A Labrador Doctor Part 26

"Skipper John, what relation are those people to you?"

"Well, no relation 'zactly."

"Do they pay nothing at all?"

"Them has nothing," he replied.

"What made you take them in?"

"They was homeless, and the old lady was already blind."

"How long have they been with you?"

"Just twelve months come Sat.u.r.day."

I found myself standing in speechless admiration in the presence of this man. I thought then, and I still think, that I had received one of my largest fees.

Ours is primarily a medical mission, and nothing that may have been stated in this book with reference to other branches of the work is meant in any way to detract from what to us as doctors is the basic reason for our being here, though we mean ours to be prophylactic as well as remedial medicine.

St. Anthony having so indisputably become the headquarters of the hospital stations, there can be but one answer to the question of the advisability of its closing its doors summer or winter in the days to come. For not only is our largest hospital located there--its scope due in great measure to the reputation gained for it by Dr. Little's splendid services, and continued by Dr. Curtis--but also the Children's Home, our school, machine shop, the headquarters of various industrial enterprises, and lastly a large storehouse to be used in future as a distributing centre for the supplies of the general Mission. Moreover, the population of the environs of St. Anthony, owing to their numbers and the fact that they can profit by the employment given by the Mission, should be able increasingly to a.s.sist in the maintenance of this hospital, though a large number of its clinic is drawn from distant parts. These patients come not only from Labrador, the Straits of Belle Isle, and southern Newfoundland, but we have had under our care Syrians, Russians, Scandinavians, Frenchmen, and naturally Americans and Canadians, seamen from schooners engaged in the Labrador fishery.

Harrington Hospital, located on the Canadian Labrador, must for many years to come depend on outside support. I am Lloyd Georgian enough to feel that taxation should presuppose the obligation to look after the bodies of the taxed. The Quebec Government gives neither vote, representation, adequate mail service, nor any public health grant for the long section of the coast which it claims to govern, that lies west of the Point des Eskimo. It is to my mind a severe stricture on their qualifications as legislators. That hospital should, we believe, be adequately subsidized and kept open summer and winter. At present we have to thank the Labrador Medical Mission, which is the Canadian branch of the International Grenfell a.s.sociation, for their generous and continued support of this station.

Battle Harbour and Indian Harbour Hospitals can never be anything but summer stations, owing to their geographical positions on islands in frozen seas, on which islands there is practically no population during the winter months. But gifts and grants sufficient to maintain a doctor at Northwest River Cottage Hospital, and one if possible in Lewis Bay, winter supplements to these summer hospitals, are to my thinking more than justifiable.

As to the future of our hospital stations at Pilley's Islands, Spotted Islands, and Forteau, that will depend upon the changing demands of local conditions. That the need of medical a.s.sistance exists is unquestionable, as is evidenced from the many appeals which I receive to start hospitals or supply doctors in districts at present utterly incapable of obtaining such help.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ENTRANCE TO ST. ANTHONY HARBOUR]

One still indispensable requisite in our scattered field of work is a hospital steamer. In fact, not a few of us think that the Strathcona is the keystone of the Mission. She reaches those who need our help most and at times when they cannot afford to leave home and seek it.

Her functions are innumerable. She is our eyepiece to keep us cognizant of our opportunities. She both treats and carries the sick and feeds the hospitals. She enables us to distribute our charity efficiently. The invaluable gifts of clothing which the Labrador Needlework Guild and other friends send us could never be used at all as love would wish, unless the Strathcona were available to enlarge the area reached. In spite of all this, those who would quibble over trifles claim that she is the only craft on record that rolls at dry-dock! Her functions are certainly varied, but perhaps the oddest which I have ever been asked to perform was an incident which I have often told. One day, after a long stream of patients had been treated, a young man with a great air of secrecy said that he wanted to see me very privately.

"I wants to get married, Doctor," he confided when we were alone.

"Well, that's something in which I can't help you. Won't any of the girls round here have you?"

"Oh! it isn't that. There's a girl down North I fancies, but I'm shipped to a man here for the summer, and can't get away. Wouldn't you just propose to her for me, and bring her along as you comes South?"

