Nov. 1912.

THE Log of the "Prospero" or 6 (?) Days on the English Channel.

DEAR MON,

FATHER will tell you what it looked like when we left St. John's. Well, when we got out it was just one degree rougher than anything I have ever seen. She didn't pitch or roll, she was "buffeted." We only hit the high spots and very few of those. Do you know Kipling's Ballad of the Bolivar where "Half the rails adeck awash, all the rails below." Well, we had no rails, but huge barrels of oil, molasses and beef make an excellent substitute.

I say with some pride that I never turned a hair, why I don't know. But listen to this, there was not one passenger who missed or even thought of missing a meal! To go through that and not be able to gloat over anybody is what I call tough luck.

In the evening we put into Cape de Verde and lay there all night, as even in the harbor it was too rough to launch the boats to take ashore passengers.

Yesterday (Saturday) we went to Trinity where Dr. Armstrong(1) and I left the ship. We spent several hours there with some friends of his and drove across a neck of land on sleds to King's Cove (eighteen miles) where we met the boat. This morning we have been making pretty good time with several short stops.

So much for the log.

I will say without hesitation that I have never had as good a time on the water. Dr. Armstrong is just about the most companionable man I have ever met. We have hit it off from the word go. Here he is brilliant, married, rich, leaving his practice and wife for the fifth winter. There are plenty of people who might do that, but very few who would not be "noble" about it. He is simplicity itself and you can see in about five minutes the kind of man he is by the way these fishermen beam on him. The Captain! He looks so like Mr. Irving(2) that it is startling, with the same twinkle in his eye. He and I have played about fifty games of checkers, during which he sings very loudly the entire time. Friday evening when we were lying at anchor playing checkers the boat was jumping so that the "men" slipped over the board. He called to the Chief Engineer, who was playing poker, "Chief! let's ease up around to the other side of the pint, there ain't no comfort here."

Having done this we went to the saloon and had a concert. It was the real thing. Everybody bellowed, not for applause, but simply because they liked it. As you may imagine they sang "Old Black Joe," "Way Down upon the Swanee River," "My Old Kentucky Home," "Marching Through Georgia," etc. With the decks covered with ice and the snow driving by, the selections seemed a bit out of place, but the sadder they were the louder they sang. The Captain always started the tune saying to the man at the piano, "Very good; wallop her."

I shall stop now to join in some hymn singing. "Das Schiff" in Tristan had nothing on this craft as far as the quantity or volume of song. This Captain, who will leave the bridge apparently at any time for song or game, is supposed to be the cleverest man in the North with ice. He takes the "Stephano," which Father saw, up into the Arctic ice for seals, wherever that may be, every winter and is the only man who will or can do it.

Wednesday.

WE have just been crawling up the coast and I fancy it will be Saturday before we get to St. Anthony.

The beauty of this coast is beyond my powers of description. Everywhere are cliffs; there is scarcely a break. All the little streams, of which there are thousands, run along the edge of these stone walls and then proceed to drop into the ocean or else become one gigantic icicle. It seems as if these streams had tried for centuries to enter the ocean in the proper way, but had finally given up the attempt to cut a gorge for themselves as hopeless. It is impossible to give you even a vague idea of the peculiar fascination of the place.

We have been invited ashore to meals several times when in harbor. The people are charming. They are at the opposite pole from a Maine "Captain." They have no sense of humor, but in all other respects are a big improvement on the New Englander.

We now have aboard two Church of England parsons. Would that I were a Sterne! One is very "High" and the other very "Low."

"High" has just returned from England, about which he is the greatest living authority. He is bent upon upholding the dignity of the CHURCH. He uses very long words of Latin derivation, which he strings together into sentences of great length. He is of an argumentative turn of mind, very "exact" in all his statements, and singularly misinformed. When I tell you that he carries with him a Greenwich chronometer in a mahogany case when he travels and that he "checks" this with a "sidereal" sun dial you can guess the type of bore he is. When with non-nautical people he discourses on navigation, and when with non-medical people he talks of the "wonders of modern surgery," as "I saw it at Guy's, Sir."

"Low" has striven to be "Rough and ready." He is studiously untidy. He smokes the blackest plug tobacco and tells with great bravado stories with "Damn" and "Hell" in them. He values "horse sense," but thinks book learning overrated.

They are polite to each other in that ghoulish way in which ladies who hate each other are polite.

Both of these men have been ruined by failure. Being poor and living in this climate has brought out the worst in both of them instead of the best.

The more I see of Dr. Armstrong the better I like him. He is one of the type who has made the British Empire. Instead of settling down at home, he has tried about everything. He has always tried things in a British way, but he has been more places and done more things than almost anybody I know. A rolling stone may gather very little moss, but it sees a good deal of the country. He has been fine, and says that he is going to appoint himself my boss.

The scenery gets grander and grander as we approach home.

I will leave this letter on board and send another by the boat when she calls at St. Anthony.

Do not figure on this boat leaving or getting anywhere at set times. Just send anything along and trust to luck.

The telegraph operator is on board. The station at St. Anthony will be open in a couple of weeks more or less.

CAP.

St. Anthony, Nfld.

DEAR MOTHER,

I HAVE just time to write you a few lines. Never have I met more fascinating people. Just how the general tone of this place could be improved I do not know. Dr. Grenfell(3) is even more charming than I had pictured him. I have put in a very busy day. Owing to a great lack of doctors and nurses I am posing, Dr. Armstrong's orders, as Doctor Burton. I have worked all day in the operating-room and etherized at two of the operations.

The hospital is crowded and Dr. Grenfell looks all in, but is the most buoyant man I have ever seen.

You can walk across the harbor on the ice and dog teams are everywhere.

My quarters are palatial and Dr. Armstrong has fixed it up so that I am to have my meals with him instead of with the mob.

Do not think that I am trying to fool people here. Dr. Armstrong quizzed me from A to Z and then with a wink dubbed me his assistant.

There is a boat due in a few days. So I will write again.

Hurriedly,            
CAP.

Sunday, December 10, 1912.

I AM going to try to keep a sort of diary; this you may like to read, and I think I may find it amusing in years to come. . .

On Sunday afternoon we went to the hospital and had a service for all the patients. Dr. Grenfell gave a little talk which I consider the most perfect Christian talk it has ever been my good fortune to listen to. In the evening we went to the Methodist Church where Dr. Grenfell conducted the service, as the pastor was away. He did this equally well.

Dr. Grenfell is very different from all descriptions of him. He is primarily an overgrown boy. He is very enthusiastic one minute and depressed the next, and takes no pains to conceal either condition of mind.

Now I am not a hero worshipper, in the Carlyle sense, but this man has one quality raised to the nth power. He literally sheds pleasure. Whoever he meets leaves him feeling more optimistic than before. I believe that Dr. Grenfell loves his neighbor in a simple boyish way more than anybody I have ever seen. This is the secret of his great power.

Monday.

LATE yesterday night a man died of T.B., which is the curse of this country. Dr. Grenfell is such a Believer that he looks on the matter of "A man's body dying" in about the same way that Fr. Field(4) does. We did a P.M. and then went off rabbit shooting for the day --- Dr. Grenfell, Grant,(5) three men who live in St. Anthony and I.

Komatiking, or dog-sledging, has become my passion. It gives you the feeling of being in danger while you are perfectly safe. I have not an idea of how fast we went, but I don't think I ever went so fast in a runabout or rig of any sort. And the steering arrangements are crude, to put it mildly. We tramped on snowshoes all day after we left the dogs. This was also excellent sport. And Dr. Grenfell! He was as happy as a school-boy getting an unexpected holiday on account of the sudden death of the principal's wife. My outfit kept me perfectly warm and comfortable. Anything woolen is useless. Canvas and skins make you perfectly comfortable.

Tuesday, 12th.

I HAVE been on the jump in the hospital all day. Everything has gone badly. Every patient seems determined to have fever. Dr. G. "lit into a man" who was moaning. The man stopped. I went across the harbor with Dr. A. We found a girl in hysterics. She was artificially making her mouth foam. Dr. A. said to her, when we were alone, "Sit up, you can't fool me." She did. She then said she "warn't bein' treated right" and called Mrs. Tilley, her boss, names. Then Mrs. Tilley called her names, then Dr. A. told them both to shut up. Mr. T. walked along with us in silence, then he said, "Well, Doctors, they'se both women and they don't somehow like each other. They'se genrilly Hell to pay when that's the case, ain't there now, Doctor?"

Wednesday.

