That does not mean they were dogangels. Every “husky” is in part a wolf,and the gentlest and most amiable that fawnsupon you will in a twinkling go from the Dr.Jekyll to the Mr. Hyde in his make-up whenthe breaking-point is passed. The leaders ofthe pack were two monsters named Scottyand Carlo, and they were rivals to the end ofthe tether. Carlo was a sentimentalist of ahue between fawn and grey: his greatestpleasaunce was to put his forepaws on yourshoulders and lick your nose ere you couldstave him off. Scotty’s nose—he was blackand white—was embossed with the marks ofmany bitter duels. Probably the other dogscould read those marks, as a Bret Harte cowboycould read the notches on a gun, and hewon respect commensurate with the length andbreadth of the scratches. Scotty came with uson theStrathcona, as his mistress was leavingfor a rest in England shortly. It was a jobto persuade him aboard the boat, but oncethere he entered into a tacit agreement, as betweengentlemen, that he should have the afterdeck while Fritz, our official dog, monopolizedthe prow. Scotty had the better of the bargain,for his bailiwick included the cook’sgalley. But Fritz could sleep on the floor ofmy cabin, though whenever I looked for himon the floor he was snugly ensconced in a forbiddenlower bunk, curled up like a jelly roll.He learned to vacate without even a wordwhen I gazed at him reproachfully.

All Sister Bailey’s dogs, and a great manymore, converged upon the beach when Fritzswam ashore and shook himself free fromsuch marine algae as he might have collected onhis course. We kept Fritz close at heel, butthere were constant alarums and incursions.As we sauntered along the shore path by thefish-flakes where the women were turning overthe fish under the threat of rain, Fritz was ina measure taken into the loosely cohesiveplunderbund of Sister Bailey’s pack. Theyseemed to be saying to him after their fashion:“Oh, well, you are a foreigner from that shipout yonder in the cove, to be sure, but herewe are passing one hostile tribe after another,and we may need you any time to help us outin a scrap, so you may as well travel alongwith our bushy tails—though yours pointstoward the ground, and you can’t be very muchof a dog, after all.”

For dogs appeared in squads, platoons, companies,battalions, even as iron-filings clusterto a magnet. There was a most outrageousand unholy pow-wow when we had gone aboutfive houses from the beach. All the dogs fromnear and far piled into it like hornets froma broken nest. There was no speech norlanguage known to dogdom in which theirvoices were not heard with howls and imprecations.Alas! even the gentle Sister Bailey hadto abandon for the nonce her policy of moralsuasion and get in among her protégés withthwackings of a bit of driftwood and a fewwell-directed pushes (not to say kicks) of thefoot. Any moderate impact, when a scrap isin full swing, rebounds from the tough integumentslike hailstones landing on a tin roof.Even an every-day argument of these beastssounds like wholesale murder. It is a patheticfact that with all the affectionate responsivenessof some of the animals to human noticethere always lurks a danger. If you are astranger, meeting a strange pack, it is well tokeep your eyes upon them, and if you have nota stick in your hand, or a stone ready to throw,it is wholesome to stoop groundward and pretendyou have a missile. Then, nine timesout of ten, they will scatter. So often onewould like to believe they are all dog, withall of the dog’s graces and goodnesses—butthere reigns in the breast of each a vulpinejealousy that easily and instantly mounts toa blood-heat of maddened fury. Dogs of thesame litter will fight as furiously and savagelyas born enemies, though they may recognizein the traces intuitively the leadership of theirmother at an age far beyond that at whichcivilized puppies become as contemptuous oftheir mother as she is of them.

Unhappily, there are many cases on authenticrecord when young children and old people,unable to defend themselves, have been devouredby dogs—not necessarily when the dogswere starving. A grewsome climax wasreached when in the “flu” epidemic of1918-19 on the Labrador the dogs fell on thedead and the dying and the enfeebled survivorscould not stem the onslaught. No wonder,then, that Dr. Grenfell, with all his manifestaffection for dogs that he has known, insiststhat the importation of reindeer is the salvationand the solution. Stubbornly the folkof the northern tip of the peninsula and theLabrador coast cling to the huskies that werebanished, in favour of cows, horses, pigs andchickens, by their more sophisticated southernneighbours. Uncle Philip Coates at Eddy’sCove is the only man on that shore, as far asis known, who keeps pigs.

A fisherman landing on an island off CapeCharles, on the side away from his home,found himself the object of the unwelcome attentionsof a pack of dogs who were acting onthe principle of the uncouth villager of the oldstory who cried: “ ’Ere’s a stranger, Bill—let’s’eave ’arf a brick at him.” He is sure theywould have pounced on him and polished offhis bones, had he not seen one dog he knew—theleader. He called the dog’s name; thewolfish creature halted instantly. When thename was repeated, the dog slunk off, hisragged retinue at his heels.

It is sad to think that the dogs that will performso nobly in the traces are such bad actorswhen they have nothing to do but to pick aquarrel in places where perhaps there is nofoliage but the proud curled plumage of theirtails. They are beside themselves with excitementwhen after the summer siesta they areharnessed to the komatik again. When thedriver smartly rubs his hands and cries, “Seethe deer!”—or anything he pleases—it augmentsthe fever. In Labrador “ouk, ouk!”turns the team to the right—perchance witha disconcerting promptness—and “urrah,urrah!” swerves it to the left. The correspondingdirections in Newfoundland are“keep off!” and “hold in.” No reins areused—some drivers use no whip. The booksof Dr. Grenfell abound in affectionate referenceto the better nature of these animals andtheir extraordinary fidelity to duty. Like mostof the people of the land, they do not fear todie. Their life is largely of neglect and pain:they spend much of their time crawling underthe houses to get out of the way. Theirpleasure is the greater when they find a humanplaymate ready to throw a stick into the waterfor them. Grand swimmers are they, and theywill plunge into the coldest sea; and if theyare hungry they dive in for a small fish withoutconcern. It is hard to find a time whenthey are not ready to set their fangs to food—“full-fed”is an ideal condition to which mostof them seldom attain. A square meal ofwhalemeat is their millennium. “I don’t seewhat satisfaction they get out of it,” said“Bill” Norwood—one of the volunteer“wops” building the Battle Harbour reservoir.“The meat in winter comes to themin frozen hunks, and they slide it down at onegulp, to melt in their stomach. That’s notquite my idea of enjoying a meal.”