The library would touch a very limited field if it were not for the hospital ship. She carries half a hundred travelling libraries each year. She finds out the derelict children and brings them home. She is often a court of law, trying to dispense justice and help right against might. She has enabled us to serve not only men, but their ships as well; and many a helping hand she has been able to lend to men in distress when hearts were anxious and hopes growing faint. In a thousand little ways she is just as important a factor in preaching the message of love. To-day she is actually loaned for her final trip, before going into winter quarters, to a number of heads of families, who are thus enabled to bring out fuel for their winter fires from the long bay just south of the hospital.

Her plates are getting thin. They were never anything but three-eighths-inch steel, and we took a thousand pounds of rust out of her after cabin alone this spring. She leaks a little--and no iron ship should. It will cost two thousand dollars to put her into repair again for future use. Money is short now, but when asked about the future of the Mission I feel that whatever else will be needed for many years to come, the hospital ship at least cannot possibly be dispensed with.

The child is potential energy, the father of the future man, and the future state; and the children of this country are integral, determining factors in the future of this Mission. The children who are turned out to order by inst.i.tutions seem sadly deficient, both in ability to cope with life and in the humanities. The "home" system, as at Quarrier's in Scotland, is a striking contrast, and personally I shall vote for the management of orphanages on home lines every time.

This is not a concession to d.i.c.kens, whose pictures of b.u.mble I hope and believe apply only to the dark ages in which d.i.c.kens lived; but historically they are not yet far enough removed for me to advocate Government orphanages, though our Government schools are an advance on Dotheboys Hall.

The human body is the result of physical causes; breeding tells as surely as it does in dogs or cows, and the probability of defects in the offspring of poverty and of l.u.s.t is necessarily greater than in well-bred, well-fed, well-environed children. The proportion of mentally and morally deficient children that come to us absolutely demonstrates this fact; and the love needed to see such children through to the end is more comprehensive than the mere sentiment of having a child in the home, and infinitely more than the desire to have the help which he can bring.

The Government allows us fifty-two dollars a year toward the expense of a child whose father is dead; nothing if the mother is dead, or if the father is alive but had better be dead. It would be wiser if each case could be judged on its merits by competent officials. But we believe it is a blessing to a community to have the opportunity of finding the balance.

Tested by its output and the returns to the country, our orphanage has amply justified itself. One new life resultant from the outlay of a few dollars would cla.s.s the investment as gilt-edged if graded merely in cash. The community which sows a neglected childhood reaps a whirlwind in defective manhood.

In view of these facts--to leave out of consideration my earnest personal desire--there can never be any question in my mind as to the imperative necessity of the Mission's continuance of the work for derelict children. This conclusion seems to me safeguarded by the fact that all nations are placing increasing emphasis on "the child in the midst of them."

When Solomon chose wisdom as the gift which he most desired, the Bible tells us that it was pleasing to G.o.d. St. Paul holds out the hope that one day we shall know as we are known. But there is a vast difference between knowledge and being wise. In fact, from the New Testament itself we are led to believe that the devils knew far more than even the Disciples.

The school is an essential part of the orphanage. Seeing that the village children needed education just as much as those for whom we were more directly responsible, and realizing the value to both of the cooperation, and that the denominational system which still persists in the country is a factor for division and not for unity, it became obviously desirable for us to provide such a bond. Friends made the building possible. The generosity of a lady in Chicago in practically endowing it has, we feel, secured its future. We have now a proper building, three teachers, a graded school, modern appliances for teaching, and vastly superior results. In these days when the expenditure of every penny seems a widow's mite, one welcomes the encouragement of facts such as these to enable one to "carry on."

Modern pedagogy has brought to the attention of even the man in the street the realization that education consists not merely in its accepted scholastic aspect, but also that training of the eye and hand which in turn fosters the larger development of the mind. In the latter sense our people are far from uneducated. Taking this apt.i.tude of theirs as a starting-point, some twelve years ago we began our industrial department, first by giving out skin work in the North, and later started other branches under Miss Jessie Luther, who subsequently gave many years of service to the coast.

The cooperative movement is the same question seen from another angle, and is almost contemporaneous with our earliest hospitals.

