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28 chapters
PREFACE
PREFACE
I have long been resisting the strong pressure from friends that would force me to risk having to live alongside my own autobiography. It seems still an open question whether it is advisable, or even whether it is right—seeing that it calls for confessions. In the eyes of God the only alternative is a book of lies. Moreover, sitting down to write one's own life story has always loomed up before my imagination as an admission that one was passing the post which marks the last lap; and though it w
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CHAPTER IToC
CHAPTER IToC
To be born on the 28th of February is not altogether without its compensations. It affords a subject of conversation when you are asked to put your name in birthday books. It is evident that many people suppose it to be almost an intrusion to appear on that day. However, it was perfectly satisfactory to me so long as it was not the 29th. As a boy, that was all for which I cared. Still, I used at times to be oppressed by the danger, so narrowly missed, of growing up with undue deliberation. The e
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CHAPTER IIToC
CHAPTER IIToC
Marlborough "College," as we say in England for a large University preparatory school, is situated in Wiltshire, in a perfectly beautiful country, close to the Savernake Forest—one of the finest in all England. As everything and everybody was strange to me on my arrival, had I been brought up to be less self-reliant the events of my first day or two would probably have impressed themselves more deeply on my memory than is the case. Some Good Samaritan, hearing that I was bound for a certain hous
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CHAPTER IIIToC
CHAPTER IIIToC
In 1883 my father became anxious to give up teaching boys and to confine himself more exclusively to the work of a clergyman. With this in view he contemplated moving to London where he had been offered the chaplaincy of the huge London Hospital. I remember his talking it over with me, and then asking if I had any idea what I wanted to do in life. It came to me as a new conundrum. It had never occurred to me to look forward to a profession; except that I knew that the heads of tigers, deer, and
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CHAPTER IVToC
CHAPTER IVToC
I have never ceased to regret that there was not more corporate life in our medical school, but I believe that conditions have been greatly improved since my day. Here and there two or three classmates would "dig" together, but otherwise, except at lectures or in hospitals, we seldom met unless it was on the athletic teams. We had no playground of our own, and so, unable to get other hospitals to combine, when a now famous St. Thomas man and myself hired part of the justly celebrated London Rowi
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CHAPTER VToC
CHAPTER VToC
I have dwelt at length upon the experiences of the North Sea, because trivial as they appear on the surface, they concern the biggest problem of human life—the belief that man is not of the earth, but only a temporary sojourner upon it. This belief, that he is destined to go on living elsewhere, makes a vast difference to one's estimate of values. Life becomes a school instead of a mere stage, the object of which is that our capacities for usefulness should develop through using them until we re
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CHAPTER VIToC
CHAPTER VIToC
Twenty years have passed away since that day, and a thousand more important affairs which have occurred in the meantime have faded from my memory; but still its events stand out clear and sharp. The large and lofty island, its top covered with green verdure, so wonderful a landmark from the sea, its peaks capped with the fleecy mist of early morning, rose in a setting of the purest azure blue. For the first time I saw the faces of its ruddy cliffs, their ledges picked out with the homes of myria
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CHAPTER VIIToC
CHAPTER VIIToC
Since the publication of the book "Labrador, the Country and the People," the means of transportation to the coast have been so improved that each year brings us an increasing number of visitors to enjoy the attractions of this sub-arctic land. So many misconceptions have arisen, however, as to the country and its inhabitants, and one is so often misrepresented as distorting conditions, that it seems wise at this point to try and answer a few questions which are so familiar to us who live on the
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CHAPTER VIIIToC
CHAPTER VIIIToC
We had now been coming for some two years to the coast, and the problem was assuming larger proportions than I felt the Society at home ought to be called on to finance. It seemed advisable, therefore, to try and raise money in southern Newfoundland and Canada. So under the wing of the most famous seal and fish killer, Captain Samuel Blandford, I next visited and lectured in St. John's, Harbour Grace, and Carbonear. The towns in Newfoundland are not large. Its sectarian schools and the strong de
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CHAPTER IXToC
CHAPTER IXToC