In a yawl that theStrathcona draggedastern three plaintive huskies, to be committedto the pack at St. Anthony, hungrily sniffedthe meat-laden breeze that blew from ourdeck. They were perturbed at finding themselvesgoing to sea. I may add that when theygot ashore the youngest of the three—a merebaby—jumped on a rock and bit the nose ofthe leader of the St. Anthony pack, Eric byname, thereby winning respect for himselfand his two comrades among the aborigineswho might otherwise have fallen upon themand rent them limb from limb.

The dogs at Battle Harbour live up to thename of the settlement. Like all other“huskies,” they are ready to fight on slightprovocation, and the night is made vocal withtheir long-drawn ululations. Their appetiteis insatiable—they devour with enthusiasmwhatsoever things are thrown out at thekitchen door—they even ate a towel that wentastray—and when nothing better offers theywill wade into the water in quest of caplin, orcods’ heads. In their enthusiasm for food thedogs will dig through boards to get at cattleand pigs, and cows and chickens seldom livewhere the dogs are numerous.

The murderous proclivities of the dogs ofthe Labrador furnished one of the chief reasons,as has been said before, why the Doctorwent to such great pains and to such a relativelylarge expense to import and domicile the reindeer.

“It was wildly exciting work, I can tell you,lassoing those reindeer and tying their legs inthat country over yonder,” he said, as theStrathcona rounded the rugged bread-loafisland of Cape Onion. He pointed to the settlementof Island Bay behind it. “There wewere blown across the bay on the ice—dogs,komatik and all—roaring with laughter atour own predicament, helpless before the greatgale of wind.” Thus he recalls without bitternessthe costly undertaking whose fruitionhas been—and still is—one of his dearestdreams. Conveying the captured reindeeracross the Strait in a schooner to Canada withalmost nobody to help him was a Herculeantask. Some day the Legislature at St. John’smay see fit to divert a little money to establishingthe docile and reliable reindeer in placeof treacherous and predatory dogs. It is agreater loss to the island than to Grenfell thatthe scheme must wait.

With a mob of dogs in every village, a mobactuated most of the time by an insatiablehunger driving it forth in quest of any sortof food, it has been impossible in most placesto keep a cow or a goat, and hay is prohibitivelycostly to import. Dr. Grenfell has describedwith pathos how Labrador mothers, indefault even of canned milk for the baby, arein the habit of chewing hard bread into a pulpymass to fill the infant’s mouth and thus producethe illusion of nutriment until it is ableto masticate and assimilate “loaf” for itself.In few countries is milk so scarce.

The reindeer might be the cow of the Labrador.The reindeer is able to find a squaremeal amid the moss and lichens, and it yieldsmilk so rich as to require dilution to bringit down to the standard of cow’s milk, whileit is free from the peculiar flavour of the milkof the goat. The Lapps make the milk intoa “cream cheese” which Dr. Grenfell hastried out on his sledge journeys and heartilyendorses.

Nearly three hundred reindeer were obtainedby Dr. Grenfell in Lapland in 1907,with three Lapland families to herd them andteach herding. They were landed at Cremailliere,(locally called “Camelias”), three milessouth of St. Anthony. At the end of fouryears the herd numbered a thousand. In 1912,twelve hundred and fifty at once were corraled.Poaching and want of police protectionmade it desirable to transfer the animalsacross the Straits to Canada. Some of them,by virtue of strenuous effort, were collectedin 1918 and transported to the St. AugustineRiver district where now they flourish and increasein number. Some day, it would seemfrom the great success of the reindeer-herdsof Alaska—introduced by Dr. Sheldon Jacksonand fostered by the United States Government—thesefine animals will surely replacethe dogs on the Labrador, when local prejudiceagainst them has been overcome or hasevaporated. They are useful not merely forthe milk but for the meat and the skins, aswell as for transportation. They live at peaceinstead of on the precarious verge of battle.The “experiment” has not collapsed in dismalfailure. It is only in abeyance to theultimate assured success, and it is not too muchto predict that another generation or two willsee the reindeer numerous and useful throughoutthe Labrador.

To take the measure of the man Dr.Grenfell is and the work he does it isnecessary to know something of theland and the waters round about, where heputs his life in jeopardy year after year, dayunto day, to save the lives of others. Thereis much more to “Dr. Grenfell’s parish” thanthe “rock, fog and bog” of the old saying.Such observations as are here assembled arethe raw material for the Doctor’s inimitabletales of life on the Labrador.

The great fact of life here is the sea, andmuch of existence is in giving battle to it.The little boys practice jumping across rain-barrelsand mud-puddles, because some daythey hope to get a “ticket” (a berth on asealer) and go to the ice, and when it is “agood big copy from pan to pan”—that is tosay, a considerable distance from one floatingice-cake to the next—their ability to jump liketheir own island sheep may save their lives.

The word “copy” comes from the childishgame of following the leader and doing as hedoes. A little piece of ice is called a knob, anda larger piece is a pan. A pan is the samething as a floe, but the latter expression isnot in common usage.

Every youth who aspires to qualify as askipper must go before an examining board ofold sea-wise and weather-wise pilots, and provehimself letter-perfect in the text of that bigbook, “The Newfoundland and LabradorPilot and Guide.” His examiners scorn theknowledge of the book, very often, for theyhave the facts at the fingers’ ends from longand harsh experience of the treacherouswaters, with the criss-cross currents, the hiddenreefs, the sudden fogs, the contrary winds.So they delight to make life miserable for theyoung mariner by heckling him.

The disasters that now and then overtakethe sealing-fleet are ever present in the mindsof those who do business in these waters.They know what it means for a ship’s companyto be caught out on the ice in a snow-storm,far from the vessel. In early Marchthe wooden ships race for the Straits of BelleIsle, and three days later the faster iron shipsfollow. When they get to where the seals aresunning themselves around the blow-holes inthe ice, the crew go out with their gaffs(staves) and kill the usually unresisting animalsby hitting them over the back of the head.It sounds like simple and easy hunting, andin good weather it is. But a long-continuedstorm changes the complexion of the adventureto that of the gravest peril.