IN hospital all day. Two operations O.K. I spent the evening with Dr. Grenfell at his house doing some blood counts, etc. He was using some of my blood for a trial. He made a mistake in arithmetic and got a terribly high count. He then looked in a book and turned to me and said, "I am sorry to break the news to you, but the book says 'such a condition is found only in pregnancy." Mrs. Grenfell said, "Wilf!" and the pretty, English governess blushed.

Thursday, 27th.

DR. G. has got the scientific bee in his bonnet for the time being. He and I have spent the entire day doing perfectly useless things in the laboratory while Dr. Armstrong has been able to get the hospital straightened out. Dr. Grenfell has made me sick laughing. When we weren't able to get a certain stain right, he counted out "eenye, meeny, miney, mo" down a line of bottles and tried the one he came to. The slide was ruined.

Dr. Armstrong and I have made a list of provisions which we are sending to St. John's for. It will chew up most of my money, I fancy. He is of a very donative nature and keeps producing gifts from his dozen trunks for the nurses.

Friday.

IN hospital all day. Dr. G. is growing tired of "science." He forced himself to it this morning, but has just gone off with a dog team to have a "mug up" (tea) with some crony of his across the bay.

I am eating like a horse and enjoying it, why I don't know, as the food is well below par.

Saturday.

WE took out an eye. We had some trouble getting this man etherized this time, although he went under easily a week ago. After we had given him a whole can he murmured, "It don't seem to work, Doctor, although it tastes just as good."

I had dinner at the Grenfells'. We (the editorial we) will have to concede more and more to Mrs. Grenfell.(6) She has rare tact and sense. She never talks about the hospital or work and appears to take no interest. She does a lot of good without trying to get the credit of doing any. This species of human is a "rara avis."

Miss ------ is very pretty, every inch a lady, and well educated. I kept thinking, 'Here is all the stage set for a real romance. The lady knows nothing of your past. With a little effort, old boy, you might appear a pretty fine sort of chap. You might even, after things had gone a certain distance, tell of what a wild devil you had been, and let her think she had reformed you.' . . . But she is both sweet and shy. Either of those traits alone would hopelessly cramp my style and the combination bores me to tears. Why didn't she stay in England and be the poor Vicar's daughter?

Sunday, 15th.

I HELPED do dressings all morning. These poor fellows, most of them with rotting T.B. joints, are all splendid chaps. They have great pluck. The women, of whom there are only a few, are more unattractive than I can tell.

After service we komatiked over to the reindeer herd. A cow bears the same relation to a gazelle that a reindeer does to a cow .... I was led to believe by Miss Howard, Miss Furness, Miss Merrywether(7) and other misinformed ladies, that the deer was a wild animal and the dog a domestic pet. A dog slept at Mr. Brown's feet after he had done his day's work while a deer sprang through a dense forest. I had to give up all these ideas. A reindeer, of which there are thousands, apparently, appears to be halfway under the influence of ether. When he sees a choice morsel he has to think quite a while before he can decide whether it is worthwhile to make the effort to reach for it. A child could ride one, but would soon scream for the excitement of "ride a cock horse."

A komatik dog, on the other hand, sprang from a different stock from the peaceful hound of Mr. Brown. If you feel so inclined, you single the smallest one out from the lot, you pat it with one hand while you hold in the other an axe at half-cock. So far I have contented myself with staying outside the radius of their traces and throwing them food.

Monday, 16th.

POOR Dr. Armstrong is terribly homesick. My happiness palls on him, so I am going to give up L'Allegro and adopt Il Penseroso when I am with him. I like him better and better. He is very conceited and takes any stray compliment which comes his way like a child takes ether. He is beautifully British! He thinks America above other nations, but second class because Americans are not pure Anglo-Saxons. I like him for treating me as a real friend and telling me what he thinks. I have made some remarks about England which I thought very sharp and unusually clever. You might just as well try to shoot a rhino with a pea-shooter.

The two nurses, Miss Bryce(8) and Miss Cannon,(9) are both English, although trained in New York. Miss Cannon has the heart of a Saint with the manner of a Sally Brass. She even carries the keys of the storerooms at her girdle (a region mentioned in novels but not in anatomies). She seems to carry around a placard, "There is no nonsense about me." And my! how that female works! I believe she must sleep, but when, I don't know. I was up till 3.30 the other morning. She was still full of "pep" when I crawled into bed. When I stumbled on the job at 8.30 (in the dark) she had already done a day's work. She had me guessing for a few days. I finally caught her, however. Behind a screen I caught her hugging and kissing the most unlovely child who answers, or rather snarls, to the name of Baxter. She blushed, and explained, but I have her number now and she knows it. I expect to catch her sleeping, or touching a sterile instrument before I leave.

Tuesday.

Miss BRYCE is easy to look upon. She is also pleasant on all occasions. She is really a brick. When she gets some time off she takes it, and is very good fun. She has also stopped medical talk at meal-times, which was getting rather crude. I was getting a little too much of it myself. I know how Kipling felt in the "Three Decker" when he says "They never talked obstetrics when the little stranger came." Miss Bryce is O.K. Anybody would like her. She reminds me a bit of Mary Grosbeck.(10)

Wednesday, 18th.

I HAVE just finished a book called "Brain and Personality," by Thompson. He attempts to deal in an elementary and too diagrammatic way with a very complex subject. But it is stimulating reading. Read it.

If I never give away a penny to a blind man I will never send anything I have no use for to a mission. If I can't buy an article and send it with the price mark on it I won't send it. All the perfectly useless things in the world are here in St. Anthony. There are eight million second-class books, there are half-worn clothes; there are hundreds of Victor records which were bought by people who must have been blind drunk when they bought them. Amongst these I found one Caruso record and one Gadski record. When I tried them the first had one large crack and the second had two. The rest are English sentimentals, naval songs, hymns by the Trinity choir, funny songs, recitations, both comic and sentimental, and real coon songs sung by Cockneys.

Most people have the wrong idea. They think that because a person is in a mission they want hymns on the Victor and articles about a mission in Timbuctoo. If we were not fed upon that sort of thing we might be mildly interested in either. What you really want is some sensuous Italian music sung by Caruso and a nice mauve edition of Oscar Wilde. At home you might prefer a good Bach Mass, and you certainly would prefer Thomas à Kempis, or in fact almost any other known form of literature to Oscar Wilde.

I have been led to believe that there are people who have been good so long that it becomes a habit with them; that they only like noble thoughts and deeds; that to be good becomes actually a pleasure to them. I don't believe this. I once read, in printed notes, about a man named Heraclitus who held that all life and matter consists in change. As I found that he had written very little I read what he did write. He said that the only reality of life, the only thing of which we could be sure, was "flux."

All great historians and sociologists (there are one or two with whom I am not well acquainted) see in history the pendulum swinging. In this the aforesaid illustrious men have me on their side. This view of life is the one always in my mind, when I think of any event from Napoleon to the Becker trial. But it is a dangerous view to take and it is excellent fun to sit and watch the pendulum swing. But I am beginning to think that possibly it is also good sport to keep the pendulum away from a certain side. If you want to keep a pendulum away from one side and on the other the thing to do is to wait until it has reached the highest point on the objectionable side and then hit it. Striking it as it comes toward this side is pretty ineffective. As an example take the Becker incident. It would have been useless to try to clean up New York when it wasn't very bad. It would have been wasted effort, but just now is the time to shove the pendulum back and then throw sand on the track hoping to let the pendulum swing back slowly.

Now aren't people singularly like their institutions? Who makes the best Christian, for example? A man who hasn't been very keen and gradually improves little by little or a man who gets hit or allows himself to get hit at the height of the wrong swing of the pendulum? St. Paul, St. Francis of Assisi, Thomas à Becket, are three of the latter type who come to my mind.

But I am getting in above my head. I shall soon solve this speculation and publish the result to the waiting world. It is rather an interesting question, though?

3 AM. Friday.

THE" Duchess" has just come in with the mail. I am night nurse every third night now, so I am up and got everything. I will send this right off and will send you more by the "Prospero" which is due any day now.

It really did seem good to hear from everybody and from you in particular. Of course, I suppose I should write at great length in reply to all your letters. When I feel deeply about anything it is almost impossible for me to mention it and when I have tried to express myself I certainly have made a fizzle of it ....

It seemed to me, and now I know that I was right, that there might possibly be lurking somewhere in me a taste for this kind of work. I am not able to do much actual good work here, but I like everybody and I am going to see to it that they like me, and I may be able to help, even if it is only to cheer up some of these poor devils. I am really trying to bring out something in me which will please you. I am not doing the hardest thing I could do. I am doing a very easy thing. The so-called hardships of this place are not as bad as they are pictured (at least they are not so for me). Well, I will never be prominent and may never be successful, but when I leave here I think I will honestly be able to say to myself, "Well, it was a poor financial and worldly move, it led nowhere, it wasn't the best thing to do for your parents, but, by George, nobody can say you were a worthless dilettante during this period at any rate." This will be a satisfaction to me and to you, I think.