Returning South in the fall of 1895, business necessitated my remaining for some time in St. John's, where as previously the Governor, Sir Terence O'Brien, very kindly entertained me. It proved to be a most exciting time. There were only two banks in the Colony, called respectively the Union and the Commercial. These issued all the notes used in the country and except for the savings bank had all the deposits of the fishermen and people. Suddenly one day I was told, though with extreme secrecy,
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CHAPTER XToC
CHAPTER XToC
In the spring of 1897 I was asked by the Council to sail to Iceland with a view to opening work there, in response to a petition sent in to the Board by the Hearn longliners and trawlers, who were just beginning their vast fishery in those waters from Hull and Grimsby. Having chosen a smaller vessel, so as to leave the hospital ship free for work among the fleets, we set sail for Iceland in June. The fight with the liquor traffic which the Mission had been waging had now been successful in drivi
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CHAPTER XIToC
CHAPTER XIToC
Not one of the many who have wintered with us in the North has failed to love our frozen season. To me it was one long delight. The dog-driving, the intimate relationships with the people on whom one was so often absolutely dependent, the opportunity to use to the real help of good people in distress the thousand and one small things which we had learned—all these made the knowledge that we were shut off from the outside world rather a pleasure than a cause for regret. Calls for the doctor were
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CHAPTER XIIToC
CHAPTER XIIToC
Being a professional and not a business man, and having no acquaintance with the ways of trade, the importance of a new economic system as one of the most permanent messages of helpfulness to the coast was not at first obvious to me. But the ubiquitous barter system, which always left the poor men the worst end of the bargain, is as subtle a danger as can face a community—subtle because it impoverishes and enslaves the victims, and then makes them love their chains. As a magistrate I once heard
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CHAPTER XIIIToC
CHAPTER XIIIToC
The argument for coöperation had been that life on the coast was not worth living under the credit system. A short feast and a long famine was the local epigram. If our profits could be maintained on the coast, and spent on the coast, then the next-to-nature life had enough to offer in character as well as in maintenance to attract a permanent population, especially with the furring in winter. For the actual figures showed that good hunters made from a thousand to fifteen hundred dollars in a se
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CHAPTER XIVToC
CHAPTER XIVToC
"What's that schooner bound South at this time of year for?" I asked the skipper of a fishing vessel who had come aboard for treatment the second summer I was on the coast. "I guess, Doctor, that that's the Yankee what's been down North for a load of Huskeymaws. What do they want with them when they gets them?" "They'll put them in a cage and show them at ten cents a head. They're taking them to the World's Fair in Chicago." People of every sort crowded to see the popular Eskimo Encampment on th
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CHAPTER XVToC
CHAPTER XVToC
Every child should be washed. Every child should be educated. The only question is how to get there. The "why's" of life interest chiefly the academic mind. The "how's" interest every one. It is a pleasure sometimes to be out in dirty weather on a lee shore; it permits you to devote all your energies to accomplishing something. When secretary for our hospital rowing club on the Thames, a fine cup was given for competition by Sir Frederick Treves on terms symbolic of his attitude to life. The rac
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CHAPTER XVIToC
CHAPTER XVIToC
We are somewhat superstitious down here still, and not a few believe that shoals and submerged rocks are like sirens which charm vessels to their doom. On one occasion, as late in the fall we were creeping up the Straits of Belle Isle in the only motor boat then in use there, our new toy broke down, and with a strong onshore wind we gradually drifted in toward the high cliffs. It was a heavy boat, and though we rowed our best we realized that we must soon be on the rocks, where a strong surf was
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CHAPTER XVIIToC
CHAPTER XVIIToC
Labrador will never be a "vineland," a land of corn and wine, or a country where fenced cities will be needed to keep out the milk and honey. But though there may be other sections of the Empire that can produce more dollars, Labrador will, like Norway and Sweden, produce Vikings, and it is said that the man behind the gun is still of some moment. In past years we have made quite extensive experiments in trying to adapt possible food supplies to this climate. I had seventeen bags of the hardiest
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CHAPTER XVIIIToC
CHAPTER XVIIIToC
On Easter Sunday, the 21st of April, 1908, it was still winter with us in northern Newfoundland. Everything was covered with snow and ice. I was returning to the hospital after morning service, when a boy came running over with the news that a large team of dogs had come from sixty miles to the southward to get a doctor to come at once on an urgent case. A fortnight before we had operated on a young man for acute bone disease of the thigh, but when he was sent home the people had allowed the wou