One captain saved his men by making themdance like mad the long night through, whilehe crooned the music to them. At the end ofeach five minutes he let them rest on theirpiles of gaffs, and then they were made tospring to their feet again and resume the franticgyrations that kept them from freezing todeath. In the same storm, theGreenland ofHarbour Grace lost 52 of her 100 men.

They still talk of the fate of theQueen onGull Island off Cape St. John, though thewreck took place nigh unto forty years ago.There was no lighthouse then. The island liftsits head hundreds of feet above the mean ofthe tides, and only the long rank grass andthe buttercups live there in summer. But thiswas in a December night, and the wind blewa gale. There were six passengers—a womanamong them. When the passengers hadbattled their way ashore through the leapingsurf, the crew went back on the doomed shipto salvage some of the provisions. For theyknew that at this forsaken angle of the islandno help from any passing ship was likely tillthe spring.

The passengers toiled to the top of the bleakislet, lugging with them a fragment of a sail.The crew, aboard the vessel, were carried bythe furious winds and waters out to the OldHarry Shoals, where they lost their lives whenthe sea beat the vessel to pieces.

The sequel is known by a little diary inwhich a doctor—one of the hapless half-dozen—madenotes with his own blood tillhis stiffening fingers refused to scrawl anotherentry.

It seems from this pathetic note-book thatthe six at the end of a few days, tortured withthirst and starvation, drew lots to see whoshould die.

Then the entries in the book cease; and thecurtain that fell was not lifted till springbrought a solitary hunter to the island. Heshot a duck from his boat, and it fell in thebreakers. Afterwards he said it was a phantomfowl, sent from heaven to guide him. Forhe did not see it again, though he landed andsearched the beach.

But he saw splinters flung high by the surfthat seemed to him a clear indication of awreck.

He clambered to the top of the islet. Therehe found, under the rotted sail, the six bodies,and in the hand of one, was a piece of fleshtorn from one of the bodies.

Even when their lives are endangered thefishermen preserve their keen mindfulness ofthe religious proprieties. Caught on an ice-pantogether, Protestants and Catholics prayed,their backs to one another, on opposite sidesof the pan—and the same thing has happenedin ships’ cabins. The sailors are not above around oath now and then, but there are manyGod-fearing, prayerful men among them.“These are my sailing orders, sir,” said anold retired sea-dog to me as he patted the cheekof his Bible.

Phrases of the sea enter into every phase ofdaily human intercourse. “You should havegiven yourself more room to veer and haul,”said the same old sailor to me when I was ina hurry. Fish when half-cured are said to be“half-saved,” and a man who is “not allthere” is likely to be styled “half-saved.”

“Down killik” is used impartially on arrivalat the fishing grounds or at home after avoyage—the “killik” being a stone anchor forsmall craft or for nets. (A “killy-claw” isof wood with the stone in the middle.) Youmay hear an old fisherman say of his retirementfrom the long warfare with the sea fora living: “My killiks are down; my boat ismoored.” One of them who was blind in hisleft eye, said as he lay dying, referring to hisown soul: “She’s on her last tack, heading forI don’t know where: the port light is out, andthe starboard is getting very dim.” A fewminutes later he passed away.

The ordinary talk is full of poetry. “If Icould only rig up a derrick, now, to hoist meover the fore part of the winter,” an old saltwill say, “wi’ the help o’ God and a sou’westerlywind and a few swyles I could lasttill the spring.” By “swyles,” of course, hemeans “seals.” A man’s a man when he haskilled his seal. Seal-meat is an anti-scorbutic,and the sealers present the “paws,” or flippers,as great delicacies to their friends. A “bigfeed” is a “scoff.” Sealing brings men togetherin conviviality and comaraderie, and itis the great ambition of most of the youth ofNewfoundland to “go to the ice.” Manyare the stowaways aboard the sealing craft.If a man goes “half his hand” it means hegets half his catch for his labour.

“Seal” is pronounced “swyle,” “syle,” or“swoyle” and Swale Island also takes itsname from this most important mammal.Seals wandering in search of their blow-holeshave been found as far as six or seven milesinland.

As might be expected, there survives in thevernacular—especially of the older people—manywords and phrases that smack of theirEnglish dialect origin, and words that werethe English undefiled of Chaucer’s or Shakespeare’sday. Certain proper names representa curious conversion of a French name nolonger understood.

In Dorsetshire dialect v is used for f, andin Newfoundland one hears “fir” pronounced“vir” or “var.” Firewood is “vir-wood.”Women who are “vuzzing up theirvires” are fussing (making ready) their fires.We have “it wouldn’t be vitty” in place of“it wouldn’t be fitting.” A pig “veers”; itdoes not farrow. The use of “thiccy” for“this” is familiar to readers of “LornaDoone.” “The big spuds are not very jonnickyet” means that the potatoes are not welldone. If something “hatches” in your“glutch,” it catches in your throat. Blizzardis a word not used, and a lass at school, confusingit with gizzard, said it meant the insidesof a hen. The remains of birds or of animalsare the “rames.” “O yes you, I ’low” isa common form of agreement. To be photographedis to be “skitched off,” and of snapshotsit is sometimes said by an old fishermanto a “kodak fiend”: “I heard ye firin’ of’em.”

“Cass ’n goo,” for “can’t you go” may beheard at Notre Dame Bay, as well as “biss ’ngwine” for “aren’t you going?” and “theescass’n do it” for “thee can’t do it.” Theberries called “harts” (whorts) are, I presume,the “hurts” of Surrey.

A vivid toast for a sealer going to the icefieldswas “Bloody decks to ’im!”

When bad weather is brewing, “We’re goingto have dirt” is a common expression.

A fisherman who had hooked a queer creaturethat must have been first cousin to thesea-serpent said, “It had a head like a hulf,a neck like a harse; I cut the line and let itgo to hell.”

Here is a puzzler: “Did ye come on skitsor on cart and dogs?” That means, “Did youcome on skates or on a dog-sledge?” Dog-catis a dog-sledge. Cat is short for catamaran,which is not a sea-boat but a land-sledge,so that when you hear it said: “He’staken his dog and his cat and gone to thewoods” you may know that it means “He’staken his dog and his sledge.”