The Prospero will bring the boxes. Many thanks. I do not think there is a single other thing you can do for me, as I have everything. I may not get any more time to write until this boat leaves, as I have to keep right on the job until two operations are over in the morning, after which I shall hibernate for a round or so of the clock.

Dec. 24th, 1912.

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I HAVE been terribly busy since the Duchess got here with patients. Thank Goodness! have not had to join in any of the elaborate Christmas preparations which start this evening.

I have had some amusing experiences lately. On Sunday I went to the Church of England with Dr. and Mrs. G. Mrs. G. froze both cheeks stiff in church, while the parson was mentioning the terrors of fire and brimstone. We also prayed in the Litany (which never has seemed to me a very warm affair) to "eliminate" all Bishops, etc. The sermon was about whenever you read of a brave deed being done, the name of an Englishman usually follows, etc. Dr. G.'s comments were wonderful. In the afternoon Dr. G. was trying to mend a watch, which he had needlessly taken apart. I asked him what he was doing. He replied, "I am trying to remember that I am a Christian and I am losing ground every moment." He preached a wonderful Christmas sermon. It is wonderful to see how the men here improve while they are in the hospital. They brighten up in a really surprising manner. Oh, the pettiness of people, with different religious views! Up here each place has Catholic, Church and Methodist schools, all poor. Nobody ever trusts people of other denominations. Thank God, Dr. G. has got the power and the sense at least to do something to knock all this in the head.

He is very keen about our Church in America and very down upon the Church of England at the present time. He said, "I don't mind form in the Church, what I hate is 'forms" (meaning of course, red-tape).

I am expecting the box by the Prospero and it is anxiously awaited, particularly by the nurses who seem to be tired of the diet.

Christmas Morning, 1912.

WE had dinner last evening at the Grenfells'. Just after dinner the Prospero came in. It was a really wonderful sight. As we ran over the ice dog teams seemed to rise from the ice. Later I counted 180 dogs all harnessed and there must have been many more. They were all fighting and howling. As the Prospero bucked the ice full steam ahead, some of the boys walked on the ice, which was trying to break, with their hands on her bow. . .

We got a terrible bunch of patients, and will be operating most of today, I fear. We were up most of the night seeing patients who had to go along on the boat, making medicines, etc.

This afternoon Santa (Dr. Armstrong) is to come over the hill from the North Pole with the toys on a sled with Donner and Blitzen and the other reindeer pulling him.

I have just been able to snatch a moment for this letter, but may be able to snatch another before the Prospero leaves this afternoon.

I have not had time to open the box as yet.

Later.

I OPENED the boxes. I can tell you that such things don't grow on trees up here and will come in mighty handy. When Dr. G. saw my boxes he threw himself across the room and embraced me, saying, "I will have to be very careful to keep in your good graces until all these are eaten."

I wonder what Dr. Johnson would have said of this place!!!

I am going off on a trip to Cape Norman sometime next week to take a crippled boy home. It ought to be a wonderful trip. It is about eighty miles each way. They tell me the "going" is good now. Perhaps I might not have come to this conclusion by myself. I am bursting with health and my heart has only a faint suggestion of a murmur left.

I am thinking of inventing a thermos bottle for humans. If you hear of such an invention send me a few hundred, will you?

By the next Prospero I hope to answer some of the letters I got.

I got the Bible. Every third book in the Mission is a Bible, but thanks all the same; also the orange glasses.

Dec. 26th.

WELL, Christmas is over! I got everything, for which many thanks. It was a real pleasure to see how the orphans and the other children enjoyed it. I took your letter off to the Prospero on a komatik, driven by two reindeer covered with ribbons. Dr. G. and I boarded her from the ice while he hobnobbed with a lot of cronies. It is truly remarkable to see how these sad, quiet-looking men brighten up in his presence.

We got a lot of pretty bad patients, most of them tubercular or septic.

I expect to go to Cape Norman tomorrow morning at 5.30 with your toys and others. I am going to do one-night stands along the Straits for a week or ten days. I like trying new things, but there is a limit. I have to drive a team of reindeer, run Xmas trees, see anybody who is sick (and not kill anybody) and read the Church of England service. Well, I have always said I would try anything once.

Friday.

IT turned "dirty," so I did not go. It has blown a gale of wind and snow all day. I had my head shingled! I found that my head sweated going up a hill and my hair froze going down. I also broke off my front tooth, so that I am not very beautiful to look at. Dr. Grenfell wants his hair shingled, but Mrs. G. is firm.

Saturday, 28th.

IT was still too dirty to go. I went over to Goose Cove, eight miles away, with Dr. Armstrong, where he fixed a broken arm. We came back at night in a driving snowstorm. How those dogs ever kept the trail is a mystery to me, for all the tracks were gone and one part of the country looks exactly like another, with no tree or anything for landmarks. But they only lost their way once and then stopped like a shot and all twelve of them lay on their backs until we found the trail again. They are really wonderful, and my! how they can pull.

Sunday.

STILL too bad to go, but I expect to go tomorrow if possible.

Dr. G. is the biggest-hearted Christian I have ever met! Whether he is playing with the X-ray machine or running the Strathcona through the fog and ice on the uncharted coast of Labrador, he must be called either extraordinarily brave or a fool, he has a great practical vision of a life of usefulness, he is a fine surgeon and a charming English gentleman .... His charm and goodness are so apparent that they convince.

Have you ever realized what a power it is to feel that you are right? Look at the stupid people and nations going ahead of others simply because they never doubt. I sometimes think that the most dangerous thing that can happen to a person is to be able to see both sides of a question. I am sure that this is a terrible fault with me. For the life of me I cannot work up any very great enthusiasm about anybody or anything in general except myself and life in general. So-called bad men are so much like so-called good men, if you treat them in the right way. What a person amounts to in this world seems to me to depend not very much on what he is. It depends on which one of the great influences in this world takes effect. If a person can work up belief and enthusiasm for some good cause he can become a very fine man from a very mediocre start. On the other hand, it is very easy to get a good start, but to default early in the tournament, because you don't fancy the cup, even if you should win it

Now there are lots of prizes offered, but most of the plums of this world, particularly those called prominence and power, I don't like. The victor is apt to be a bit too self-assured.

Well, how about wealth! Well, this is the long-distance race. Most people have to enter this race, a few even like it, but Heavens! how stupid and tiresome it is. Let us rather get beaten in the 10 yd. dash.

But the trouble is that if you stop competing, some day they may hang up a prize you want and then you will be so out of practice that you won't have a chance.

Jan. 5, 1913.

DEAR MOTHER,

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I HAD a glorious trip North. You may laugh about Mr. Irving and the prayer-tree! I know that I am a poor sort of a Christian except when I am alone in the so-called barren places. It seems on these occasions as if my whole vision of life clears, as if cataracts had been removed from my eyes. A city interests me, a rural community disgusts me, and a great space of virgin land inspires me. As I pushed up hill, slid down hill and jogged on the level my mind fairly buzzed. I did not think of anything I had done or was going to do, but of what a marvellous world God has lent us to live in. Alfred de Vigny in his latter days became a cynic. He said, "There is a God; but He is a cruel God not to tell us about the mysteries of Nature." How wrong! What an exciting problem He left us to solve! And the beauty of this problem is that by means of science, etc., we can discover the answer to bits of this problem; just enough at the time to keep us going and fascinated. When science, etc., discover a lot more are we going to see that Christianity is really the answer after all? It certainly looks more and more like this to me. Compare Darwin and the modern scientist, even the German, for instance. I firmly believe, and I don't believe just on a hunch either, that the day will come when men will not only believe in Christ, but will be able to prove it.

I spent the first night in Ha-Ha, but first a word about reindeer. I drove one and Ned Evans, one of the herders, another. My deer was named Daisy, I changed this to Xanthippe. In the first place a deer has one trace and one rein. You will ask, "But how does that work?" Answer, "It doesn't." Dr. Grenfell says," Deer must be O.K. because the Laps are content with them." I replied, "Yes, and they are contented with Lapland, I fancy." A reindeer comes just below the jellyfish in a scale of evolution. Fear is the only motive which makes a deer go, but "Xan" didn't know enough to realize that murder lurked in my heart. On bays and lakes and rivers "Xan" went very slowly. Between boulders, stumps and the tops of trees sticking above the snow "Xan" went like a stake horse. This was exciting, but made my lower limbs blue and yellow, and wore out a pair of sealskin boots. "Xan" has one virtue. When it is time for having a "mug up," you tie her to a tree, which bears not a leaf, but is covered, that part which sticks above the snow, with ice and dry scales, and you say, "Dinner is now served in the Dining Car." "Xan" then sticks out about five yards of tongue and looks pleased beyond words. Off this perfectly sterile tree she eats a full meal and goes much better.

