has not reached me. Picture if you can my amazed incredulity yesterday
to see an exact replica of myself as I once was, walking on the dock.
I rubbed my eyes and stared. Yes, it _was_ my purple gown. My first
impulse was to jerk it off the culprit, but I decided on more
diplomatic tactics. A very little detective work elucidated the
mystery. You had addressed the box in care of the Mission, thinking
doubtless, in your far-sighted, Scotch way, that if sent to an
individual, the said individual would have duty to pay. Knowing all
too well the chronic state of my pocket-book, you anticipated untoward
complications. Now, none of the Mission staff pay duties. The contents
of the box were mistaken for reinforcements for the charity clothing
store, and to-day my purple chambray gown, "to memory dear," walks
the street on another. _Sic transit_. I should add that one of the
modernists of our harbour has chosen it. The old conservatives regard
our collarless necks and abbreviated skirts with horror. What with the
loss _en route_ of several necessary articles of apparel, and the
discovery of this further depletion of my wardrobe, I regard the
oncoming winter with some misgivings.
One of the crew on the Northern Light, _alias_ the Prophet, so-called
because he is spirit brother to the Prophet of Doom, took a keen
relish in my discomfiture, or I fancied he did. He it was who put the
question in the doctor's Bible class, "Is it religious to wear
overalls to church?" The house officer had carefully saved a pair of
clean khaki trousers to honour the Sunday services, but in the local
judgment they were no fit garment for the Lord's house. Local
judgment, I may add, was not so drastic in its strictures on boudoir
caps. Some very pretty ones came to service on the heads of the choir,
but the verdict was a unanimously favourable one. A nomadic _Ladies'
Home Journal_ was responsible for their origin.
[Illustration: THE PROPHET OF DOOM]
"Out of the mouths of babes," etc. I have been trying to teach the
little ones the thirteenth chapter of Corinthians. Whilst undressing
Solomon the other night I had occasion, or it seemed to me that I had,
to speak somewhat sharply to one of the others. When I turned my
attention again to Solomon, he enunciated solemnly in his baby tones,
"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not
love, I am become as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal."
You complain most unjustly that I do not give a chronological account
of events. I give you the incidents which punctuate my days, and as
for the background, nothing could be simpler than to fill it in.
To divert your mind from such adverse criticism, let me tell you that
there is a strong suspicion abroad that I am a devout adherent of the
Roman Church. Rumours of this have been coming to me from time to
time, but I determined to withhold the news till its source was less
in question. Now I have it on the undeniable authority of the
Prophet. I have candles, lighted ones, on the dining-room table at
dinner. _Post hoc, propter hoc_--and what further proof is needed!
[Illustration: ANANIAS HAS BROKEN YET ANOTHER WINDOW]
Ananias has broken yet another window. When I questioned him as to
when the deed had been committed, he replied politely, but mournfully,
that he really could not tell me how many YEARS ago it was,
as if I were seeking to unearth some long undiscovered crime.
_August 25_
The other day Topsy had the misfortune to fall out of bed and hit her
two front teeth such a violent blow on the iron bar of the cot beside
hers that bits of ivory flew about the dormitory. This necessitated a
prompt matutinal visit to Dr. B., the dentist. As we waited our turn
in the Convalescent Room, I overheard one patient-to-be remark to his
neighbour, "They do be shockin' hard on us poor sailors. They says
I've got to take a bath when I comes into hospital. Why, B'y, I hasn't
had a bath since my mother washed me!"
The ethics of dentistry here are so mixed that one needs a Solomon to
disentangle them. Mrs. "Uncle Life"--her husband is Uncle
Eliphalet--recently had all her teeth pulled out, or, to be more
accurate, all her remaining teeth. As the operation involved
considerable time, labour, and novocaine, she was charged for the
benefit of the hospital. When two shining sets, uppers and lowers,
were ready for her, she was as pleased as a boy with his first
jack-knife; but not so Uncle Life. He considered it a work of
supererogation that not only must one pay to have the old teeth
removed, but for the new ones to replace them.
Did I ever write you about our chambermaid's feet--the new one? Her
name is Asenath, and she is so perfectly spherical that if you were to
start her rolling down a plank she could no more stop than can those
humpty-dumpty weighted dolls. 'Senath's temper is exemplary, and her
intentions of the best; in fact, she will turn into a model maid.