Just as we change the position of ther ingoing fromthree tothird, we find the letterstransposed in “aps” for aspen, “haps” forhasp, “waps” for “wasp” and “wordle” forworld. Labrador is Larbador, and “down tothe Larbador” or “down on the Larbador”are common expressions.

Instead of “the hatch” the telescoped form“th’ ’atch” is used. We have “turr” for“tern” and “loo” for “loon,” and “yammit”(emmet) for “ant.”

The tendency to combine syllables is illustratedin the pronunciation of Twillingate asTwulngate.

A scaffolding for fish is known as a “flake.”Here the split cod are outspread to dry and,by the way, a decision of the NewfoundlandSupreme Court declares “cod” and “fish”synonymous. The scaffolding is made of polescalled longers, and it is suggested that these“longers” are the “longiores” which Caesarused to build bridges, according to his Commentaries.A silk hat is known as a beaver,or behaviour, and so when you hear it said,“I saw Tom Murphy; he must have been ata funeral; he had his behaviour on,” it meansnot that he was circumspect in his conduct,but that he wore the formal headgear.“Sammy must ’a’ been writin’ some poetry.I saw him just now a-humourin’ of it with hisfoot.” Cannot you see the bard beating outthe rhythm with his foot, as a musician sometimesdoes when he is sure that he is in timeand the rest are mistaken?

“South’ard,” “north’ard,” “east’ard,”“west’ard” are current maritime usage, andthe adjective “wester” is heard.

Legal Latin is drawn upon for “tal qual”—talisqualis—applied in a bargain for fish “justas they come.”

Here is a quaint one. The end of a pile,above the surface of a wharf, is a gump-head.Gump and block are one and the same thing.We of the United States use the word“gump” or “chump” figuratively for a“blockhead.”

“The curse o’ Crummle on ye” is a ruralexpression still heard, and refers to Cromwell’sbloody descent on Ireland.

“I find my kinkhorn and I can’t glutch”means “I have a pain in my throat and I can’tswallow.” The kinkhorn is the Adam’s apple.A man at Chimney Cove remarked: “I havea pain in my kinkhorn and it has gone to mywizen (chest).”

A dog is often called a “crackie.” Caribouis shortened to “boo.” A door that has stuckis said to be “plimmed up.” A man who atehard bread and drank water said “It plimmedup inside and nearly killed me.”

To say of a girl that she “blushed up likea bluerag” refers to the custom of enclosinga lump of blueing in a cloth when launderingclothes. “The wind baffles round the house”is a beautiful way of saying that it was blustering.

“Bruise” is a very popular dish of hardbread boiled with fish, and with “scrunchins”(pork) fried and put over it. It is the equivalentof Philadelphia’s famous “scrapple.” Aguide, admitting that bread and tea are thestaple articles of diet in many an outpost, saidreflectively: “Yes, that’s all those people liveon. Now there’s other things. There’sbeans.”

When a man says that his hands are “hardafrore” (hard frozen) we remember Miltonin “Paradise Lost,” “the air burns frore.”Frozen potatoes are “frosty tiddies.” Headis often called “heed.” “Tigyer,” said by anold man to a mischievous lad, means “Takeyerself off.” “Is en?” is a way of saying“Is he?” An old man cut his finger andsaid that he had a “risen” on it, which iscertainly more of a finality than a “rising.”“I’m going chock to Gargamelle” means “I’mgoing all the way to Gargamelle,” the lattername from “garçon gamelle,” said to signify“the boy who looks after the soup.”

Instead of “squashed,” “squatted” is acommon word, as in the expression “Isquatted my finger.” And there are manyother provincialisms not in the dictionaries.

The fathom is a land-measure of length, aswell as a sea-measure of depth. The leadingdog of a team is six or seven “fathoms”ahead of the komatik.

“Start calm” means perfectly calm, andthen they may say expressively “The wind’sup and down the mast.”

“Take it abroad” is “take it apart”; “doyou relish enough,” is “have you eatenplenty?” “Poor sign fish” means that fishare scarce. Woods that are tall are said to be“taunt.”

These few examples of distinctive phraseologymight be multiplied a thousand-fold.

As for the proper names, a fascinating fieldof research lies before a patient investigatorwho commands the leisure. Here are but afew of countless examples that might be cited.

French names have been Anglicized instrange ways. Isle aux Bois thus becomes Isleof Boys—or, as pronounced on the southcoast, Oil of Boys or Oil o’ Boy. Baie deBoules has lost the significance of bouldersthat bestud its shores in the name Bay Bulls.The famous and dreaded Cape Race, near thespot where the beautifulForizel was lost, getsits name from the French “razé,” signifying“sheer.” Reucontre is Round Counter; CinqIsles has become St. Keels, and Peignoir is alteredto Pinware or Pinyare. Grand Bruitis Grand Brute; the rocky headland of Blomidonthat nobly commands the mouth of theHumber is commonly called Blow-me-down;Roche Blanche is Rose Blanche.

One would scarcely recognize Lance-au-Diablein Nancy Jobble. Bay d’Espoir hasbeen turned into its exact antithesis, in theshape of Bay Despair. L’Argent Bay is nowBay Le John. Out of Point Enrage is evolvedPoint Rosy, and St. Croix is modified to Sancroze(Sankrose).

Children’s names are likely to be Biblical.They are often called by the middle name aswell—William James, Henry George, AlbertEdward. Merchants’ ledgers must take accountof a vast number of nicknames that areoften slight variants on the same name—YankeePeter, Foxy Peter, Togo Ben, Sailor Ben,Bucky Ben, Big Tom, Deaf Tom, Young Tom,Big Jan, Little Jan, Susy’s Jan, Ripple Jan,Happy Jack. Thomas Cluett comes to becalled Tommy Fiddler, whereupon all the childrenbecome Fiddlers, and the wife is Mrs.Fiddler. The family of Maynards is knownas the Miners.

The little boys have a mischievous way ofteasing one another as “bay noddies.” Thenoddy is a stupid fish that is very good atcatching the smaller fry and then easily allowsitself to be robbed of its prey. The childrencry:

They throw marbles against a wall for asort of carom-shot, and call it “bazzin’ marbles.”“The real precursor of the spring, likethe sure mating of the birds,” said an old manof the game.