It is not unnatural that man, realizing that he is himself like "the gra.s.s that to-morrow is cast into the oven," should worry over the permanency of the things on which he has spent himself. Though Christ especially warns us against this anxiety, religious people have been the greatest sinners in laying more emphasis upon to-morrow than to-day. The element which makes most for longevity is always interesting, even if longevity is often a mistake. Almost every old parish church in England maintains some skeleton of bygone efforts which once met real needs and were tokens of real love.

The future is a long way off--that future when Christ's Kingdom comes on earth in the consecrated hearts and wills of all mankind, when all the superimposed efforts will be unnecessary. But love builds for a future, however remote; and at present we see no other way than to work for it, and know of no better means than to insure the permanency of the hospitals, orphanage, school, and the industrial and cooperative enterprises, thus to hasten, however little, the coming of Christ in Labrador.

CHAPTER XXVII

MY RELIGIOUS LIFE

No one can write his real religious life with pen or pencil. It is written only in actions, and its seal is our character, not our orthodoxy. Whether we, our neighbour, or G.o.d is the judge, absolutely the only value of our "religious" life to ourselves or to any one is what it fits us for and enables us to do. Creeds, when expressed only in words, clothes, or abnormal lives, are daily growing less acceptable as pa.s.sports to Paradise. What my particular intellect can accept cannot commend me to G.o.d. His "well done" is only spoken to the man who "wills to do His will."

We map the world out into black and white patches for "heathen" and "Christian"--as if those who made the charts believed that one section possessed a monopoly of G.o.d's sonship. Europe was marked white, which is to-day comment enough on this division. A black friend of mine used often to remind me that in his country the Devil was white.

My own religious experiences divide my life into three periods. As a boy at school, and as a young man at hospital, the truth or untruth of Christianity as taught by the churches did not interest me enough to devote a thought to it. It was neither a disturbing nor a vital influence in my life. My mother was my ideal of goodness. I have never known her speak an angry or unkind word. Sitting here looking back on over fifty years of life, I cannot pick out one thing to criticize in my mother.

What did interest me was athletics. Like most English boys I almost worshipped physical accomplishments. I had the supremest contempt for clothes except those designed for action or comfort. Since no saint apparently ever wore trousers, or appeared to care about football knickers, I never supposed that they could be the same flesh as myself.

It was always a barrier between me and the parsons and religious persons generally that they affected clothing which dubbed my ideals "worldly."

It was even a barrier between myself and the Christ that I could not think of Him in flannels or a gymnasium suit. At that time I should have considered such an idea blasphemous--whatever that meant. As soon as religious services ceased to be compulsory for me, I only attended them as a concession to others. The prime object of the prayers and lessons did not appear to be that they might be understood. So far as I could see, common sense and plain natural feelings were at a discount. A long heritage of an eager, restless spirit left me uninterested in "homilies," and aided by the "dim religious light," I was enabled to sleep through both long prayers and sermons. Justice forces me to add that the two endless hours of "prep" lessons after tea had very much the same effect upon me.

At the request of my mother I once went to take a cla.s.s at the Sunday School. These were for the "poor only" in England in those days.

Little effort was expended on making them attractive. I recall nothing but disgust at the dirty urchins with whom I had to a.s.sociate for half an hour. An incident which happened on the death of one of the boys at my father's school interested me temporarily in religion. The boy's father happened to be a dissenter, and our vicar refused to allow the gates of the parish churchyard to be opened to enable the funeral cortege to enter. My chum had only a legal right to be buried in the yard. The coffin had therefore to be lifted over the wall and as the church was locked, father conducted the service in the open air. His words at the grave-side gave a touch of reality to religion, and still more so did his walking down the aisle out of church the following Sunday when the vicar referred to the destructive influence of anything that lent colour to dissent. Later when father threw up the school for the far more onerous and less remunerative task of chaplain at the London Hospital, even I realized that religion meant something.

Indeed, it was that tax on his sensitive, nervous brain that brought his life to its early close. No man ever had a more generous and soft-hearted father. He never refused us any reasonable request, and very few unreasonable ones, and allowed us an amount of self-determination enjoyed by few. How deeply and how often have I regretted that I did not understand him better. His brilliant scholarship, and the friends that it brought around him, his ability literally to speak Greek and Latin as he could German and French, his exceptionally developed mental as compared with his physical gifts, were undoubtedly the reasons that a very ordinary English boy could not appreciate him.