But the process of turning is in progress at the moment. It began with
our cook, a pattern of neatness and all the virtues, coming into my
office and complaining, "One of us'll have to go, miss."
"What? Which?" I enquired, dazed by the abruptness of this decision,
and wondering whether she were referring to me.
"This morning, miss, you know how hot it was? Well, 'Senath comes into
the kitchen and says to me, 'Tryphena, I finds my feet something
wonderful.' 'Wash them, and change your stockings,' I says. 'Wash
them! Why, Tryphena, I'se feared to do that. I might get a chill as
would strike in.'"
In a few well-chosen sentences I have explained to 'Senath the basic
rules of hygiene and of this house regarding water and its uses. She
has decided to stay and accept the inevitable weekly bath, but she
warns me fairly that if she goes "into a decline," I must take the
responsibility with her parents!
With your zeal for gardens, and your attachment to angle-worms--which
you will recall I do not share--you would be interested in our efforts
along these lines--the gardens, not the worms. In this climate a
garden is a lottery, and in ten seasons to one a spiteful summer
frost will fall upon the promising potatoes and kill the lot just as
they are ripening. The Eskimos at the Moravian stations put their
vegetal charges to bed each night with long covers over the rows. The
other day, in an old journal about the country, I came upon this
passage, and it struck me "How history does repeat itself." It runs:
"The soyle along the coast is not deep of earth, but bringing forth
abundantly peason small, peason which our countrymen have sowen have
come up faire, of which our Generall had a present acceptable for the
rarenesse, being the first fruits coming up by art and industrie in
that desolate and dishabited land." I can assure you that the sight of
a "peason," however small, if it did not come out of a tin can, would
be an acceptable offering to your friend. Even in summer we get no
fresh vegetables or fruits with the exception of occasional lettuce or
local berries. The epitome of this spot is a tin! In the same old
journal Whitbourne goes on to say that "Nature had recompensed that
only defect and incommoditie of some sharpe cold by many
benefits--with incredible quantitie and no less varietie of kindes of
fish in the sea and fresh water, of trouts and salmons and other fish
to us unknowen."
I have eaten fish (interspersed liberally with tinned stuff) and
drunken fish and thought and spoken and dreamt fish ever since I
arrived. But don't pity me for imaginary hardships. I like fish better
than I do meat, and for that matter our winter meat supply is walking
past my window this minute. He goes by the name of "Billy the Ox"; and
I am informed that as soon as it begins to freeze, he is to be killed
and frozen _in toto_, for the winter consumption of the staff,
patients, and children. So our winter is not to consist of one long
Friday.
_August 28_
You already know the worst about my leanings to Papacy; but to-day I
propose to set your mind at rest on an idea with which you have
hypnotized yourself--namely, that I am going to die of malnutrition
during what you are pleased to term the "long Arctic winter." I have
no intention of starving, and as for the "long Arctic winter," I do
not believe there is any such beast, as the farmer said when he looked
at the kangaroo in the circus.
I was sitting by my window quietly sewing the other day (that sentence
alone should reveal to you how many miles I have travelled from your
tutelage) when I overheard one of the children stoutly defending what
I took at first to be my character. The next sentence disabused me--it
was my figure under discussion.
"She's not fat!" averred Topsy. "I'll smack you if you says it
again."
"Well," muttered David, the light of reason being thus forcibly borne
in upon him, "she may not be 'zactly fat, but she's fine and hearty."
[Illustration: NOT FAT, BUT FINE AND HEARTY]
If this is the case, and my mirror all too plainly confirms the
verdict, and the summer has not waned, what will the "last estate of
that woman be," after the winter has passed over her? They tell me
that every one here puts on fat in the cold weather as a kind of
windproof jacket. I enclose a photograph of me on landing, so you may
remember me as I was.
No, you need not worry either over communications in the winter. You
really ought to have an intimate acquaintance with our telegraph
service, after you have, so to speak, subsidized it during the past
three months. It runs in winter as well as summer; and I see no
prospect of its closing if you keep it on such a sound financial
basis. Moreover, the building is devoted to the administration of the
law in all its branches. One half of it is the post and telegraph
office, while the other serves as the jail. The whole structure is
within a stone's throw of the church and school, as if the corrective
institutions of the place believed in intensive cultivation. But to
return to the jail. The walls are very thin, and every sound from it
can be plainly heard in the telegraph office adjoining. Friday morning
the operator, a capable and long-suffering young woman, came over to
complain to the doctor that she really found it impossible to carry
out the duties of her office, if the feeble-minded Delilah Freak was
to be incarcerated only six inches distant from her ear. It seems
that Delilah spends her days yelling at the top of her lungs, and Miss
Dennis states that she prefers to take telegraphic messages down in
competition with the mail steamer's winch rather than with Delilah's
"bawling."