In some places there is a local celebrity witha real talent for the composition of what areknown as “come-all-ye’s,” from the fact thatthe minstrel is supposed to invite all who willto come and hear him chant his lay. Everybig storm or shipwreck is supposed to be commemoratedin appropriate verse by thelaureate. For instance, one of these balladsbegins:

If a boy doesn’t go across the Straits beforehe is sixteen, he must be “shaved by Neptune.”It is almost a disgrace not to havegone to the Labrador. Neptune is called“Nipkin.” “Nipkin’ll be aboard to shave youtonight.”

When they are cleaning fish, the last manto wash a fish for the season gets ducked inthe tub.

Some of the older residents are walkingepitomes of the island lore. They know agreat deal that never found lodgment in books.Matty Mitchell, the 63-year old Micmac guide,now a prospector for the Reid-NewfoundlandCompany, was a fellow-passenger on the mail-boat.He was full of tales of the days whenthe wolf still roamed the island’s inner fastnesses.I asked him when the last of whichhe knew were at large. He said: “Aboutthirty years ago I saw three on Doctor’s Hill.I have seen none since. There are still lotsof bears and many lynxes. Once I was attackedby six wolves. I waited till the nearestwas close to me—then I shoved my muzzle-loaderinto his mouth and shot him and theother five fell away. Another time I wasattacked by three bears who drove me intoa lake where I had to stay till some men whohad been with me came to the rescue.

“My grandfather was with Peyton whenMary March and another Indian woman werecaptured at Indian Lake. Mary March diedat St. John’s, and was buried there; the otherone was brought back to the shore of thelake.”

“How do you know what minerals youare finding when you are prospecting?” Iasked.

“I was three times in the Museum at St.John’s,” he answered. “I see everything inthe place. That way I know everything thatI look at when I go to hunt for minerals andmetals. I hear a thing once—I got it. I seea thing once—I got it. I never found gold—butI got pearls from clams, weighing as muchas forty grains. I can’t stay in the house. Imust be out in the open. If I stay inside Iget sick. I take colds. I’ve been twice to theGrand Falls in Labrador. At the upper fallsthe river rises seven times so”—he archedthe back of his hand—“before the water goesover. The biggest flies I ever saw are there.They bite right through the clothes. Youclose the tent—sew up the opening. You burnup all the flies inside. Next morning there arejust as many.”

Another passenger was the Rev. ThomasGreavett, Church of England “parson,” witha parish 100 miles long on the West Coastbetween Cow Head and Flower’s Cove. Hehad to be medicine-man and lawyer too, andin his black satchel he carried a stomach-pump,a syringe, eight match-boxes of medicine andGibbon’s “Decline and Fall.” He told mehow he hated to use the mail-boat for hisparish visiting, for it generally meant sleeplessnights of pacing the deck or sitting in thelifeboat in default of a berth. He carried apetition, to go before the Legislature, recitingthe many reasons why the poor little boat onwhich we were travelling is inadequate to theheavy freight and passenger traffic in which sheis engaged. With accommodations for hardlymore than 50 passengers, she has carried 210,235 and even 300, which meant acute discomfortfor everybody and the open deck, nightand day, for many passengers. What iswanted is a big, heavy ice-breaker. TheEthienever was meant by her Glasgow builders tofight the Humboldt Glacier bit by bit as itfalls into the sea. In December she waswrecked off Cow Head in a gale, fortunatelywith no loss of life.

I don’t know of a harder-working lot thanthe crew and captain of a boat that undertakesto carry freight and passengers betweensouthern ports of Newfoundland and theLabrador.

Take the experience of this vessel, theEthie,in the summer of 1919 as an example. Undera thoroughly capable and chart-perfect skipper,Captain English, she made several ineffectualattempts to get to Battle Harbourthrough the dense ice-jam before she finallymade that roadstead on June 24. When Imet her at Curling to go north, a week late,at the end of August, she had just come outof a viscous fog of four days’ duration inthe Strait of Belle Isle and in that fog she hadescaped by the closest of shaves a collisionwith a berg that towered above her till thetop of it was lost in the fog. She carried somany passengers, short-haul or long-distance,that every seat in the dining saloon was filledwith weary folk at night and some paced thedecks or sat on the piles of lathes or the oil-barrels.Lumber and barrels were storedeverywhere, the hold was crammed, and cattlein the prow came and went mysteriously asthe vessel moved into one cove or bight ortickle after another in the dead of the nightor the silver cool of the early morning. Theclatter of the steam-winch with the tune ofbabies strange to the sea-trip, the slap andscuffle of the waves on our sheet-iron sidesand the banging of the doors as the vesselwrithed in her discomfort made an orchestraof many tongues and percussions. The boatwas so heavy with her cargo of machinery,oil, lumber, flour ($24 a barrel at Battle Harbour),cattle and human beings that the deckoutside my stateroom was hardly two feetout of water. There were four of us in thestateroom, but the population changed almosthourly from port to port, so that I had barelytime to get acquainted with a fellow-passengerere I lost him to look after his lobster or fish,or his missionary labours. One of the ship’scompany was going to teach school at GreenIsland Cove at the northern tip of Newfoundland.He told me he would get $275 for tenmonths’ work and out of it would have to payboard. Yet out of that salary he meant toput by money to pay for part of a collegeeducation at St. John’s. “How old are you?”I asked. “Not yet eighteen, sir.”

