Dr. and Mrs. Wakefield have given several years of both medical and industrial work for the people of this coast, both in St. Anthony, Forteau, Mud Lake, and Battle Harbour.
Alas, the functions of superintendent involved executive duties, and I had once again to run to St. John's, during the following summer, for a meeting of the Board of Directors. With true Christian unselfishness these men come all the way from Ottawa, New York, and Boston, to help with their counsel so relatively unimportant a work as ours. Sir Walter Davidson again lent his heartiest coöperation. The people owe him, Sir Herbert Murray, Sir Henry MacCallum, Sir William MacGregor, Sir Ralph Williams, Sir Alexander Harris, and all the long line of their Governors, more than most of them realize. They bring all the inspiration of the best type of educated, widely experienced, and travelled Englishmen to this Colony. They are specially trained and specially selected men, and can give their counsel and leadership absolutely untrammelled by any local prejudices.
One excellent outcome of this particular meeting was the reorganization on a larger scale of the Girls' Committee for the Institute. The success of it has been phenomenal. Together with its protective work it has aimed at that most difficult task of creating in them sufficient ambition to make the girls receiving very small wages want to pay for a better environment. The committee has always been strictly interdenominational, with Mrs. W.C. Job and Mrs. W.E. Gosling as its presidents. It has made a "show place" of the Girls' Department of the Institute, and that department has become self-supporting—a most desirable goal for every philanthropy.
The lumber mill and schooner building work were in slings. Our men, made far better off by the winter work thus provided, had acquired gear so much better for fishing than their former equipment that they could not resist engaging in the more remunerative work of the fishery in the summer months. For two years previous they had left before the drive was complete and the logs out of the woods. Now the local manager had also decided to fish during the three summer months—which is really the only time available for mill operations also. I was fortunate enough on my way North to persuade an expert lumber operator from Canada, and an entirely kindred spirit, Mr. Harry Crowe, to come down and help me out with the problem. We spent a few delightful days together, in which he taught me as many things that every mill man should know as he would have had to learn had he been dabbling in pills. Like myself, Mr. Crowe is an ardent believer in Confederation with Canada for this little country. Before Mr. Crowe's efforts on our behalf had materialized, a new friend, Mr. Walter Booth, of New York, well known in American football circles as one of the best of all-American forwards, came North and carried the mill for a year. The one and only fault of his régime was that it was too short. The field of work was one for which he was admirably equipped, but home reasons made him return after his time expired. He has often told me since, however, that he has fits of wishing that he could have put in a life with us in the North, rather than spending it in the more civilized circles of the New York Bar.
Many invitations to speak, especially at universities in America, and through a lecture agency in England to numerous societies and clubs, led me to devote the winter of 1913-14 to a lecture tour. My wife induced me also to renew my youth by a holiday of a month on the Continent.
A lecture tour includes some of the most delightful experiences of life, bringing one into direct personal contact with so many people whom it is a privilege to know. But it also has its anxieties and worries, and eternal vigilance is the price of avoiding a breakdown at this the most difficult of all my work. One's memory is taxed far beyond its capacity. To forget some things, and some people and some kindnesses, are unforgivable sins. A new host every night, a new home, a new city, a new audience, alone lead one into lamentable lapses. In a car full of people a man asked me one day how I liked Toledo. I replied that I had never been there. "Strange," he murmured, "because you spent the night at my house!" On another occasion at a crowded reception I was talking to a lady on one side and a gentleman on the other. I had been introduced to them, but caught neither name. They did not address each other, but only spoke to me. I felt that I must remedy matters by making them acquainted with each other, and therefore mumbled, "Pray let me present to you Mrs. M-m-m." "Oh! no need, Doctor," he replied. "We've been married for thirty years." Shortly after I noticed at a reception that every one wore his name pinned onto his breast, and I wondered if there were any connection.
It is my invariable custom in the North to carry a water-tight box with matches and a compass chained to my belt. One night, being tired, I had turned into bed in a very large, strange room without noting the bearings of the doors or electric switches. My faithful belt had been abandoned for pyjama strings. It so happened that to catch a train I had to rise before daylight, and all my possessions were in a dressing-room. I soon gave up hunting for the electric light. It was somewhere in the air, I knew, but beating the air in the dark with the windows wide open in winter is no better fun in your nightclothes in New York than in Labrador. A tour of inspection discovered no less than five doors, none of which I felt entitled to enter in the dark in déshabille. The humour of the situation is, of course, apparent now, but even one's dog hates to be laughed at.
An independent life has somehow left me with an instinctive dislike for asking casual acquaintances the way to any place that I am seeking. The aversion is more or less justified by the fact that outside the police force very exceptional persons can direct you, especially if they know the way themselves. On my first visit to New York I could see how easy a city it was to navigate, and returned to my host's house near Eighth Street in good time to dress for dinner after a long side trip near Columbia University and thence to the Bellevue Hospital. "How did you find your way?" my friend asked. "Why, there was sufficient sky visible to let me see the North Star," I answered. I felt almost hurt when he laughed. It is natural for a polar bear not to have to inquire the way home.
The aphorism attributed to Dr. John Watson, of "Beside the Bonnie Briar Bush," suggests itself. "My fee is one hundred dollars if I go to a hotel, two hundred if I am entertained, because in the latter event one can only live half so long." I conclude that he made the choice of Achilles, for he died on a lecture tour. So far fate has been kinder to me.
The greatest danger is the reporter, especially the emotional reporter, who has not attended your meeting. I owe such debts to the press that this statement seems the blackest of ingratitude. On the contrary, I must plead that doctors are privileged. My controversy with this class of reporters is their generosity, which puts into one's mouth statements that on final analysis may be cold facts, but which, remembering that one is lecturing on work among people whom one loves and respects, it would never occur to me to slur at a public meeting. No one who tries to alter conditions which exist can expect to escape making enemies. I have seen reports of what I have said at advertised meetings, that were subsequently cancelled. I have followed up rumours, and editors have expressed sorrow that they accepted them from men who had been too busy to be present. But "qui s'excuse, s'accuse"; and my conclusion is that the lecturer is practically defenceless.