[Illustration: DELILAH BAWLING]
I know all about competition in noises after trying to write in this
house. The ceilings are low and thin, and the walls are near and thin,
and the children are omnipresent and not thin, and their wants and
their joys and their quarrels are as numerous as the fishes in the
sea, and there you have the problem in a nutshell.
Now I must "hapse the door," and hie me to bed. As a matter of fact
the people here are far too honest for us to lock the doors. Such a
thing as theft is unheard of. Some may call it uncivilized. I call it
the millennium!
_August 31_
I believe that the writer who described the climate of this country as
being "nine months snow and three months winter" was not far from the
truth. In June the temperature of our rooms registered just above
freezing point, in July we were enveloped in continuous fog, and in
August we are having snow.
Such a tragic event has occurred. Our lettuce has been eaten by the
Mission cow! You know how hard it is to get anything to grow here.
Well, after having nearly killed ourselves in making a square inch of
ground into something resembling a bed, we had watched this lettuce
grow from day to day as the little green shoots struggled bravely
against the frost and cold. Then a few nights ago I was awakened by
the tinkle of a bell beneath my window. Hastily flinging on wrapper
and shoes I fled to save our one and only ewe lamb. But all the
morning light revealed was a desperate cold in the head, and an empty
bed from which the glory had departed.
Topsy has just been amusing herself by turning on the corridor taps to
watch the water run downstairs! Oh! Topsy,
"'Tis thine to teach us what dull hearts forget
How near of kin we are to springing flowers."
News has just reached us that the mail boat from St. Barbe to St.
Antoine has gone ashore on the rocks and is a total wreck. Happily no
lives were lost, but unhappily wrecks are of such frequent occurrence
on this dangerous coast as to excite little comment.
Drusilla, aged five, has been to my door to enquire if the children
may play with their dolls in the house. I believe in open-air
treatment, so I replied with kindness, but firmly withal, that "out of
doors" was the order of the day. I was a little electrified to hear
her return to the playroom and announce that "Teacher says you are to
go out, every darned one of you!" I was equally electrified the other
day to overhear Drusilla enquiring of her fellow philosophers which
they liked the best, "Teacher, the Doctor, or the Lord Jesus Christ."
In the midst of writing to you I was called away to interview a young
man from the other side of the harbour. He wanted me to give him some
of the milk used in the Home, for his baby, as at the hospital they
could only furnish him with canned milk, guaranteed by the label, he
claimed, to give "typhoid, diphtheria, and scarlet fever"!
_September 7_
It is a windy, rainy night, and I have told Topsy, who has a cold,
that she cannot come with us to church. After a wild outburst of anger
she was heard to mutter that "Teacher wouldn't let her go to church
because she was afraid she would get too good."
The fall of the year is coming on and the evenings are made wonderful
by two phenomena--the departure of the cannibalistic flies, and the
Northern lights. Twice at home I remember seeing an attenuated aurora
and thinking it wonderful. No words can describe this display on these
crisp and lovely nights. There is a tang and snap in the air, and the
earth beneath and the heavens above seem vibrating with unearthly
life. The Eskimos say that the Northern lights are the spirits of the
dead at play, but I like to think of them, too, as the translated
souls of the icebergs which have gone south and met a too warm and
watery death in the Gulf Stream. Certainly all the colours of those
lovely monarchs of the North are reflected dimly in the heavens. The
lights move about so constantly that one fancies that the soul of the
berg, freed at last from its long prison, is showing the astonished
worlds of what it is capable. The odd thing was that when I first saw
them on a clear night, the stars shone through them, only they looked
like Coleridge's "wan stars which danced between."
I can vouch for the truth of another "sidelight," though from only one
experience. One night last week, clear and frosty, I had just gone to
my room at about eleven o'clock when the doctor called me to come out
and "hear the lights." I thought surely I must have misunderstood, but
on reaching the balcony and listening, I could distinctly hear the
swish of the "spirits" as they rushed across the sky. It sounds like a
diminished silk petticoat which has lost its blatancy, but retains
its personality.
