CHAPTER I

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| By Wilfred T. Grenfell |

| |

| |

| A LABRADOR DOCTOR. The Autobiography of |

| Wilfred Thomason Grenfell. Illustrated. |

| |

| LABRADOR DAYS. Tales of the Sea Toilers. |

| With frontispiece. |

| |

| TALES OF THE LABRADOR. With frontispiece. |

| |

| THE ADVENTURE OF LIFE. |

| |

| ADRIFT ON AN ICE-PAN. Illustrated. |

| |

| HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY |

| BOSTON AND NEW YORK |

+-------------------------------------------------+

A LABRADOR DOCTOR

The Autobiography of

Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

[Illustration: (signed) Wilfred Grenfell]

A LABRADOR DOCTOR

The Autobiography of

Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

M.D. (Oxon.), C.M.G.

With Illustrations

[Illustration]

Boston and New York

Houghton Mifflin Company

The Riverside Press Cambridge

Copyright, 1919, by Wilfred T. Grenfell

All Rights Reserved

PREFACE

I have long been resisting the strong pressure from friends that would

force me to risk having to live alongside my own autobiography. It

seems still an open question whether it is advisable, or even whether

it is right--seeing that it calls for confessions. In the eyes of God

the only alternative is a book of lies. Moreover, sitting down to

write one's own life story has always loomed up before my imagination

as an admission that one was passing the post which marks the last

lap; and though it was a justly celebrated physician who told us that

we might profitably crawl upon the shelf at half a century, that added

no attraction for me to the effort, when I passed that goal.

Thirty-two years spent in work for deep-sea fishermen, twenty-seven of

which years have been passed in Labrador and northern Newfoundland,

have necessarily given me some experiences which may be helpful to

others. I feel that this alone justifies the writing of this story.

To the many helpers who have cooperated with me at one time or another

throughout these years, I owe a debt of gratitude which will never be

forgotten, though it has been impossible to mention each one by name.

Without them this work could never have been.

To my wife, who was willing to leave all the best the civilized world

can offer to share my life on this lonely coast, I want to dedicate

this book. Truth forces me to own that it would never have come into

being without her, and her greater share in the work of its production

declares her courage to face the consequences.