I had a medicine chest and two huge boxes of toys. I saw patients, pulled teeth, cut open septic fingers, gave conservative medicines and held Xmas trees. I also made speeches at all the Xmas trees which were held in the churches. I wanted to say, "You see those new toys. Well, Ma sent me those. The broken ones were sent by short skates." As a matter of fact I preached sermons about what a Xmas tree was and why we had it. They were easily the best Xmas-tree talks that have ever been given. By a unique process of reasoning I have proved to myself that I am not a hypocrite when I do such things.

At Ha-Ha I was given a great time; I was given fresh meat and tinned cow (condensed milk). I also got many lice in my hair, but it was so short that they all died of the cold or something the next day. Hospitality is the cardinal virtue of these people. I hit it off beautifully with them, as they have virtues which I admire and vices which most of the people I like (including myself) have ....

January 6th, 1913, Monday.

THE Duchess left last night; her last trip ....

Miss --------, whom you saw, is the most objectionable person I ever met. She is kind, she is really very good, she is willing, she is able, she is good nature itself; in fact there is absolutely no good Christian virtue, except grace, which she hasn't got. But!! Well, if I am able to keep up pleasant (so-called) relations with her I am sure that in the next life I will climb up one big step in the Inferno. If a person were to pick out of prison the worst person there and say, "You have to eat two meals every day with this fellow," I am perfectly sure that after some labor I could find one subject upon which we could converse with pleasure. Well, this could never happen with Miss --------. She said to Dr. A. (who openly hates her), "Oh, Dr. Armstrong, I just think it is too splendid of you giving up your lucrative London practice, to be a Missionary in this bleak Northland." He said, coloring up, "I came up here because I like the life, not out of a sense of duty. I think to be a fashionable doctor in London the most damnable boring life I know of." Dr. A. keeps her away from him by swearing like a trooper when she appears. She spends all her spare time either taking pictures or writing hundreds of letters, enclosing them.

Tuesday.

I WORKED all morning, but got off in the afternoon. I went skiing, which is a great sport, with Dr. Grenfell and Grant. We went to see George Ford, who is the Hudson Bay Co.'s factor at the northernmost post in Baffin Land. I bought some marvellous boots and sealskins $1.20 a skin!) and a beautiful caribou overcoat which reaches to my ankles; it also has a large hood. It is all Eskimo-made with beads and layers of light and dark hide. I shall give it to Cleves(11) when I return. Tell him!

Wednesday.

DR. G. has a fit on for doing heart work. We have been making blood pressure curves, etc., of hearts. He pulled out two old tracings of men who died. Then he said, "Now we will see if we can't make you give one like these." He seemed terribly annoyed when I gave the most normal tracings of anybody. He says he knows I cheated, how, I don't know. But, joking aside, I certainly did get a good heart. My circulation is so good that one ear is all I have frozen so far. Everybody else is continually freezing fingers and particularly toes; these parts keep perfectly warm with me, and, by the way, just as sea-sickness is for some reason, unknown to me, considered a good joke, so freezing something is considered terribly amusing.

I had to go across the harbor this afternoon. I was blown back by a wind which I am sure came from the North Pole without stopping. As I came in the Guest House Grant was playing on the Victor a song from a comic opera "The Arcadians":

It's nice and warm, I think, that we shall have a lovely day,
Very, very warm for May, eighty in the shade they say --- just fawncy!
It really really looks as though we'll really have a lovely day,
Oh, what very charming weather!

But at my request he gladly took this off and played "From Greenland's Icy Mountains" sung by the Trinity mixed choir, which fitted the occasion better.

I am going to Griquet (eighteen miles) with Dr. Grenfell tomorrow to give a Christmas tree. Mrs. G. is also going if we can find a "woman-box" (I love that phrase) to put on a komatik.

This place was wrongly named. St. Anthony would never have had his chance to become a saint here!

Saturday.

WE, Dr. and Mrs. G., Grant, George Ford, Alex Sims (the driver) and I went to Griquet. We had a most glorious trip. We had one dog komatik and three deer ones. Going over was about the best fun I have ever had. There was not a bit of wind, which is unusual for this country. Dr. G. smashed his komatik, which was the one that Peary took to the North Pole, and was very amusing about it. I have beyond a doubt formed a new and strong taste. Apart from the Mission and the people I shall always love the country. The endless snow and ice has a fascination for me greater than anything I have ever experienced. I can easily understand Dr. Grenfell's love for this country. Intoxicating is the only adjective which at all describes it. I believe that this climate affects you in one of two ways; you either look on it as drearier than anything that you have ever conceived of, in which case all your instincts make you dread the cold, or else it intoxicates you so that you will tackle with real pleasure a job which by all means ought to be a most disagreeable one.

Whenever I hear the komatic dogs howling and fighting I run to the window; when they finally cut the thong holding it to a post and the komatik jumps forward, I want to go and I don't care in the least where I go to. I think one thing that makes me feel this way is that I am so ridiculously healthy. I am just beginning to realize that I have been distinctly below par for well over a year. Keenness is what describes my physical condition. I discovered myself rolling around in the snow playing with some dogs for the sheer joy of it the other day. For a long time I had felt like kicking every dog I saw.

At Griquet we had a glorious time. We had a fine tree in Orangeman's Hall. Dr. Grenfell was the most fascinating human being I have ever seen. The people to a man love him.

I spent the night with Ed, Al Bursey and family. The kitchen, dining-room, library, living-room, nursery, bedroom, pantry, storeroom, bathroom, woodshed, laundry, etc., all turned into one was a gem. The decorations were catholic; a picture of Jesus in the Manger, Dr. Grenfell, an advertisement for Fleischman's yeast, Landseer's "Stag," and Lily Langtry, as well as nets and fiddle. On this weapon Mr. B. performed for George Ford and me.

He said, "Most folks won't try to fiddle because they think it hard, but I never had no trouble."

To see those children with their toys was a joy that would have warmed anybody's heart. Solomon, aged eight, even stopped smoking his pipe to play with a popgun. We had a mug up. At meals none of the females eat until all the males get through, then they get what is left. In this land the male wears all the plumage; the wife is only "his woman." I'll bet Mrs. G. was a revolutionary bomb in the house where they stayed. I went to bed with George Ford. I would have gladly taken in any of the rest of the family, regardless of age or sex, provided they would radiate heat. It got "parky" (a London cabby's phrase which Dr. G. uses in describing a windy night) during the night. Grant, in the next house, took off his boots and socks and actually froze two toes in bed. The greatest virtue of these people is hospitality. Tell Charley I want no more talk about Southern hospitality. This latter simply amounts to giving alcohol, of which you have more than enough, to a person who wants it, but actually doesn't need it, in a very gracious way. This hospitality means giving of food, of which the donor never by any chance has all he wants or even needs.

I am night nurse again, as Dr. Armstrong and Miss Cannon have gone off to tackle a diphtheria epidemic. I expect the Prospero tomorrow for the last trip. I will probably get no mail or be able to get any out for a long time, a month or two, but then it ought to come every now and then.

I found a box of splendid Victor records, Caruso, Farrar, etc. They are really a great joy. I have finished the books you sent me and have ferreted out some others, notably Gibbon's "Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire." This is a marvellous book which I did not think I would ever read. I wonder if I shall be reduced to Dad's literature or "Pilgrim's Progress" first. It is a toss-up. Just a touch of that skunk John Knox makes me boil, and one concentrated pill of Puritanism is more than I can stand, classic or no classic.

What Father needs is the woods in one long dose! Read O. Henry's story about the man and the doctors and how he finally found health.

Will you please ask Father to send up by the first Prospero some fly nets and possibly a silk hood and some fly dope, as I fancy the flies are about as bad here as anywhere? If he could send me up a cheap salmon rod and reel and some large salmon flies I will probably be able to get off for a few days for what is the best salmon fishing in the world. I don't care anything about a gun, as I prefer prodding a reindeer with a balsam pole to shooting caribou; it is more satisfying.

If you shouldn't get a telegram you will know the wire is down.