Little did I realize at the time my good fortune in arriving here in
daylight. It seems that it is the invariable habit of all coastal
steamers to reach here at night, and dump the dumbly resenting
passengers in the darkness into the tiny punts which cluster around
the ship's side. Since my arrival every single boat has appeared
shortly before midnight, or shortly after. In either case it means
that the men of the Mission must work all night landing patients and
freight, and the next day there is a chastened and sleepy community to
meet the forthcoming tasks. It is especially hard on the hospital
folk, for the steamer only takes about twenty hours to go to the end
of her run and return, and they try and send those cases which do not
have to be admitted back by the same boat on her southern journey.
This means an all-night clinic. But I can say to the credit of the
patients and staff that I have never heard one word of complaint.
That is certainly a charming feature about this life. There are plenty
of things to growl about, but one is so reduced to essentials that the
ones selected are of more importance than those which afford such
fruitful topics in civilization.
I have just overheard Gabriel informing the other children that "Satan
was once an angel, but he got real saucy, so God turned him out of
heaven." Paradise Lost in a sentence!
The night after the audible lights a furious rain and wind storm broke
over us. No wonder the trees have such a struggle for existence, if
these storms are frequent. They do not last long, but they are the
real thing while they are in progress. I used to smile when I was told
that the Home was riveted with iron bolts to the solid bedrock, but
that night when I lay wide awake, combating an incipient feeling of
_mal de mer_ as my bed rocked with the force of the gale, I thanked
the fates for the foresight of the builders. Never before had I
believed in the tale of the church having been blown bodily into the
harbour; but during those wild hours of darkness I was certain at each
succeeding gust that we were going to follow its example.
Dawn--a pale affair looking out suspiciously on the chastened
world--broke at last, and I "histed" my window (to quote the estimable
'Senath). The rain had stopped. The cheated wind was whistling around
the corners of the old wooden buildings, and taking out its spite on
any passers-by who must venture forth to work. The harbour, usually so
peaceful and so sheltered, was lashed into a cauldron of boiling white
foam, and the rocks were swept so clean that they at least had
"shining morning faces."
I dressed quickly and ran down to the wharf to enquire as to the
health of the Northern Light. The first person I met was the Prophet.
He was positively elate. If I were a pantheist I should think him a
relative of the northeast wind. The storm of the previous night had
been exactly to his liking. All his worst prognostications had been
fulfilled, and quite a bit thrown in _par dessus le marché_. He told
me that a tiny, rickety house across the harbour had first been
unroofed, and then one of the walls blown in. It is a real disaster
for the family, for they are poor enough without having Kismet thus
descend upon them.
The hospital boat had held on safely, but several little craft were
driven ashore. Naturally the children love the aftermath of such an
event, for the world is turned for them into one large, entrancing
puddle, bordered with embryo mud pies.
Topsy again! I am informed that she has tried to convert her Sunday
best into a hobble skirt, reducing it in the process to something
hopelessly ludicrous. It can never, never be worn again.
My arm aches and I cannot decide whether it is from much orphan
scrubbing or from much writing, but in either case I must bid you _au
revoir_.
_September 25_
Last night I was awakened by a terrific noise proceeding from the
lower regions. Armed with my umbrella, the only semblance of a stick
within reach, I descended on a tour of investigation. Opening the
larder door I beheld six huge dogs, and devastation reigning supreme.
These dogs are half wolf in breed, and very destructive, as I can
testify. When I wildly brandished my umbrella, which could not
possibly have harmed them, they jumped through the closed window
leaving not a pane of glass behind. This, I suppose, is merely a
nocturnal interlude to break the monotony of life in a country which
boasts no burglars.
The children attend the Mission school, and yesterday Topsy was sent
home in dire disgrace for lying and cheating. She is not to be
permitted to return until she is willing to confess and apologize. She
thereupon tried to commit suicide by swallowing paper pellets, and in
the night the doctor had to be called in to prescribe. She is white
and wan to-day, but when I went in to bid her good-night I found her
thrilling over a new prayer which she had learned, and which she
repeated to me with deep emotion:
"Little children, be ye wise,
Speak the truth and tell no lies.