It is easy to see why Dr. Grenfell’s heartand hand go out in a practical and helpfulsympathy to those whose battle with grim, unmitigatednatural forces and with harsh circumstanceis unending. The commonest questionasked of anyone who returns from a visitto the Labrador is “Why do people livethere?” Despite the fog and the cold, the sea-perilsand the stark barrenness of the rocks,the Labrador has an allurement all its own.It has brought a sturdy explorer like WilliamB. Cabot of Boston (“Labrador” Cabot)again and again to the rivers and inlets and thecentral fastnesses, where he shares the life ofthe Montagnais and the Nauscapee Indians;and the same magic has endeared the Labradorto those who year upon year continue the questof the cod and the seal and know no life otherthan this. Whatever place a man calls hishome is likely to become unreasonably dear tohim, however bare and poor it looks to visitors;and that is the way with the Labrador.But he who cannot find by sea or land a wildand terrible beauty in the waters and the luminousskies and the long roll and lift of theblue hills must be insensible to some of thefairest vistas that earth has to show. Grenfelland his colleagues do not concede that life onthe Labrador is dull or that the environment issterile and monotonous and cheerless. As oneof the brave Labrador missionaries, theRev. Henry Gordon, has written, “Not onlydoes Labrador rejoice in some of the finestscenery in North America, but she also possessesa people of an exceptionally fine type.”Surely it is not right to think of such acountry as a land only of rocks, snows andmisery.

A typical interior gladdened by theDoctor’s presence is this on theSouthern Labrador. A drudge fromNancy Jobble (Lance-au-Diable) is scrubbingthe floor, for the mother is too ill to look tothe ways of her household. The drudge insteadof singing is chewing on something thatmay be tobacco, paper or gum, and as sheslings the brush about heartlessly she givesfurtive eyes and ears to the visitors. Thewalls are bestuck with staled and yellowednewspapers. There are no pictures or books.There is a wooden bench before the linoleum-coveredtable, on which are loaves of bread,ill-baked. There is a stove, of the “Favourite”brand with kettle and teapot simmering.A tarnished alarm-clock from Ansonia,a mirror, a wash-stand, shelves withchina, tin cans and shreds of bread, a baby’scrib, a rocking-chair and two more benchesforlornly complete the inventory. There isnothing green in sight from the besmirchedwindows but grass and people.

A telegraph operator was reading a volumeof the addresses of Russell Conwell when weentered his not overtasked laboratory. Thebook bore the title “How to Get Rich Honestly.”“ ’Fraid I’ll never get any further thanreading about it!” exclaimed the man of thekeys and wires. Dr. Grenfell took the bookand presently became engrossed in the famousaddress called “Acres of Diamonds.” Itseemed to him the sort of literature to firethe ambition of his neighbours under theNorthern Lights, with its instances of thosewho made their way defiant of the odds andin spite of all opposition.

A very young minister at another Labradorwatering-place said to the Doctor: “Youneedn’t leave any of your books here. I’m notinterested in libraries. I’m only interested inthe spiritual welfare of the people.”

A run of six miles by power-boat acrossLewis Inlet took us to Fox Harbour and thehouse of Uncle George Holley. In recentyears the power-boat, even with gasoline atthe prevailing high prices, has become thefisherman’s taxicab or tin Lizzie, and Oh! thedifference to him. He bobs and prances outover the war-dance of the waves with hisbarrels and boxes easily, where once it was amighty toiling with the sweeps to make hisway. The run across the inlet went swiftlyand surely past an iceberg white as an angel’swing though with the malign suggestion of thedevil behind it: and there were plenty ofchances to take photographs from every possibleangle.

Uncle George had on the stage a skinnedseal, some whalemeat, salted cod and a fewbarrels of salmon. His wife showed us atiny garden with cabbages, lettuce, rhubarb,radishes and “greens.” One year, she said,she had a barrel of potatoes. Indoors shemanaged to raise balsam, bachelor’s buttonsand nasturtiums. Nowhere in the world doflowers mean more to those that plant them.Constantly there comes to mind H. C. Brunner’spoem about a geranium upon a window-sill:for the flowers which it needs incessantcare to keep from the nipping frost come tobe regarded as not merely friends but membersof the family. Uncle George, a fine,patriarchal type, told vividly how with a dogwhip nine fathoms long the expert hand couldcut off the neck of a glass bottle without upsettingthe bottle, and take the bowl from aman’s pipe or the buttons off his coat. Nowonder the huskies slink under the houseswhen they see a stranger coming.

The winter of 1918-19 was especially terrible—or“wonderful” as would be said here—becauseof the visitation of the “flu.” Conditionswere bad enough in Newfoundland,but in Labrador the “liveyers” (those whoremain the year round) fought their battlesin a hopeless isolation illumined by heroicself-abnegation on the part of a tiny handfulof persons.

When spring released the Labrador Coastfrom the grip of the ice, and the tragic taleof the winter was told, the NewfoundlandGovernment dispatched theTerra Nova(Scott’s Antarctic vessel) to the aid of theafflicted. Then news filtered out to the worldof plague conditions during that terrible wintermore dreadful than those which De Foe haschronicled. While reading the gruesome details,one is reminded of the long, lonely andhopeless fight of the early Jamestown colonyagainst sickness and starvation. Throughoutthe bitter months the Red Death stalked itsdread way up and down the Coast, with almostno doctors, nurses or medicines to check thedisease. Whole families were stricken, theliving were too weak to bury the dead or evento fight off the gaunt dogs that hovered hungrilyabout the houses; and hamlets were wipedout while neighbouring villages were unableto send aid.

A few sentences from the diary of HenryGordon, the brave missionary at Cartwright,on Sandwich Bay, will suffice to show what ahideous winter his people passed through. Ofthis man Dr. Grenfell said to me: “Insteadof a stick with a collar on it we have a manwith a soul in him.” He is always laughing—incurablyan optimist, and a great Boy Scoutleader. The following are condensed excerpts.

“Wednesday, Oct. 30, 1918. ReachedCartwright 8 a.m. Mail-boat had brought‘the great Plague’ and nearly half the populationwas down with it.

“Nov. 1. Whole households stretched inanimateon floors, unable even to feed themselvesor keep fires going.

“Nov. 21. Will Leaming in from IndianHarbour with news that ten are dead at NorthRiver still unburied and only three coffins.The rest are too sick and dismayed to help.

“Nov. 22. (At North River). Some hadlain in their beds three weeks and the stenchwas appalling. Old Mrs. L. W., aged 71, onlysurvivor of five, lived alone for a fortnightwith four dead. No fire, no wood, only ice,which she thawed under her arms.

“Dec. 14. Find five little orphans livingalone in a deserted house in a deserted cove,bread still frozen.

“Dec. 25. (Christmas Day). Service10.30. Only six communicants, but considerable‘Communion of saints.’

