Plainfield High School - Milestone Yearbook (Plainfield, NJ)

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THE ORACLE 15 Chidley, stopping at the various missionary stations, the three hospitals and the Orphan Asylum, and answers calls from all quarters. No weather is rough enough, no gale too strong to keep the “Strathcona” in harbor when a call comes for help. Seas that appall the staunchest of the Labrador fisher- men, tempests that fairly lift the ships from their anchorage—nothing is too formidable for this daring missionary. By the natives he has long been regarded with tolerant amusement as a gentle lunatic, whom Providence preserves miraculously from destruction. Mr. Norman Duncan, who visited him on board his little vessel during a most perilous trip says: “Doubtless he enjoyed the experience while it lasted—and promptly forgot it as being common-place. I have heard of him caught at night in a winter’s gale of wind and sleet, threading a tumultuous, reef strewn sea, his skipper at the wheel, himself on the bowsprit, guiding the ship by the flash and roar of breakers while the sea tumbled over him.” Mr. Duncan says of a friend who was with Dr. Grenfell on this trip: “If the chance passenger who told me the story, is to be believed, upon that trying occasion the Doctor had ‘the time of his life.’ “All that man wanted, I told the Doctor, was, as he said, ‘to bore a hole in the bottom of the ship and crawl out.’ “Why, exclaimed the Doctor with a laugh of surprise, ‘he wasn't frightened, was he?’ ” The “Strathcona” is the fifth boat which Dr. Grenfell has had since he began his work on the Labrador. All the others have succumbed to hard usage on “the worst coast in the world.” The Doctor’s disregard of storm and surf has given rise to a new proverb among the fishermen. When the wind blows an exceptionally stiff gale and the sea looks particularly hostile, they say, “This will bring Grenfell.” And it usually does. All through the long, desolate winter Dr. Grenfell makes his untiring trips on his sledge, the “Lend-a-Hand.” Drawn by a dog-team, over ice and snow, in bitter cold, he never hesitates for an instant to start out whenever he is called upon. In a letter written to a contemporary periodical, he says: “We have already been over six hundred miles with the dogs. I hada long trip to a place seventy miles away to set a broken arm. Fortunately, or, I may say, unfortunately, I had forty other patients along the route. Thus, on my second southern trip to a place about sixty miles distant, to fetch a person back for operation, we were away thirteen days and saw seventy sick folk.” In another article he tells most graphically of a typical trip which he made during the winter. Called to the bedside of a dying priest many miles away, he prepared to start immediate ly on his long journey. He was just

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14 TEEORACEE pecting and illiterate as they are, they are readily fleeced by unscrupulous traders, who practically own them before many years. After a hard winter they start handicapped. In order to secure the wherewithal to begin work, they must needs mortgage the prospective catch, and thus, living from hand to mouth, they are obliged to continue as long as there are fish to sell. Such was the state of the Labrador coast before Dr. Grenfell’s arrival. There was but one physician to be had—and his visits were few and casual, —a brutal creature, who as often as not refused to attend the people, suc- cored them or left them to die, as the spirit moved him. Here was a con- dition of affairs sadly in need of reformation. And the man was not want- ing. Dr. Grenfell came and immediately set to work, with an energy and precision which foreshadowed great things. In a short time there was a hospital established at St. Anthony on the coast of North Newfoundland, and the new doctor was known over some two thousand miles of sea-board. All his efforts were directed to the extermination of the race-plague— tuberculosis—which the insufficient nourishment and hard lives of the folk rapidly produced. To gain his end, Dr. Grenfell must in some way better the physical con- dition of the people, else his work would be totally useless. As a first step, he determined to release them from the bondage in which they were held by the traders, and to abolish the iniquitous “truck” system, as it was called. So he started a co-operative store. This succeeded so well that now there are eight or ten more scattered along the coast of Labrador and Newfoundland, and the people are in much happier circumstances than ever before. 3ut the assistance of the fishers during the winter was a matter of much concern to the missionary. Little could be done for them, as they scattered as soon as the cold weather fell, in the hope of being able to trap a few fur- bearing animals. Thus widely separated as they were, nothing could be done to educate the children. The problem then was, to provide for the men em- ployment which would bring the families together into a small community. But what problem could Dr. Grenfell not solve? Taking up a large grant of government land, he had soon built a saw-mill, gathered the people about it, giving them plenty of work for the terrible winter time, and provided a school for the children. | But quite as important as these medical and missionary stations are the movable ones in which Dr. ‘Grenfell patrols the coast, bearing with him health and cheer. In summer he carries on his work by means of his little steamer, the “Strathcona;” in winter he visits every accessible corner of his territory in his dog-sleigh, dubbed the “Lend-a-Hand.” The “Strathcona” sails up and down the coast from St. John’s to Cape

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16 Gi OA Gis on the point of setting out, dog-train before the door and driver merrily cracking his whip, when an urgent summons was brought him to attend a small boy who had broken his thigh. “Johnnie’s” sufferings relieved and his injured limb plastered in a plaster cast, the doctor hurried forward to his first patient. As they were hastening past a wretched little hut in the wilder- ness of snow, the Doctor was again hailed and asked to look into the con- dition of a poor little orphan girl, half dead from starvation. He found the child wrapped in rags and laid on the floor of the shanty, a pitiful spectacle. The little one was ministered to and the Doctor set out for the third time, finally reaching his destination in spite of delays and appeals. Such is the life of Dr. Grenfell. And does he regret the other life in the outside world which he has given up? Does he realize how great is the work he is doing? Perhaps he best answers himself. “I am no martyr,” he exclaimed impatiently to a friend who put to him a like question. Indeed no. He is a healthy, hearty, humorous man, eager to get out of life all there may be in it for him, rejoicing boyishly in the risk and the danger, glad of his freedom, always merry and brave, cheerful and strong. His ideal of existence seems to be expressed in the words he so often uses: “The great joys of this life are its opportunities for service.” VALEDICTORY ESSAY THE PRIOMPHS ORWOU LE: GERTRUDE LAURA HUNTER. HERE is one respect in which the aging world and the aging individual are alike. With each the limit of usefulness advances as each in- creases in years. The boy who at ten considered the man of forty as ready for the chimney-corner and Taylor’s “Holy Dying,’ himself at forty is carrying a banner of red or orange or blue to football matches, and is splitting his throat over valorous deeds on the diamond or gridiron. So it is with the world. Part of it elected a “young” man of forty-three to the presidency a year or so ago, and insistently spoke of his youth in connection with such a position of trust. Over a century ago, however, William Pitt, a man twenty years his junior, was managing the office of chancellor of the exchequer, becoming premier of England at twenty-three. We are in the habit of referring to Alphonso as “the little king of Spain,’ imagining him with the curls and the broad white collar of infancy. It would be safe to say, however, that when the world was younger, nobody regarded the eighteen year old Alexander as “‘the little prince of Macedon.” Whatever the world may regard as the limit of youthfulness, however,