“Dr. Grenfell and his people have more than they can do. We all of us realize today as we never understood before the meaning to the people of the North of the presence of Grenfell and his people among them. We caught the spirit of the work inevitably, and tried to do what good we could while we were there.
“The folk of the Alexis and the St. Louis River districts, as a rule, can’t afford the price of gas to go to Battle Harbour. It’s a day’s run, and there’s nobody to mind their cod-traps when they’re away. So one can imagine how completely they’d be shut out of the world but for the contacts which the mission provides even at such long intervals.
“William Russell is the grand old man of Williams Harbour. He is the most-travelled and the best-educated man of those parts, and he represents the finest type of patriarch. He never saw a horse or a cow or an automobile; he has never been south of Battle Harbour, though he has visited that diminutive settlement four times. He was dumfounded at our aeroplane.
“In his family the father’s word was law to the twelve children. They never thought of questioning his authority. They were the best behaved and most dutiful children I have ever seen. Their obedience was absolute, and their manner to strangers was deferential. They always said ‘Yes, sir,’ and ‘No, sir,’ most politely.
“At his house thirty-one gathered to hear the gramophone—for the first time. They were packed in as tight as could be, choking the room with their tobacco-smoke. The first night they were silent. The next night they were excited, and on the third they became hilarious.
“As I said, following the Grenfell example, we did what doctoring we could on the side. The constant diet of bread and tea, tea and bread is hard on the teeth. There is much pyorrhea due to this diet, to limestone in the water, and to failure to clean the teeth. At Blanc Sablon we treated a little boy who had suffered for three weeks with the toothache. It was a simple case of congested pulp. The relief was immediate. It is a joy and a reward to behold the gratitude of those who are helped.
“I tell you if these people who question the value of Grenfell’s work, or wonder why he chooses to spend his life in bleak and barren places, could just see his ‘parishioners’ and know their gratitude toward their benefactors, they would understand.
“There was a picturesque soul at Blanc Sablon who asked for tobacco, which we gave him. He was never off the coast. I don’t know where he had heard a violin. But to make some return to us for the smoke, he gave us an imitation of a man first tuning and then playing a violin, which was perfect in its way.”
VI
THE SPORTSMAN
As we were coming off to the Strathcona one evening, the Doctor, bareheaded, pulling at the oars with the zest of a schoolboy on a holiday, and every oar-dip making a running flame of phosphorescence, said: “At college we worshipped at the shrine of athletics. Of course that wasn’t right, but it did establish a standard—it did teach a man that he must keep his body under if he would be physically fit. I realized that if I wanted to win I couldn’t afford to lose an ounce, and so I was a rigid Spartan with myself. The others sometimes laughed at me as a goody-goody, but they saw that I could do things that couldn’t be done by those who indulged in wild flings of dissipation.