_THE CHAMPION_
The Deep-sea Mission is not concerned chiefly with the souls of the
folk, nor yet exclusively with their bodies: it endeavours to provide
them with religious instruction, to heal their ailments; but it is
quite as much interested, apparently, in improving their material
condition. To the starving it gives food, to the naked clothing; but
it must not be supposed that charity is indiscriminately distributed.
That is not the case. Far from it. When a man can cut wood for the
steamer or hospitals in return for the food he is given, for example,
he is required to do so; but the unhappy truth is that a man can cut
very little wood "on a winter's diet" exclusively of flour. "You gets
weak all of a suddent, zur," one expressed it to me. In his effort to
"help the people help themselves" the doctor has established
cooperative stores and various small industries. The result has been
twofold: the regeneration of several communities, and an outbreak of
hatred and dishonest abuse on the part of the traders, who have too
long fattened on the isolation and miseries of the people. The
cooperative stores, I believe, are thriving, and the small industries
promise well. Thus the mission is at once the hope and comfort of the
coast. The man on the _Strathcona_ is the only man, in all the long
history of that wretched land, to offer a helping hand to the whole
people from year to year without ill temper and without hope of gain.
"But I can't do everything," says he.
And that is true. There is much that the mission-doctor cannot
do--delicate operations, for which the more skilled hand of a
specialist is needed. For a time, one season, an eminent surgeon, of
Boston, the first of many, it is hoped, cruised on the _Strathcona_,
and most generously operated at Battle Harbour. The mission gathered
the patients to the hospital from far and near before the surgeon
arrived. Folk who had looked forward in dread to a painful death, fast
approaching, were of a sudden promised life. There was a man coming,
they were told, above the skill of the mission surgeons, who could
surely cure them. The deed was as good as the promise: many operations
were performed; all the sick who came for healing were healed; the
hope of not one was disappointed. Folk who had suffered years of pain
were restored. Never had such a thing been known on the Labrador. Men
marvelled. The surgeon was like a man raising the dead. But there was
a woman who is now, perhaps, dead; she lacked the courage. Day after
day for two weeks she waited for the Boston surgeon; but when he came
she fled in terror of the knife. Her ailment was mortal in that land;
but she might easily have been cured; and she fled home when she knew
that the healer had come. No doubt her children now know what it is to
want a mother.
Dr. Grenfell will let no man oppress his people when his arm is
strong enough to champion them. There was once a rich man (so I
was told before I met the doctor)--a man of influence and wide
acquaintance--whose business was in a remote harbour of Newfoundland.
He did a great wrong; and when the news of it came to the ears of the
mission-doctor, the anchor of the _Strathcona_ came up in a hurry, and
off she steamed to that place.
"Now," said the doctor to this man, "you must make what amends you
can, and you must confess your sin."
The man laughed aloud. It seemed to him, no doubt, a joke that the
mission-doctor should interfere in the affairs of one so rich who knew
the politicians at St. Johns. But the mission-doctor was also a
magistrate.
"I say," said he, deliberately, "that you must pay one thousand
dollars and confess your sin."
The man cursed the doctor with great laughter, and dared him to do his
worst. The joke still had point.
"I warn you," said the doctor, "that I will arrest you if you do not
do precisely as I say."
The man pointed out to the doctor that his magisterial district lay
elsewhere, and again defied him.
"Very true," said the doctor; "but I warn you that I have a crew quite
capable of taking you into it."
The joke was losing its point. But the man blustered that he, too, had
a crew.
"You must make sure," said the doctor, "that they love you well enough
to fight for you. On Sunday evening," he continued, "you will appear
at the church at seven o'clock and confess your sin before the
congregation; and next week you will pay the money as I have said."
"I'll see you in h--ll first!" replied the man, defiantly.
[Illustration: "A CREW QUITE CAPABLE OF TAKING YOU INTO IT"]
At the morning service the doctor announced that a sinful man would
confess his sin before them all that night. There was great
excitement. Other men might be prevailed upon to make so humiliating a
confession, the folk said, but not this one--not this rich man, whom
they hated and feared, because he had so long pitilessly oppressed
them. So they were not surprised when at the evening service the
sinful man did not show his face.
"Will you please to keep your seats," said the doctor, "while I go
fetch that man."
He found the man in a neighbour's house, on his knees in prayer, with
his friends. They were praying fervently, it is said; but whether or
not that the heart of the doctor might be softened I do not know.
"Prayer," said the doctor, "is a good thing in its place, but it
doesn't 'go' here. Come with me."
The man meekly went with the doctor; he was led up the aisle of the
church, was placed where all the people could see him; and then he was
asked many questions, after the doctor had described the great sin of
which he was guilty.
"Did you do this thing?"
"I did."
"You are an evil man, of whom the people should beware?"
"I am."
"You deserve the punishment of man and God?"
"I do."
There was much more, and at the end of it all the doctor told the man
that the good God would forgive him if he should ask in true faith and
repentance, but that the people, being human, could not. For a whole
year, he charged the people, they must not speak to that man; but if
at the end of that time he had shown an honest disposition to mend his
ways, they might take him to their hearts.
The end of the story is that the man paid the money and left the
place.
This relentless judge, on a stormy day of last July, carried many
bundles ashore at Cartwright, in Sandwich Bay of the Labrador. The
wife of the Hudson Bay Company's agent exclaimed with delight when she
opened them. They were Christmas gifts from the children of the
"States" to the lads and little maids of that coast. With almost all
there came a little letter addressed to the unknown child who was to
receive the toy; they were filled with loving words--with good wishes,
coming in childish sincerity from the warm little hearts. The doctor
never forgets the Christmas gifts. He is the St. Nicholas of that
coast. If he ever weeps at all, I should think it would be when he
hears that despite his care some child has been neglected. The wife of
the agent stowed away the gifts against the time to come.
"It makes them _very_ happy," said the agent's wife.
"Not long ago," I chanced to say, "I saw a little girl with a stick of
wood for a dolly. Are they not afraid to play with these pretty
things?"
"They _are_," she laughed. "They use them for ornaments. But _that_
doesn't matter. It makes them happy just to look at them."
We all laughed.
"And yet," she continued, "they _do_ play with them, sometimes, after
all. There is a little girl up the bay who _has kissed the paint off
her dolly_!"
* * * * *
Thus and all the time, in storm and sunshine, summer and winter
weather, Grenfell of the Deep-sea Mission goes about doing good; if
it's not in a boat, it's in a dog-sled. He is what he likes to call "a
Christian man." But he is also a hero--at once the bravest and the
most beneficently useful man I know. If he regrets his isolation, if
the hardship of the life sometimes oppresses him, no man knows it. He
does much, but there is much more to do. If the good people of the
world would but give a little more of what they have so
abundantly--and if they could but know the need, they would surely do
that--joy might be multiplied on that coast; nor would any man be
wronged by misguided charity.
"What a man does for the love of God," the doctor once said, "he does
differently."
_Decorated Cloth, $1.50_
_Doctor Luke of The Labrador_