The reason this letter is so disjointed and badly written is because it is about four in the morning and cold. That fiend of a Miss-------, unknown to me, gave a lot of the patients, I should say, very large doses of castor oil which has kept me on the jump all night.

Later and Warmer.

I DON'T want you to misunderstand me about Dr. Grenfell's books. The only objection to Dr. Grenfell's books on Christianity, Immortality, etc., is that they are poorly written and are not anywhere near sound. Theologically and scientifically they are a joke. They also smack too much of Lyman Abbott, Henry Van Dyke, Jane Addams, that fellow Crothers, etc., with all of whom he is intimate and by whom he has been greatly influenced. I have a theory about all this modern rot about Simple Faith. Simple Faith is excellent for simple people (and this combination may be the best thing), but simple religion is as much bosh as the Simple Life for complex people. For instance, I don't see how a man like Father Waggett, say, should accomplish Faith by the same mental processes that a Labrador fisherman does. If a man feels as Dr. G. does, why an education, except for worldly purposes?

As regards his stories! They are possible because they are so sincere and because Dr. G. has led an unusual and romantic (I hate the word, it suggests the Albert Memorial) life. If they were written by a fur trader I think they would be estimable. . .

But far be it from me to criticize a real saint like Dr. G.

Tuesday, Jan. 14th, 1913.

THE Prospero has just gotten in. She has been eleven days out from St. John's. Three times she tried to get around Cape St. John (down the coast a few miles) and had to put back. Captain Kane is a hero, as everybody "lows as how Cap'n Kane's the only man livin' 'twould a nosed her down here." She couldn't get in the harbor at all and is anchored to the ice outside. It was twenty-eight below today with a regular gale of wind. I went out to the boat and had a terrible time getting two stretcher cases back against the wind, but didn't freeze a finger or toe of either one. My canvas suit keeps out the wind absolutely, so that I can be perfectly warm where it covers me. Little or rather huge caribou skin moccasins, only the thickness of paper but absolutely air-tight, with the aid of numerous socks, keep my feet perfectly warm. These are quite wonderful. As Mark Twain said of the bicycle, "I have seen it, but it is impossible." The reason for this is that they are so soft that they never bind and hence the blood is never stopped even momentarily. Seal gloves, made of seal's flippers, keep my hands perfectly warm. The only trouble is the face, when you have to face the wind and flurries of snow and small pieces of ice. When these times come it is just plain Hell. I have just been fighting this wind for about three hours getting these patients in and I don't mind saying that my language would have made that of a mate on a river-boat sound like the Catechism. I almost never swear on ordinary occasions. Most of the natives here are poorly nourished and are, with some notable exceptions, about as yellow as you make them; most of them instead of getting used to the cold get absolutely cowed by it. Dr. Little seems to be the man who is everybody's hero up here. Almost every house I go into somebody says, "Well, this is almost as cold as the night Doc Little did -----" When I got in Miss ------ said, "Oh, Mr. Burton, weren't you afraid?" I wanted to slay her. One more nice thing about Dr. G. is that he never either criticises or praises you as long as he thinks you are doing your best.

I only got one letter from you describing Xmas. In this country letters really get lost, so I suppose some of yours were. After this there will be no mail either way for probably two months, but I will try to write you daily on the chance that you will get them sometime. I am truly sorry you are not well, but don't ever think "nerves" are the worst thing that can happen to you. Just spend one morning dressing great open tubercular joints as I do every day. The agony that some of these poor fellows suffer is beyond belief, but Dr. G. always tries to save their limbs because they cannot earn a living with one hand or one leg.

Almost everybody in St. Anthony has had the grippe except me. For the first time in years my nose is always clear and I use one handkerchief indefinitely. I am putting on weight at a surprising rate. I weigh about 150 pounds in my indoor clothes.

I got no papers, but I don't seem to care. Balkan troubles, Caruso's throat, prize fights, President Eliot's views on bringing up babies, Whitelaw Reid's death, etc., don't seem to interest me in the least. Everybody else seems crazy to get news of the World, but somehow or other I don't seem to care. I guess I will never get over being more interested in myself than other people.

I really cannot understand the working of your mind when you thank me for my Christmas present. I would have given you a Xmas present if I had been home and if I had any money. You speak of my giving and not receiving this Xmas. Well, the only things I gave were toys and food which you sent me and food which I bought with Father's money. Another thing which I like about Dr. G. is that he never does the Lady Bountiful act for one minute. He always is giving away things "which some kind friends have sent me." It is never as if he himself was giving things (never money) away.

We have been having great fun over two operations for circumcision. Dr. A. did the first one. Dr. G. watched, then he said, "Armstrong, how much do you rob people of for doing that in London?" Dr. A. said fifty guineas. Dr. G. then said, "And do you then come out here to get square with your conscience? Now watch me on this next boy. I learned how to circumcise from Leviticus, and I'll bet you that by following the directions I beat you and your fifty guineas all hollow." So he put an Old Testament on the boy's chest and proceeded. Then on the eighth day we cleansed it. We beat Dr. A. all hollow.

I must stop. Too busy.

Love,                
CAP.

Tell Spence a Mr. Sadler(12) is here and wanted to be remembered to him. He seems thoroughly O.K. He says this place is not as cold as Cowley.

Friday, 17th Jan. 1913.

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I HAD to make one flying trip to Griquet since I wrote you last to see a fellow who had a bad hemorrhage in his left lung. I brought back a gentleman named Humby who has lain in bed for four years with no organic trouble. He is what you can call a hypochondriac if you want to. He thinks his insides are bearing down. Well, Dr. G. is resourceful, if anything. We told him we were going to fix him. Then we etherized him and put a large blister on his abdomen. We first showed him all the large knives and saws that we had. Two days later we opened all the windows in his room, took away his bedclothes, and told him he had his choice of freezing to death or walking to the next room where we would fix him up. We then left him yelling and screaming. After about a minute he got out of bed and walked for the first time in nearly five years. And, by George, he walks every day now. How that man hates me! It is my job to tell him that he is a fraud. As a matter of fact he isn't a fraud, for his mind is diseased. Dr. G. says crazy or not crazy he is going to pull up cod next summer, and I fancy he will. It is a very interesting case to me and I have largely had charge of him. Dr. G. says he understands auto-commanding better than auto-suggesting.

Saturday.

I GOT a day off today. I took my thermos bottle and some chocolate and went off by myself for the day. I just put on my racquettes and wandered way back in the white hills. It was glorious. Cold but no wind. I shot several white ptarmigan and a couple of large white hares. It is good fun following up fox and rabbit tracks. I only wish I had a chance to do more of this sort of thing, for there, is nothing I love so much. I tell you my bump of direction comes in handy up here; I haven't gotten twisted yet even in some very dirty weather.

Thursday, Jan. 24th, 1913.
Griquet chez Esau Hillier.

HERE I am snowed in for fair. Monday afternoon a man came over from here wanting a doctor in a hurry. Dr. G. couldn't go, so I was elected. Dr. Armstrong has pneumonia at Flower's Cove, but has passed the crisis. Dr. G.'s only remark on hearing of this by telegraph was, "Well, why didn't he send his team home? He can't want it if he is sick." Dr. G. is strong on spiritual consolation, but he certainly doesn't waste much time feeling sorry for physical pain. Saturday before last when I had the grippe he came in the room smiling, and said, "If you are able to help in the operating room, get up; if you would just be in the way, stay in bed." This is characteristic of his attitude towards sickness. I don't think that he considers relieving pain of the slightest consequence unless it helps in curing a man and allowing him to "get back to his work," which is a great phrase of his.

I saw the sick man who had pneumonia; knocked the window out with an axe, left some directions, medicines, etc., and chased away a large part of the women folks who always gather when anybody's sick. They weep and particularly moan until a fairly sick man gets convinced that he is going to die. At this stage they admit that the case has gotten beyond their medical skill (a great blow to their pride) and send for help.

During the night a woman died in child-birth, two miles from where I was, without sending for me in time, as "she seemed all right." I got to her about four in the morning after working two hours to go two miles against the storm. I was too late. Even I could have saved her life, as her well-meaning women kin had certainly made a ghastly job of it.

Let me describe the scene:

It was four in the morning; dark as pitch with howling nor'easter; it wasn't that it was snowing, but the snow which was on the ground was migrating; in one place bare ground and within fifty yards a drift way up over tall trees. In fact such nights rarely occur outside of Nick Carter.

In the house were about twenty-five people all sitting around the stove. The second I entered I saw I was too late. Everybody was moaning and wailing. It was the most interesting scene I have ever witnessed.