CONTENTS

I. EARLY DAYS 1

II. SCHOOL LIFE 15

III. EARLY WORK IN LONDON 37

IV. AT THE LONDON HOSPITAL 64

V. NORTH SEA WORK 99

VI. THE LURE OF THE LABRADOR 119

VII. THE PEOPLE OF LABRADOR 139

VIII. LECTURING AND CRUISING 159

IX. THE SEAL FISHERY 171

X. THREE YEARS' WORK IN THE BRITISH ISLES 183

XI. FIRST WINTER AT ST. ANTHONY 197

XII. THE COOPERATIVE MOVEMENT 215

XIII. THE MILL AND THE FOX FARM 226

XIV. THE CHILDREN'S HOME 241

XV. PROBLEMS OF EDUCATION 254

XVI. "WHO HATH DESIRED THE SEA?" 270

XVII. THE REINDEER EXPERIMENT 288

XVIII. THE ICE-PAN ADVENTURE 304

XIX. THEY THAT DO BUSINESS IN GREAT WATERS 315

XX. MARRIAGE 331

XXI. NEW VENTURES 344

XXII. PROBLEMS ON LAND AND SEA 357

XXIII. A MONTH'S HOLIDAY IN ASIA MINOR 376

XXIV. THE WAR 384

XXV. FORWARD STEPS 403

XXVI. THE FUTURE OF THE MISSION 411

XXVII. MY RELIGIOUS LIFE 424

INDEX 435

ILLUSTRATIONS

WILFRED THOMASON GRENFELL _Frontispiece_

VIEW FROM MOSTYN HOUSE, THE AUTHOR'S BIRTHPLACE, PARKGATE,

CHESHIRE 2

OXFORD UNIVERSITY RUGBY UNION FOOTBALL TEAM 44

THE LABRADOR COAST 120

ESKIMO WOMAN AND BABY 128

ESKIMO MAN 128

ESKIMO GIRLS 132

BATTLE HARBOUR 140

A LABRADOR BURIAL 156

THE LABRADOR DOCTOR IN SUMMER 164

THE STRATHCONA 192

THREE OF THE DOCTOR'S DOGS 198

A KOMATIK JOURNEY 202

THE FIRST COOPERATIVE STORE 218

ST. ANTHONY 226

INSIDE THE ORPHANAGE 250

FISH ON THE FLAKES 272

DRYING THE SEINES 272

A PART OF THE REINDEER HERD 296

REINDEER TEAMS MEETING A DOG TEAM 296

A SPRING SCENE AT ST. ANTHONY 304

DOG RACE AT ST. ANTHONY 304

ICEBERGS 320

COMMODORE PEARY ON HIS WAY BACK FROM THE POLE, 1909 340

THE INSTITUTE, ST. JOHN'S 354

DOG TRAVEL 368

THE LABRADOR DOCTOR IN WINTER 406

ENTRANCE TO ST. ANTHONY HARBOUR 418

A LABRADOR DOCTOR

CHAPTER I

EARLY DAYS

To be born on the 28th of February is not altogether without its

compensations. It affords a subject of conversation when you are asked

to put your name in birthday books. It is evident that many people

suppose it to be almost an intrusion to appear on that day. However,

it was perfectly satisfactory to me so long as it was not the 29th. As

a boy, that was all for which I cared. Still, I used at times to be

oppressed by the danger, so narrowly missed, of growing up with undue

deliberation.

The event occurred in 1865 in Parkgate, near Chester, England, whither

my parents had moved to enable my father to take over the school of

his uncle. I was always told that what might be called boisterous

weather signalled my arrival. Experience has since shown me that that

need not be considered a particularly ominous portent in the winter

season on the Sands of Dee.

It is fortunate that the selection of our birthplace is not left to

ourselves. It would most certainly be one of those small decisions

which would later add to the things over which we worry. I can see how

it would have acted in my own case. For my paternal forbears are

really of Cornish extraction--a corner of our little Island to which

attaches all the romantic aroma of the men, who, in defence of

England, "swept the Spanish Main," and so long successfully singed the

Bang of Spain's beard, men whose exploits never fail to stir the best

blood of Englishmen, and among whom my direct ancestors had the

privilege of playing no undistinguished part. On the other hand, my

visits thither have--romance aside--convinced me that the restricted

foreshore and the precipitous cliffs are a handicap to the development

of youth, compared with the broad expanses of tempting sands, which

are after all associated with another kinsman, whose songs have helped

to make them famous, Charles Kingsley.

My mother was born in India, her father being a colonel of many

campaigns, and her brother an engineer officer in charge during the

siege of Lucknow till relieved by Sir Henry Havelock. At the first

Delhi Durbar no less than forty-eight of my cousins met, all being

officers either of the Indian military or civil service.

To the modern progressive mind the wide sands are a stumbling-block.

Silting up with the years, they have closed the river to navigation,

and converted our once famous Roman city of Chester into a sleepy,

second-rate market-town. The great flood of commerce from the New

World sweeps contemptuously past our estuary, and finds its

clearing-house under the eternal, assertive smoke clouds which

camouflage the miles of throbbing docks and slums called

Liverpool--little more than a dozen miles distant. But the

heather-clad hills of Heswall, and the old red sandstone ridge, which

form the ancient borough of the "Hundred of Wirral," afford an

efficient shelter from the insistent taint of out-of-the-worldness.

Every inch of the Sands of Dee were dear to me. I learned to know

their every bank and gutter. Away beyond them there was a mystery in

the blue hills of the Welsh shore, only cut off from us children in

reality by the narrow, rapid water of the channel we called the Deep.

Yet they seemed so high and so far away. The people there spoke a

different language from ours, and all their instincts seemed

diverse. Our humble neighbours lived by the seafaring genius which we

ourselves loved so much. They made their living from the fisheries of

the river mouth; and scores of times we children would slip away, and

spend the day and night with them in their boats.

[Illustration: VIEW FROM MOSTYN HOUSE, THE AUTHOR'S BIRTHPLACE,

PARKGATE, CHESHIRE]

While I was still quite a small boy, a terrible blizzard struck the

estuary while the boats were out, and for twenty-four hours one of the

fishing craft was missing. Only a lad of sixteen was in charge of

her--a boy whom we knew, and with whom we had often sailed. All my

family were away from home at the time except myself; and I can still

remember the thrill I experienced when, as representative of the "Big

House," I was taken to see the poor lad, who had been brought home at

last, frozen to death.

The men of the opposite shores were shopkeepers and miners. Somehow we

knew that they couldn't help it. The nursery rhyme about "Taffy was a

Welshman; Taffy was a thief," because familiar, had not led us to hold

any unduly inflated estimate of the Welsh character. One of my old

nurses did much to redeem it, however. She had undertaken the burden

of my brother and myself during a long vacation, and carried us off

bodily to her home in Wales. Her clean little cottage stood by the

side of a road leading to the village school of the State Mining

District of Festiniog. We soon learned that the local boys resented

the intrusion of the two English lads, and they so frequently chased

us off the village green, which was the only playground offered us,

that we at last decided to give battle. We had stored up a pile of

slates behind our garden wall, and luring the enemy to the gates by

the simple method of retiring before their advance, we saluted them

with artillery fire from a comparatively safe entrenchment. To my

horror, one of the first missiles struck a medium-sized boy right over

the eye, and I saw the blood flow instantly. The awful comparison of

David and Goliath flashed across my terror-stricken mind, and I fled

incontinently to my nurse's protection. Subsequently by her adroit

diplomacy, we were not only delivered from justice, but gained the

freedom of the green as well.