“Jan. 1, 1919. (At Cape Porcupine, inHerbert Emb’s one-room house). ‘A sort ofdamp earthy smell met one on entering, butthanks to frost, body was not so bad as expected.More like mouldering clay than anything.Right on his side was his little girl,actually frozen on to him, so that bodies cameoff the bunk in one piece.’

“Jan. 8. Total deaths: Cartwright, 15;Paradise, 20; Separation Point, 7; NorthRiver, 13; Strandshore, 9; Grady, 1; HareIslands, 4; Sandhills, 4; Boulter’s Rock, 5;North, 12.”

These do not seem large figures, but insettlements of half a dozen houses or less theyrepresent a very large proportion of the inhabitants.

News of the armistice with Germany did notreach Mr. Gordon until January 9, whichshows how far from the world was this regionwithin a hundred miles of the summer hospitalat Battle Harbour.

It is to be noted that nearly all the childrenwho died perished of starvation, because theirelders could no longer feed them and the“loaf” was too frozen to be eaten.

The Eskimo settlements suffered still moregrievously. The bodies were buried at sea.Dogs were eating the bodies, and had to beshot. Sometimes the survivors were too weakto drive the dogs from the dead and thedying.

Hebron was wiped out. At Okkak 200 diedof 267, and on August 15 there were fourwidows and two little girls left, who werewaiting to be taken away. Nain was not sohard hit, but it is said that forty perished outof several hundred. Zoar and Ramah hadalready passed out of existence before the“flu” came. It is estimated that the residentEskimo population on the coast, numbering600 to 700, was cut nearly in half.

The people seem to think that Dr. Grenfellcan accomplish miracles. One is reminded ofthe words of the sister of Lazarus, “Lord,if thou hadst been here, my brother had notdied.”

“Richard Dempster, our mail-carrier,” saidgood Parson Richards, of Flower’s Cove,“owes his life to the Doctor. Something hadinfected his knee. The poison spread to hiship. He wouldn’t have lived twelve hours ifthe Doctor hadn’t made seven incisions in hisright leg with his pocket-knife to let out thepoisoned blood.

“Once when I was travelling with him, atPine’s Cove we found a family had left becausethe woman had seen a ghost. The Doctorprayed with her, and offered to go and live inthe house himself to prove that she was the victimof an illusion. At Eddy’s Cove there washard glitter ice which would have cut the dog’spaws. We thought we couldn’t go on. Whilewe debated what to do there came a snowfallthat spread the ice with a glorious soft blanket,ideal for travel. That’s just the way Providencealways seems to favour the Doctor whenhe goes abroad.

“That man never came to the parsonage andwent without leaving me with the desire to dobetter and be better. Every single time itwas the same.

“Once we were on the go with the dogs andthe komatik four days from St. Anthony toCricket (Griguet). Much of the time theDoctor had to run beside the komatik. Hestruck out a new way, deep in snow. ‘Don’tyou ever get tired, Doctor?’ I asked. ‘I don’tknow that I ever was tired in my life,’ was hisanswer.

“A day or two after that dreadful experienceon the ice-pan which he described ina book, he was at Cricket, and I went to seehim. He was still suffering from the effectsof the frost-bite. ‘Will you come to the massmeeting of the churches tonight?’ I said. Hedidn’t hesitate a moment. ‘Yes—send a dog-teamand I’ll come.’ He not merely came butdelivered an address of an hour’s duration,and I never heard him speak with greaterfervour. He seemed spiritualized by the experiencethrough which he had so recentlypassed.”

It is high time to give Dr. Grenfell’s greatwork the broad, sure underpinning of aliberal endowment. It may be true that“an institution is the lengthened shadow ofone man”; but the one-man power of Grenfell’spersonality is not immortal, and the workis too important to be allowed to lapse or tolanguish when he no longer directs, inspiresand energizes all. To endow the work now,when many concerns of lesser moment areclaiming their millions of dollars and theirthousands of devotees is to relieve the Doctorof the ordeal of stumping the United States,Canada and the British Isles to keep his greatplant going. Despite the volunteer assistants,despite the aid of good men and women bandedin associations or toiling in groups or as individualsat points far from Battle Harbourand St. Anthony, despite the economy practisedeverywhere and always, there is ever aneed, a haunting need, of funds; and a fewinsular politicians and traders may talk aselaborately as they please about Grenfell as aninterloper, with a task that does not belong tohim, but as long as Newfoundland does notprovide a sufficient subsidy, most of the moneymust come from somewhere off the island. Ihave heard some “little-islanders” say thatDr. Grenfell ought to get out, and that Newfoundlandshould take over his whole business,but as long as Newfoundland does notmove to that end, and there is a woeful wantof doctoring and nursing at any outport onthe map, somebody with the flaming zeal ofthis crusader has a place. Grenfell is doingthe work not of one man but of a hundred.Could his cured patients have their say, therewould be no doubt about that endowment. Ifgrateful words were dollars, Grenfell wouldbe a multi-millionaire.

It should not be necessary to explain in circumstantialdetail the constant and pressingneed of funds to carry on an enterprise thatcovers so large a territory and involves somany and such various activities. A chain ofhospitals and dispensaries, manned in largepart by eager and devoted volunteers, an orphanage,an industrial school, a fleet ofboats—including the schoonerGeorge B.Cluett—a Seamen’s Institute, a number ofdwellings for the staff personnel, the suppliesof food and coal and surgical apparatus andmedical equipment—all these items impose aburden on the overtaxed time and strength ofthe Doctor so considerable that it is not evenhumane or moral to expect him to speak twoor three times a day as he does when he oughtto be taking a well-earned vacation. Countlessthousands are eager to hear the man himselfdescribe his work, and there is usually athrong whenever and wherever he appears,but to let him wear himself out in appealingfor the means to carry on is a waste of theenormous man-power of a great leader of theage. He does not cavil or repine, but he oughtto be saved from his own willingness tooverdo.

“I never put up a building without havingthe funds in hand,” he declared. “But whenit comes to work—I believe in beginning firstand asking afterwards. The support willsomehow come, if there is faith, but faint-heartednessmeans paralysis of effort.”