I will stop right here and explain the use of the word "interesting." Twill try to be honest with myself and you. My sensations when I see a stranger die are exactly the same as when I read in the newspaper that fourteen people were killed in Kansas. I might be willing to try to prevent this woman's death and do so gladly, but I literally don't care at all when it is all over. I wonder why this is so. Now Dr. G. doesn't think it makes much difference whether a person dies or not (like Fr. Field). This is O.K. as long as you don't care whether you yourself live or not (and Dr. G. has certainly taken more fool chances of losing his life than almost anybody); but I myself care more about living than any other fact in this world. Well, there only seems one answer, cold-heartedness. It is an ugly fact. When I feel sorry for a person's death (as for Pren's) it is simply because I have lost a great joy. I wonder if I will ever change; I doubt it.

Well, if I didn't know how to feel sorry for this man I did have a conception of how a gentleman ought to act in a rather new situation. I got Mr. Bussey away from some of the loudest wailers (who are not relations) and gave him my last Romeo and Juliette Perfecto. Apparently he liked my methods, for he has hardly left my side since his wife's death and he has invited me to "Mourn" at the funeral tomorrow. If I can't get away before then, I shall.

I shall really read the Bible if I tour the provinces much. Are people edified by Leviticus? Not I, at any rate. I was bored. The Psalms are like all great poetry. They are (1) great poetry, (2) "very deep." Anybody ought to enjoy the sound of them and I do, just as I enjoy the sound of Milton. But, by George, it seems to me that the unlearned person is apt either to get no significance at all out of most of them, or else read into them all sorts of things that were never there. Some of them I know mean a whole lot, but they might just as well be a beautiful poem in Spanish as far as I am concerned. Is there some good criticism of them? (Not a little gem of a book telling me how fine they are.) If so, please send me it in the summer. The Chesterton you sent me is not up to the other Chesterton.

I got to talking with a skipper up here about the "Titanic." He was great! He said, "I see, Doctor, that they say Captain Smith ought to have slowed up because there was ice 100 miles ahead." He then said, "Well, if it's a 'cap'n's' duty to slow up when there's ice ahead I reckon Dr. Grenfell has done more sinnin' than any man afloat." He also said, "Seems to me like as if I had spent $10,000,000 on a boat I would hire a few men at fifty cents a day who were used to looking for ice." It seemed by far the most intelligent criticism I have heard.

Miss ------ gets "wuss and wuss." Her one ideal in life is neatness. She tidied up my dispensary and now neither Dr. Grenfell nor I can find anything. If a man was dying and wetting his bed at the same time I know she would remake that bed before she did anything else.

I am getting very thick with Miss Bryce. She is a brick. She never does things for effect, and when she makes a mistake, she does not try to make excuses for herself. The thing that I like about her is that she is so happy-go-lucky. She literally takes nothing to heart. She says that when next she becomes a missionary, it will be to the Equatorial races. Dr. G. invited her to go on a komatik ride the other day. She politely declined, saying she preferred to sit in the kitchen with her feet in the oven for a holiday. Her uncle had asked her to spend the winter on his yacht in the Mediterranean and her remarks on her Quixotic conduct are rich. It seems strange that when I know so many nice ladies that I can't manage to fall in love, if only for a week, but I can't seem to do it.

Esau Hillier, mine host, is an acquaintance of the Prospero. He is not of the four hundred I fear, and he is (and now I feel I am) very lousy. He has, however, a very keen sense of humor and I like him. His two children are named Sybil and Vera, but they do not look it.

A louse (whom only Bobby Burns has not spoken ill of) is not nearly as bad as a mosquito or black fly and is much easier to get rid of. It is the idea of lice that people mind. But I think a louse a comparatively harmless creature and I don't mind the idea of lice a bit.

I could tell you many tales about the mail, but the gist of them all would be that I haven't any idea when this will get to you, if ever.

I heard one tale which is a gem. There is a ledge of rocks up here a few miles, near the Labrador side. They want to build a lighthouse on them, but there seems to be a question as to whether the winter storms and ice sweep them or not. So George Doane, the mailman (who is the dare-devil of the coast), is spending the winter on them. In June they will go out to the Island. If he is still there they will build the lighthouse, but if he has been swept off, why, they won't. Simple, isn't it?

Saturday, Jan. 25th, 1913.

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JOHN EVANS,(13) who came on the last Prospero to take charge of the deer, is a great acquisition. He has a very fine baritone voice and sings and loves good music. He is about thirty and has been here several years in charge of the deer, which is more of a job than it sounds. He shares my bedroom with me and we get along beautifully. He also has excellent taste in books. In short, I don't know when I have found anybody that I hit it off better with. He is witty which makes him a good room-mate. . .

Monday, Jan. 27th, 1913

I AM bursting with pride. Sunday Dr. G. was away for the afternoon when a team arrived saying that a woman was dying in child-birth about twenty miles up the bay. Well, it was a case of me or nothing, so I took the obstetrical bag and departed. I found a young girl having her first child who had been laboring forty-eight hours. Well, I said, Steve Brodie took a chance, I guess I might as well.

The poor girl was almost dead and of course all the ladies in the neighborhood had convinced her that she was going to die. I kicked them all out and then set to work.

I made my examination and passed an awful moment. I won't go into details, but there was no possible chance of her having that baby herself. It was a case which only occurs about once in one hundred times, so a book has since told me. It certainly was a terrible moment. Well, alone I etherized that girl and after about an hour's work I extracted a boy. The baby then turned blue at which I had presence of mind enough to beat it until it finally squawked. I then did all the remaining things with no trouble at all. The child hasn't got a mark on it which, I think, is pretty good considering that I never even saw forceps used before. I spent most of the night with the mother and child. But I really had what I consider a great compliment. In the morning the mother sent for me and asked me my name. I said Burton. She said, "No, Doctor, I mean your first name." And the child is to be christened Caspar Henry Patey. Apparently I was a social success. Anyway, I was and still am very pleased. I shall always try to keep track of my namesake.

I certainly put through a big bluff, for I overheard the midwife say, "E looks young, but 'e knows 'is business, 'e never even 'esitated."

I think one reason Mrs. Patey liked me was that I told her that she was a very plucky girl, which she was. I wonder if I would get on better with females if I tried flattery now and then.

I wonder that more hasn't been written on the way in which we come into the world. I think this is a glorious moment; this first squawk of a child. I feel very reverent about it and at no moment of my life have I felt less materialistic. Yet isn't it in some way significant, that this glorious moment should be so unæsthetic? I feel like telling Algernon Charles Swinburne and that at the one really pure moment of their lives they were all covered with the stinkingest filth imaginable. A bas the expression, "cleanliness is next to godliness."

Every week I am more in love with this country.

Thursday, Jan. 30th, 1913.

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DR. ARMSTRONG is well, but just as he was about to come home he had to go to another place. I don't know when he will get here now. He froze three dogs, which is considered almost unpardonable by Dr. G. I am only just beginning to realize how all the mission people dislike him .... It has set me to thinking. This is the reason. He thinks that all the people under him are coolies. He gives orders in a very objectionable way, but then I say this is not as bad as ordering you to do objectionable things. His idea of running anything is to crush all individuality and make a machine, and being British he is unable to see that this plan is impossible amongst real people (i.e., non-British people). I know there is going to be a scene some day and dread it. But I can truthfully say that I like immensely both sides and I have not allowed the nurses to curse out Dr. A. while I was around. Dr. A. is the only British disciplinarian I have ever worked under (not for). It is a liberal education (as Spence will tell you); but, unlike Spence, it will be a cold day when I ever get caught again. Dr. A. says on Sunday, "You will get Thursday off." I get this no matter what happens, but I don't enjoy a holiday when it is planned. Dr. G. works me much harder, but on a fine day he will say, "Come on, Burton, let's let all the patients die and go off after reindeer." Don't misunderstand me. I could enjoy a trip around the world, say, with Dr. A. immensely. I like him immensely as a friend, and I admire him as his coolie. Well, you love Englishmen, but you haven't ever taken orders from one of the real systematic, world-conquering type.

Jan. 31st, 1913.

DR. G. had to travel all night to get to a dying man at Ha-Ha. He was killingly funny when he left. He and I had taken a twelve-mile ski trip in the afternoon and were dead fagged. I volunteered to go, but he said, "My dear chap, you are now Obstetrician Extraordinary to the French Shore, and as the case is an old man I think it cannot very well be a confinement." His fun is more contagious than I can even suggest.