The LORD'S portion is to dwell
Forever in the flames of hell."
I want to tell you something about our babies. They are four in
number. David, aged five, considers himself quite a big boy, and a
leader of the others. His father was frozen to death in Eskimo Bay
some years ago whilst hunting food for his family. Although David is
always boasting of his strength and the superior wisdom of his years,
yet he is really very tiny for his age. He is a delightful little
optimist, who announces cheerfully after each failure to do right that
he is "going to be good all the time now," to which we add the mental
reservation, "until next time." He is the proud possessor of a Teddy
bear. This long-suffering animal was a source of great pleasure until
a short time ago when David started making a first-hand investigation
to find out where the "squeak" came from--an investigation which ended
disastrously for the bear, however it may have furthered the cause of
science.
Last month I went to Nameless Cove to fetch to the Home a little boy
of three, of whom I have already written you. Nameless Cove is about
twelve miles west of St. Antoine. I have never seen such a wretched
hovel--a one-roomed log hut, completely destitute of furniture. The
door was so low I had to bend almost double to enter. A rough shelf
did duty for a bed, upon which lay an old bedridden man, while at the
other end lay a sick woman with a child beside her, and crouched below
was an idiot daughter. Altogether nine persons lived in this hut,
eight adults and this one boy. Ananias is an illegitimate child, and
has lived with these grandparents since his mother lost her reason and
was removed to the asylum at St. John's. The child was almost
destitute of clothing, and covered with vermin. He has the face of a
seraph, and a voice that lisps out curses with the fluency of a
veteran trooper. Ananias is David's shadow; he follows him everywhere,
and echoes all his words as if they were gems of wisdom, far above
rubies. Indeed, when David has ceased speaking, one waits
involuntarily for Ananias to begin in his shrill treble tones. He is a
hopeless child to correct, for when you imagine you are scolding him
very severely, and you look for the tears of penitence to flow, he
puts up his little face with an angelic smile, and lisps, "Tiss me."
Drusilla, whose slight acquaintance you have already made, is three
and comes from Savage Cove. The father has gradually become blind and
the mother is crippled. Drusilla keeps us all on the alert, for we
never know what she will be doing next. On Sunday mornings she is put
to rest with the other little ones while we are at church. On
returning last Sunday I found that she had secured a box of white
ointment (thought to be quite beyond her reach), and with her
toothbrush painted one side of the baby's face white, which with her
other rosy cheek gave her the appearance of a clown. Not content with
portrait painting, Drusilla then turned her energies to house
decoration, the result attained on the wall being entirely to the
satisfaction of the artist, as was evidenced by the proud smile with
which our outcry was greeted.
The real baby is Beulah, just two years, and she exercises her gentle
but despotic sway over all, from the least to the greatest. She is
continually upsetting the standard of neatness which was once the
glory of this Home, by sprawling on the floors, dragging after her a
headless doll with sawdust oozing from every pore. A dilapidated
bunny and several mangled pictures complete the procession. It is
hopeless to protest, for she just looks as if she could not understand
how any one could object to such priceless treasures. She awakens us
at unconscionable hours in the morning, when all reasonable beings are
still sleeping the sleep of the just, and keeps up a perpetual chatter
interspersed with highly dangerous gymnastic feats upon her bed.
Can you find any babies throughout the British Isles to match mine?
_October 20_
Since last I wrote you we have had a very strenuous time in the Home;
the entire family has been down with measles. Then when that was over
and the children well, the sewing maid, whom I had engaged shortly
after my arrival, gave notice, shook the dust from her feet, and I was
left single-handed. It took the whole of my time to keep these
forty-odd infants fed, clothed, and washed, and I had no leisure to
write to you even at "scattered times." It seemed to me that the
appetites of these _enfants terribles_ grew abnormally, that their
clothes rent asunder with lightning-like rapidity, and that they fell
into mud heaps with even greater facility than usual. It was sometimes
a delicate problem to decide which of many pressing duties had the
prior claim. Whether to try and feed the hungry (the kitchen range
having sprung a leak), to start to repair two hundred odd garments
(the weekly mend), or to resuscitate one of the babies (just rescued
from the reservoir). At such times I would wonder if I were somewhere
near attaining to that state of experience when I should be able to
appreciate your alluring phrase, "the fun of mothering an orphanage."