At fourteen years of age, at Marlborough School, I was asked if I wished to be confirmed. Every boy of that age was. It permitted one to remain when "the kids went out after first service." It added dignity, like a football cap or a mustache. All I remember about it was bitterly resenting having to "swat up" the Catechism out of school hours. I counted, however, on the examiner being easy, and he was. I am an absolute believer in boys making a definite decision to follow the Christ; and that in the hands of a really keen Christian man the rite of confirmation is very valuable. The call which gets home to a boy's heart is the call to do things. If only a boy can be led to see that the following of Christ demands a real knighthood, and that true chivalry is Christ's service, he will want all the rites and ceremonies that either proclaim his allegiance or promise him help and strength to live up to it.

What I now believe that D.L. Moody did for me was just to show that under all the shams and externals of religion was a vital call in the world for things that I could do. This marks the beginning of the second period of my religious development. He helped me to see myself as G.o.d sees the "unprofitable servant," and to be ashamed. He started me working for all I was worth, and made religion real fun--a new field br.i.m.m.i.n.g with opportunities. With me the pendulum swung very far. The evangelical to my mind had a monopoly of infallible truth. A Roman Catholic I regarded as a relic of mediaevalism; while almost a rigour went down my spine when a man told me that he was a "Unitarian Christian." Hyphenation was loyalty compared to that. I mention this only because it shows how I can now understand intolerance and dogmatism in others. Yes, I must have been "very impossible," for then I honestly thought that I knew it all.

About this time I began to be interested in reading my Bible, and I learned to appreciate my father's expositions of it. At prayers he always translated into the vernacular from the original of either the Old or the New Testament. To me he seemed to know every sense of every Greek word in any setting. Ever since I have been satisfied to use an English version, knowing that I cannot improve on the words chosen by the various learned translators.

Because I owed so much to evangelical teachers, it worried me for a long while that I could not bring myself to argue with my boys about their intellectual att.i.tude to Christ. My Sunday cla.s.s contained several Jews whom I loved. I respected them more because they made no verbal professions. I have seen Turkish religionists dancing and whirling in Asia Minor at their prayers. I have seen much emotional Christianity, and I fully realize the value of approaching men on their emotional side. A demonstrative preacher impresses large crowds of people at once. But all the same, I have learned from many disillusionments to be afraid of overdoing emotionalism in religion.

Summing up the evidence of men's Christlikeness by their characters, as I look back down my long list of loved and honoured helpers and friends, I am certainly safe in saying that I at least should judge that no section of Christ's Church has any monopoly of Christ's spirit; and that I should like infinitely less to be examined on my own dogmatic theology than I should thirty-five years ago. Combined with this goes the fact that though I know the days of my stay on earth are greatly reduced, I seem to be less rather than more anxious about "the morrow." For though time has rounded off the corners of my conceit, experience of G.o.d's dealing with such an unworthy midget as myself has so strengthened the foundations on which faith stood, that Christ now means more to me as a living Presence than when I laid more emphasis on the dogmas concerning Him.

This chapter would not be complete without an endeavour to face the task of trying to answer the questions so often asked: "What is your position now? Do you still believe as you did when you first decided to serve Christ?" I am still a communicant member "in good standing"

of the Episcopal Church. One hopes that one's religious ideas grow like the rest of one's life. It is fools who are said to rush in where angels fear to tread. The most powerful Christian churches in the world, the Greek and the Roman, recognizing the great dangers threatening, have countered by stereotyping the answer for all time, a.s.suming all responsibility, and permitting no individual freedom in the matter. The numbers of their adherents testify to how vast a proportion of mankind the course appeals. And yet we are sons of G.o.d--and at our best value freedom in every department of our being--spirit as well as mind and body. George Adam Smith says: "The great causes of G.o.d and humanity are not defeated by the hot a.s.saults of the Devil, but by the slow, crushing, glacier-like ma.s.s of thousands and thousands of indifferent n.o.bodies. G.o.d's causes are never destroyed by being blown up, but by being sat upon. It is not the violent and anarchical whom we have to fear in the war for human progress, but the slow, the staid, the respectable; and the danger of these lies in their real skepticism. Though it would abhor articulately confessing that G.o.d does nothing, it virtually means so by refusing to share manifest opportunities for serving Him."