One of the most important producers andconsumers of all Dr. Grenfell’s institutions isthe King George V. Seamen’s Institute at St.John’s. The cornerstone of the four-storybrick building was laid in 1911. Sir RalphWilliams (the Governor), Bowring Brothers,Job Brothers, Harvey and Company, MacPhersonBrothers and other loyal and forward-lookingcitizens got behind the plan: andwhen the stone was swung into place by wirefrom Buckingham Palace as King George V.pressed the button, the sum of $175,000 was inhand. The site contributed by BowringBrothers was valued at $13,000.

The enumeration of beds occupied, mealsserved, baths taken, games played, booksloaned, films shown and lectures heard doesnot begin to tell the story. Fishermen andsailormen ashore are traditionally forlorn.Men from the outports who drift into St.John’s are like country lads who come wide-eyedto a great city. It is not morally so badfor them as it was ere prohibition came andclamped the lid upon the gin-mills. But still,these are lonely men, friendless men, withvery little money: and the Institute has ahelping hand out for them, to befriend themfrom the moment they set foot on shore.Moreover, there is a dormitory given over tothe use of outport girls: since it is seen thathard as things may be for Jack ashore they areharder yet for sister Jill, who knows even lessof the great round world outside the bay andneeds even more protection than her brother.

The Institute at last is able to show a smallbalance on the right side of the ledger. Sincethe first thought of those who ran it has beenservice, they are satisfied to come out only alittle better than even. No charge of graftor profiteering lies here: and those who are fedand housed and warmed find it “a little bitof heaven” to be made so comfortable at anexpense so small.

At the start, less than a decade ago, therewere croakers who said there would be but aslim and scattering patronage: but now nearlyall the beds are in use every night. In thedread influenza year, 1918, the Institute wasinvaluable as an Emergency Hospital, whichtreated 267 patients. The city hospital at St.John’s is small and always overcrowded. Ifthe Institute had not been available the resultsof the epidemic would have been still moreterrible. When in February, 1918, theFlorizel was wrecked on the coast between St.John’s and Cape Race the survivors werebrought here, and the Institute also preparedthe bodies of the dead for burial. And onother occasions it has done good service.

Demobilized men of the Army and Navycoming into town from the outports use thebuilding as a clubhouse.

Since the high cost of living has not sparedNewfoundland, the rate for the young womenwho are permanent boarders has had to beraised to $4.00 a week. In parts of Newfoundlandthat is a good deal of money, butit is not much compared with what these girlswould have to pay in the absence of the Institute.

The successful operation of the Instituteis an outstanding object-lesson, and a sourceof particular satisfaction to its founder andchief promoter. It has triumphantly answeredand silenced the objections of those who at thestart declared that the only possible resultwould be calamitous failure. It has survivedthe shock of the discovery that some of itsearlier administrators were unworthy of theircharge; it has outlived the era of struggle andset-back; it has so clearly proved its place andits meaning in the community where it is establishedthat if it were destroyed the merchantsthemselves would be prompt to undertakeits replacement. It is as impressive amonument as any to the enduring worth of thedevoted labours of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell,and as conspicuous a proof as could beoffered that his great work by land and seadeserves an Endowment Fund.

Obvious punctuation and typesetting errors have been correctedwithout note. Some illustrations have been moved slightly to keep paragraphsintact.

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CHAPTER		PAGE
	Foreword, by Doctor Grenfell	7
I	“Doctor”	15
II	A Fisher of Men	27
III	At St. Anthony	39
IV	All in the Day’s Work	53
V	The Captain of Industry	78
VI	The Sportsman	97
VII	The Man of Science	106
VIII	The Man of Law	114
IX	The Man of God	119
X	Some of His Helpers	130
XI	Four-Footed Aides: Dogs and Reindeer	139
XII	A Wide, Wide “Parish”	150
XIII	A Few “Parishioners”	173
XIV	Needs, Big and Little	183

	PAGE
Dr. Grenfell, A.B.	Title
Fritz and His Master	38
“Doctor”	38
Battle Harbour, Spreading Fish for Drying	60
“Please Look at My Tongue, Doctor”	98
“Next”	98
Dr. Grenfell Leading Meeting at Battle Harbour	120
St. Anthony Hospital in Winter	134
Some of the Helpers	134
Signal Hill, Harbour of St. Johns	150
Happy Days at the Orphanage St. Anthony	180

Movatterモバイル変換

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofWith Grenfell on the Labrador

FOREWORD

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

I
“DOCTOR”

II
A FISHER OF MEN

III
AT ST. ANTHONY

IV
ALL IN THE DAY’S WORK

V
THE CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY

VI
THE SPORTSMAN

VII
THE MAN OF SCIENCE

VIII
THE MAN OF LAW

IX
THE MAN OF GOD

X
SOME OF HIS HELPERS

XI
FOUR-FOOTED AIDES: DOGS AND REINDEER

XII
A WIDE, WIDE “PARISH”

XIII
A FEW “PARISHIONERS”

XIV
NEEDS, BIG AND LITTLE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

Movatterモバイル変換

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofWith Grenfell on the Labrador

FOREWORD

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

I“DOCTOR”

IIA FISHER OF MEN

IIIAT ST. ANTHONY

IVALL IN THE DAY’S WORK

VTHE CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY

VITHE SPORTSMAN

VIITHE MAN OF SCIENCE

VIIITHE MAN OF LAW

IXTHE MAN OF GOD

XSOME OF HIS HELPERS

XIFOUR-FOOTED AIDES: DOGS AND REINDEER

XIIA WIDE, WIDE “PARISH”

XIIIA FEW “PARISHIONERS”

XIVNEEDS, BIG AND LITTLE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

I
“DOCTOR”

II
A FISHER OF MEN

III
AT ST. ANTHONY

IV
ALL IN THE DAY’S WORK

V
THE CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY

VI
THE SPORTSMAN

VII
THE MAN OF SCIENCE

VIII
THE MAN OF LAW

IX
THE MAN OF GOD

X
SOME OF HIS HELPERS

XI
FOUR-FOOTED AIDES: DOGS AND REINDEER

XII
A WIDE, WIDE “PARISH”

XIII
A FEW “PARISHIONERS”

XIV
NEEDS, BIG AND LITTLE