While we were resting on a rock he told me wonderful sets of tales about Freddy (Sir Frederick Treves). Dr. A., who also worked under Treves, told me that Treves says that Grenfell was easily the most promising surgeon he ever saw. Dr. G. said," You must visit Freddy when you go to England. Just tell him I say to kick out a Duke or two and make room for you." He also said, "Freddy told me I might just as well be a missionary. He was right, I never could have made a cent in the West End." He also said, "I think it is simply terrible to doctor anybody with money.

Saturday.

I HAD to go at six this morning to Goose Cove only six miles away. It was pouring rain!! When we crossed a big bay the water was about a foot deep on the ice. The going was terrible. Snowshoes and sou'wester rig made a strange combination. I put back a dislocated shoulder on an old man very easily; luck seems to be following me.

Dr. G. got back O.K., but had a terrible time, I guess; for he came twenty miles in the slush and I know what a job it was to go twelve.

Old Captain Ashe got to telling stories about the Doctor. Doctor Grenfell used to carry a kayak on the Strathcona. He took the Strathcona through Grenfell Tickle in Ungava. He went ahead in the kayak all of the twenty-five miles and picked out passages through the rocks, ice and breakers for the Strathcona to follow. In fact, whenever they used to get fog-bound he used to go ahead finding ice and breakers. Capt. Ashe said, "Mrs. Grenfell and them kids has ca'med him down some, thank God." He is also beginning to go around bays when he is told that the ice is bad and hasn't gone through the ice for two winters now!! All of the men here believe absolutely that God protects him. They will follow him when they wouldn't dream of following anybody else ....

Monday.

I MUST get this off on the mail at once. I got your kind telegrams and am sending one tonight. The wire has just been fixed. Thanks for the money. It will come in very handy. I cannot tell you how I am enjoying living where I have as much money as I not only need but want.

Give my love to Olga Montagu.(14) I meet men constantly whom I know instantly I am going to like; once in a blue moon I meet a girl about whom I feel the same way, and never was a woman more attractive to me than Olga Montagu.

Our hypochondriac walked two miles! Dr. G. says, "Well, we went through a different set of motions, but I can't see but what our methods worked as well as Lourdes."

February 8th, 1913,
Saturday, 3 A.M.

IT has been a long time since I wrote you, but I certainly have been on the jump. I have made trips to Brehat, Goose Cove and St. Carol's since I wrote you last: one confinement and two T.B. cases.

I am now sitting up with a man who is dying, I am afraid, so if this letter is not very coherent put it down to the fact that I am within six feet of a man dying a rather ugly death and that I have not been doing much sleeping the last three days. This poor fellow is game as a pebble (even when delirious); I hate losing him, but we have been playing a losing game from the start. I wish his priest (he is R.C.) was here. I would gladly retire. Somehow or other I have been running into some tough cases lately. I would gladly have turned them over to Spence, as they have been the kind of thing I would gladly avoid.

(My man is finally resting a bit.)

Here is a case for an Ibsen or perhaps a de Maupassant. I went to see a sick woman. It didn't take me long to smell a rat when I arrived at the most squalid house I have ever seen. There was not a single female visitor!!! In the one room was the husband (who is part Eskimo), five children, two cats, one sick puppy and several chickens all shuffled in together. When I went to the woman and started to ask her a question I was greeted by the following, "Doctor, I don't want to be cured. I hope to Christ I dies and goes to Hell!"

Well, God does some strange things! To place me of all people in this situation seemed about the strangest. Well, I have not got much conscience left, but I had a sneaking notion that if I dosed her with morphia and let it go at that, why, my conscience might crawl out of its hole and annoy me. Believe me I spent a terrible hour or so. It appears that she had had children by almost everybody before her marriage and the good ladies of ----- had made her life a hell on earth. You would not have known your son. I had much to say to this woman, much that I have thought a great deal about at odd moments, and it burst forth. They seemed to take hold, for she "took back" what she had said and seemed a bit eased. Moreover, she is going to live. She is also going to move, if I can bring it about. I hope this sort of thing doesn't happen often.

Everybody is out on the ice sealing with guns, clubs and nets. One man got ninety seals in his net in one cast. It is very bloody, dirty work. Dr. G. said one day, "I have killed several hundred caribou, but I shall never enjoy shooting again; I watched the cows killed at Armour's in Chicago and the two are very similar sports.".

Poor Miss -------- she lost her nerve the other day at a very critical moment and only by Miss Cannon's decision was a calamity avoided. I really feel sorry for her now that everybody else is picking at her. I am really afraid she will go to pieces if she keeps on doing the wrong things and getting cursed out for so doing.

George Ford has just bought a live black fox for $1,500. It is the excitement of the winter, and even this is considered a tremendous bargain.

I am too tired to write much. My ability to do without sleep in long stretches has come in handy.

Tell Father Powell I appreciated his two notes and will answer them before anybody else in the world.

Feb. 14, 1913.

I AM a backslider! I have not written for a week or over. I have been away tending six pneumonia cases all at once. I don't like to boast (an expression meaning that you love to boast) but I certainly did work. All six had temperatures over 104° at once and I certainly was kept on the run both day and night. I am only trained for one profession, porter on a Pullman sleeper, and in spite of the 13th Amendment I am barred from that by color and race. But not one of these patients died. I inherited Grandma Spence's ideas of dosage. You can watch my medicines work. But Dr. G. makes me seem like a homeopath. I have seen him give ten grains of calomel all at once and then repeat it next day. I get to like the people, that is the men, more and more. . . . They live their lives absolutely on prejudice, they bear their troubles without ever a wail, they are unprogressive in mind, they think everybody, excepting Dr. Grenfell, is to be judged on how much money they are worth. But their crowning virtue is hospitality; it is magnificent. But I must stop this or I shall call them "natives," a term much used by missionaries and loathsome to me.

Dr. Armstrong got back yesterday; he looked all in. Dr. G. greeted him with, "I say, Armstrong, it would be shabby of you to die before John Little gets back."

The mail came! Great excitement. I have read all your letters through Jan. 18th, 8th, which is very good. We may get a weekly mail regularly. It is one of the coldest winters they have ever had, but very little snow which is the ideal condition for travelling. It is generally the railroad which stops the mail. . .

Of course Spence will be a "succès fou" in Cambridge. With the possible exception of the Union all of the permanent institutions and activities have been slow growths. But then this is not really a new thing, for Spence has been working steadily at it for ten years. I guess he knows more about that side of Harvard than I will ever know.

We have a baby here four months old, weight four pounds, almost starved to death but gaining. I have named him Disraeli. Did you ever see a baby that looked like an old man? I am answering your letter, it is 4 A.M. I am night nurse...

I have been considerably enlightened by Dr. Johnson on the subject of young men who have lately contracted matrimony. He says that it usually requires some cunning to accomplish most things, but that marriage, like the atmosphere, is something which is equally obtainable by brainy and stupid, good and bad, rich and poor, etc., etc.

You speak of cheering up the sailors being a big job. It is and it isn't. These people connect cheer with alcohol. Like Bill Taylor(15) I think I could arrange a sort of Roman Holiday for these men that would be an event in history. As this does not seem feasible for physical, legal, political or even moral reasons I have to fall back on talk. Puns! My, how a pun is appreciated. Anyway, I find I hit it off very well with all the men. I was accused of being a Catholic the other day because I have sworn off smoking during Lent. I hear much talk of poverty which is certainly present on this coast, but it is the poverty of mental or physical sources of amusement which paralyzes me. To sit for days or years in this hospital, hardly talking, never reading, nothing to see and very little in their brain which they can shake up for amusement; that is the point.

I am bursting with health. I have put my old heart to several tests which I think were more severe than many men experience in a lifetime. I have watched closely and my heart has never once balked. The murmur is still in my heart and always will be, but I have established perfect compensation.

It is a very good joke about you seeing my picture. I am hipped on the subject of taking pictures of this place and life for public or private exhibition. My reason is that all pictures make this place seem like a real terrible place to live in. The pictures all exaggerate the atmosphere of life here. I am a cynic possibly, but I know that some of these people come up here in order to be considered heroes or heroines at home. Anybody who does missionary work or other so-called good work for the praise that fellow-men will give them I would kick out of any mission I was running. These pictures of "Nurse in Winter Dress," "Doctor on Arctic rounds," etc., etc., make me boil. Now the joke of it is that I have only had my picture taken once and that was with both doctors and nurses with two T.B. patients. This must have been the picture you saw, otherwise it wasn't of me.