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CHAPTER XIXToC
CHAPTER XIXToC
Contrary to her ungenerous reputation, even if vessels are lost on the Labrador, her almost unequalled series of harbours—so that from the Straits of Belle Isle to those of Hudson Bay there is not ten miles of coast anywhere without one—enables the crew to escape nearly every time. In 1883, in the North Sea in October, a hurricane destroyed twenty-five of our stout vessels on the Dogger Bank, cost us two hundred and seventy good lives, and left a hundred widows to mourn on the land. In 1889 a st
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CHAPTER XXToC
CHAPTER XXToC
It was now the fall of 1908, and the time had come for me to visit England again and try and arouse fresh interest in our work; and this motive was combined with the desire to see my old mother, who was now nearing her fourscore years. I decided to leave in November and return via America in the spring to receive the honorary degree of LL.D. from Williams College and of M.A. from Harvard, which I had been generously offered. My lecture tour this winter was entrusted to an agency. Propaganda is a
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CHAPTER XXIToC
CHAPTER XXIToC
No human life can be perfect, or even be lived without troubles. Clams have their troubles, I dare say. A queer sort of sinking feeling just like descending in a fast elevator comes over one, as if trouble and the abdominal viscera had a direct connection. Some one has said that it must be because that is where the average mind centres. Thus, when we lost the little steamer Swallow which we were towing, and with it the evidence of a crime and the road to the prevention of its repetition, it abso
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CHAPTER XXIIToC
CHAPTER XXIIToC
The year 1912 was a busy season. The New Year found us in Florida with the donor of the ship George B. Cluett, consulting him concerning its progress and future. Lecturing then as we went west we reached Colorado, visited the Grand Canyon, and lectured all along the Pacific Coast from San Diego to Victoria—finding many old friends and making many new ones. At Berkeley I was asked to deliver the Earle Lectures at the University of California; and I also spoke to an immense audience in the open Gr
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CHAPTER XXIIIToC
CHAPTER XXIIIToC
After the fall spent in America in raising the necessary funds, it was the now famous Carmania which carried us to England. In spite of a few days' rest at my old home, and the stimulus of a Grenfell clan gathering in London, my wife and I were both in need of something which could direct our minds from our problems, and Boxing Day found us bound for Paris, Turin, Milan, and Rome. Just before Christmas I had had a meeting at the famous office of the Hudson Bay Company in London, and attended ano
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CHAPTER XXIVToC
CHAPTER XXIVToC
In the fall of 1915, I was urged by the Harvard Surgical Unit to make one of their number for their proposed term of service that winter at a base hospital in France. Having discussed the matter with my directors, we decided that it was justifiable to postpone the lecture tour which had been arranged for me, in view of this new need. We sailed for England on the Dutch liner New Amsterdam and landed at Falmouth, passing through a cordon of mine-sweepers and small patrols as we neared the English
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CHAPTER XXVToC
CHAPTER XXVToC
My return to the work after serving in France was embittered by a violent attack made upon me in a St. John's paper. It was called forth by a report of a lecture in Montreal where I had addressed the Canadian Club. The meeting was organized by Newfoundlanders at the Ritz Carlton Hotel, and the fact that a large number from the Colony were present and moved the vote of thanks at the end should have been sufficient guarantee of the bona fides of my statements. But the over-enthusiastic account of
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CHAPTER XXVIToC
CHAPTER XXVIToC
What is the future of this Mission? I have once or twice been an unwilling listener to a discussion on this point. It has usually been in the smoking-room of a local mail steamer. The subtle humour of W.W. Jacobs has shown us that pessimism is an attribute of the village "pub" also. The alcoholic is always a prophet of doom; and the wish is often father to the thought. In our medical work in the wilds we have become a repository of some old instruments discarded on the death of their owners or c
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CHAPTER XXVIIToC
CHAPTER XXVIIToC
No one can write his real religious life with pen or pencil. It is written only in actions, and its seal is our character, not our orthodoxy. Whether we, our neighbour, or God is the judge, absolutely the only value of our "religious" life to ourselves or to any one is what it fits us for and enables us to do. Creeds, when expressed only in words, clothes, or abnormal lives, are daily growing less acceptable as passports to Paradise. What my particular intellect can accept cannot commend me to G
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