FOREWORD
Aboard the Strathcona,
Red Bay, Labrador, Sept. 9, 1919.
Dear Waldo:
It has been great having you on board for a time. I wish you could stay and see some other sections of the work. When you joined us I hesitated at first, thinking perhaps it would be better to show you the poorer parts of our country, and not the better off—but decided to let you drop in and drop out again of the ordinary routine, and not bother to ‘show you sights.’ Still I am sorry that you did not see some other sections of the people. There is to me in life always an infinite satisfaction in accomplishing anything. I don’t care so much what it is. But if it has involved real anxiety, especially as to the possibility of success, it always returns to me a prize worth while.
Well, you have been over some parts, where things have somehow materialized. The reindeer experiment I also estimate an accomplished success, as it completely demonstrated our predictions, and as it is now in good hands and prospering. The Seamen’s Institute, in having become self-supporting and now demanding more space, has also been a real encouragement to go ahead in other lines. But there is one thing better than accomplishment, and that is opportunity; as the problem is better than the joy of writing Q. E. D.
So I would have liked to show you White Bay as far as La Scie, where our friends are fighting with few assets, and many discouragements. It certainly has left them poor, and often hungry and naked, but it has made men of them, and they have taught me many lessons; and it would do your viewpoint good to see how many debts these people place me under.
If life is the result of stimuli, believe me we ought to know what life means in a country where you are called on to create every day something, big or small. On the other hand, if life consists of the multitude of things one possesses, then Labrador should be graded far from where I place it, in its relation to Philadelphia.
A thousand thanks for coming so far to give us your good message of brotherly sympathy.