I think that is one of Father P.'s poorest sermons, but Dr. Grenfell read it this afternoon and thinks it the best thing he ever read. He said, "I say, Burton, I would be willing to use every influence I could to get that old cove up in the Straits. If we could get him and Parson Richards (a wonderful man I am told) and give them a few barrels of flour and pork a year and kick out all the salaried clergy we could make things hum up here." He then added, looking at the S.S.J.E., "But he hasn't got as many letters after his name as I have. How many have I, Puss?" Mrs. G., without a moment's hesitation, "Twelve." Dr. G., "Well, I ought to write three times as good a sermon then, but I can't begin to do it. I wrote one that was twice as good once, but everybody is tired of that sermon now."

Feb. 22, 1913.

AGAIN I have missed writing you regularly, but what would be the fun of making a resolution without breaking it?

I think it was the day after I wrote you last that we had a big trial. Dr. Grenfell was prosecuting attorney, Noah Sims and Dr. Armstrong, both J.P.'s, sat on the bench and I was clerk of court. I wish you could have seen the trial. There were about a hundred men crowded into a fairly small room and every single man was excited almost to the fighting point. Nobody made a sound, but I think I never saw an uglier looking group of men. I tell you a perfectly silent man radiating hate is a stirring sight. It is sometimes consoling to me to think that if not knowing what intense love is will damn me, why, not really ever hating anything or anybody may count for me. The trial was about a reindeer shooting and was keen, to put it mildly. After the trial people paired off and we had some pretty bloody fights. I think it was a very critical time for this Mission, but we pulled through on top ....

Monday morning I started for Cape Norman lighthouse on an urgent confinement call. For the life of me I cannot have a real adventure. It was a terrible day and we worked from 5.30 in the morning until 7 in the evening. Twice we started to turn back. We froze one dog.

I said, "At last adventure, romance, glory." O for a moving picture entitled "Brave Missionary in Frozen North risking life to save Mother and Che-ild." All the settings were perfect for a little drama of which I was to be the hero and receive medals. I also froze my face and one hand, which was as it should be.

BUT ---I staggered into the lighthouse (heroic music and much snow). So far so good. But in the lighthouse, instead of anxious husband on his knees surrounded by children in spotless nightclothes praying that Mama might be saved, I found Mr. Campbell in a condition of complete mental ease. He said, "Well, Doctor, this do be ----- uncivil weather for anybody to be out in. Sybil (eldest child), rub the doctor's face and hand, they do be friz." After he had gone on for some time and I had gotten thawed, I ventured to ask how the woman was. He said he would find out; that he hadn't heard all day! He added, "Doctor, she's terrible pesky when she be havin' children!!"

Well, I saw the woman, who seemed O.K. on examination. I then went to sleep. In the morning nothing doing. I was engaged in reading Boswell (which I carry in my pocket) when Mr. C. told me to go upstairs to the Woman. When I arrived the child was just arrived. After I cleaned things up, etc., I just sat down and roared with laughter. The melodramas of my life will turn into farces no matter how they start out.

I got hung up at the lighthouse by more "uncivil" weather. Eighteen miles of ice pack moving at ten miles an hour. It is a gorgeous view, looking over at The Labrador. I thought of Kubla Khan.

"It was a miracle of strange device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice."

It is a gorgeous scene; this is really the last bit of the outlet of The Great Lakes and they enter the ocean with considerable dignity and importance.

I shall always stay at lighthouses after this. The government supplies the house and provisions, and OH! what a difference. I ate eight eggs for breakfast, the first egg I have had, also real milk and real uncanned meat. We also had a seal steak, which was not too bad.

I am not going to pity lighthouse-keepers again. I even think of applying myself for a job, for I can stand a terrible lot of loneliness if I am let alone.

These fishermen's houses have brought home to me how truly singularly unreal is the fisherman's household in "David Copperfield." I don't suppose a poorer job has ever been done in all literature. Guy de Maupassant could have turned a better job than that ....

Please get one idea out of your head. I am not going to be "influenced" by Dr. Grenfell. I may have been influenced to the bad by people, although I honestly don't think I ever have been once in my life; but I know that only one person in this world has ever influenced me towards what is called "good." That is Father Powell. He has never once offered me a word of advice without my asking for it nor has he by word or looks ever criticized me. Yet generally when I have left Father Powell I have realized what a cad I was. Now Dr. Grenfell is like every other good person I have ever seen, distinctly didactic. He wants to improve every person he comes in contact with, whether that person asks for improvement or not .... Now Dr. G. swore off smoking for Lent and has "used his influence" (in the very nicest way) to get everybody in the Mission to follow suit. He put it up to me in that cowardly "You don't have to go to Sunday School" tone, so I have not smoked, but I am spending a far less profitable Lent than I would have had had I not been "influenced."

When I see Dr. G. going through a ward lighting up each patient's face with love; when I see him in his home; when I see him taking chances in bad ice, wind, etc.; when I see him praying with a man for the soul of his dead wife; in short, when I see him from day to day, then, perhaps, I may be a little bit influenced. Then, perhaps, I have brief moments when I say to myself, "You loose-living, low-idealled, hard-hearted little ass. What are you going to do about this miserable state of affairs?" But when he descends to my own plane and tries to convince me that tobacco is a curse, etc., I hardly know whether to laugh or not; his arguments are so perfectly childish.

Sunday.

I HAVE had a busy day. Dr. G. has been getting brilliant results with his surgery, but Dr. A. certainly is the man for making things hum in the hospital; he and Miss Cannon are a great combination for creating order out of chaos. This afternoon I went over to St. Carol's to see a sick woman; I hope I was able to help her a bit. It was a glorious day with no wind, a very rare thing. I don't often speak of how I love these vast barrens, rocks, ice and snow, but they are a constant inspiration and joy to me. You can't say a word on a komatik or the dogs instantly sit down, apparently to listen.

Oh, if Turner could ever have been turned loose on these skies and the Aurora! I am indeed your son! Miss Cannon to my immense surprise "unloosened" herself to me last night when we were up watching a very sick man. She told me I reminded her of her favorite brother (now dead). She said that he was the only one of her family who was untidy (which I can easily believe) and that she was afraid she had almost pestered him to death. She said that try as she might she couldn't correct me when I was slovenly, for I reminded her of her dead brother. But she added, "Anyway, Mr. Burton, you are as careful about asepsis as anybody I ever saw." At this point she both lost her temper and wept which is characteristic of her. I get on famously with her; with no effort at all I can get her roaring with laughter any time I want to. She is a real jewel, you would love her. She is not only a Mrs. Pierce, but actually a second Miss Rothstein.(16) Her account of part of a year she spent nursing rich patients in New York is rich. She says she wanted to stick out her tongue at them, and I bet she did. I found out that her abruptness is really largely shyness and I have "jollied" her ever since almost to the point of chucking her under the chin and she just loves it. I don't think anybody else has ever treated her as a joke, which I do, in private.

Read Whistler's "Gentle Art of Making Enemies" and you have a pretty good idea of Dr. A. He certainly would not win a popularity contest here, but I really like him immensely and would love to be with him if I were not under him.

Miss Bryce is a joy; she is just about the most facile person I have ever met, but I wouldn't be much surprised if she knifed Dr. Armstrong some day.

Dr. A. travels in a unique way. He wears tons of clothes and carries millions of boxes. He sits on the komatik all the time. He won't budge without a good team and if they can't haul him he hires dogs and komatiks until they can.

He certainly gets comfort, but it costs money and he goes like last year's Yale crew, "Very nicely but very slowly." He never makes over forty miles a day and he is death on dogs. Dr. Grenfell travels with a toothbrush and makes sixty miles a day with any kind of dogs. I think I never saw a man with more endurance. I have got excellent wind now, but one day when he and I took a long walk on snowshoes he literally walked me off my feet. He is away now in Canada Bay and we all miss him terribly.

I went to our church with Miss Bryce this evening. It is impossible completely to spoil our service.

Read fifty pages of Boswell (the first one hundred pages is not so good) every day. I know of nothing which is more fun. Also re-read (three or four times) Chesterton's "Orthodoxy"; it does more to convince me of the truth of Christianity (this apart from making me a good Christian) than anything with the possible exception of Darwin's "Origin of Species." I have also been reading a bit in Gibbon, but find I am not much interested in declining Rome, and the Fall was about five thousand pages away. Have you ever read any Tourgenieff? He is very great, I believe. I have also read right through the Bible now, but have a feeling it can stand more study! That man Paul "cramps my style" considerably. I don't think he would have cared for me especially. What an "undesirable citizen" he must have been before his conversion. I don't think he was naturally of a very optimistic turn of mind. I wish St. Francis had had his opportunities. I believe we would have fewer "sects" (a term which always suggests insects) than we have.

Write me about Spence's scheme; I am both interested and curious. I want it to succeed on his account, but far more on account of Harvard.