Far away up the river came the great salt-water marshes which seemed

so endless to our tiny selves. There was also the Great Cop, an

embankment miles long, intended to reach "from England to Wales," but

which was never finished because the quicksand swallowed up all that

the workmen could pour into it. Many a time I have stood on the broken

end, where the discouraged labourers had left their very shovels and

picks and trucks and had apparently fled in dismay, as if convicted of

the impiousness of trying to fill the Bottomless Pit. To my childish

imagination the upturned wheelbarrows and wasted trucks and rails

always suggested the banks of the Red Sea after the awful disaster had

swept over Pharoah and his host. How the returning tide used to sweep

through that to us fathomless gulch! It made the old river seem ever

so much more wonderful, and ever so much more filled with adventure.

Many a time, just to dare it, I would dive into the very cauldron, and

let the swirling current carry me to the grassy sward beyond--along

which I would run till the narrowing channel permitted my crossing to

the Great Cop again. I would be drying myself in the sunshine as I

went, and all ready for my scanty garments when I reached my clothing

once more.

Then came the great days when the heavy nor'westers howled over the

Sands--our sea-front was exposed to all the power of the sea right

away to the Point of Ayr--the days when they came in with big spring

tides, when we saw the fishermen doubling their anchors, and carefully

overhauling the holding gear of their boats, before the flooding tide

drove them ashore, powerless to do more than watch them battling at

their moorings like living things--the possessions upon which their

very bread depended. And then this one would sink, and another would

part her cable and come hurtling before the gale, until she crashed

right into the great upright blocks of sandstone which, riveted with

iron bands to their copings, were relied upon to hold the main road

from destruction. Sometimes in fragments, and sometimes almost entire,

the craft would be slung clean over the torturing battlements, and be

left stranded high and dry on our one village street, a menace to

traffic, but a huge joy to us children.

The fascination of the Sands was greatly enhanced by the numerous

birds which at all times frequented them, in search of the abundant

food which lay buried along the edges of the muddy gutters. There were

thousands of sandpipers in enormous flocks, mixed with king plovers,

dunlins, and turnstones, which followed the ebb tides, and returned

again in whirling clouds before the oncoming floods. Black-and-white

oyster-catchers were always to be found chattering over the great

mussel patches at low water. With their reddish bills, what a trophy a

bunch of them made as we bore them proudly home over our shoulders!

Then there were the big long-billed curlews. What a triumph when one

outwitted them! One of my clearest recollections is discovering a

place to which they were flighting at night by the water's edge; how,

having no dog, I swam out for bird after bird as they fell to my

gun--shooting some before I had even time to put on my shirt again;

and my consequent blue-black shoulder, which had to be carefully

hidden next day. There were wild ducks, too, to be surprised in the

pools of the big salt marshes.

From daylight to dark I would wander, quite alone, over endless miles,

entirely satisfied to come back with a single bird, and not in the

least disheartened if I got none. All sense of time used to be lost,

and often enough the sandwich and biscuit for lunch forgotten, so that

I would be forced occasionally to resort to a solitary public house

near a colliery on our side of the water, for "tea-biscuits," all that

they offered, except endless beer for the miners. I can even remember,

when very hard driven, crossing to the Welsh side for bread and

cheese.

These expeditions were made barefoot as long as the cold was not too

great. A diary that I assayed to keep in my eighth year reminds me

that on my birthday, five miles from home in the marshes, I fell head

over heels into a deep hole, while wading out, gun in hand, after some

oyster-catchers which I had shot. The snow was still deep on the

countryside, and the long trot home has never been quite forgotten. My

grief, however, was all for the gun. There was always the joy of

venture in those dear old Sands. The channels cut in them by the

flowing tides ran deep, and often intersected. Moreover, they changed

with the varying storms. The rapidly rising tide, which sent a bore up

the main channel as far as Chester, twelve miles above us, filled

first of all these treacherous waterways, quite silently, and often

unobserved. To us, taught to be as much at home in the water as on the

land, they only added spice to our wanderings. They were nowhere very

wide, so by keeping one's head, and being able to swim, only our

clothes suffered by it, and they, being built for that purpose, did

not complain.

One day, however, I remember great excitement. The tide had risen

rapidly in the channel along the parade front, and the shrimp

fishermen, who used push-nets in the channels at low tide, had

returned without noticing that one of their number was missing. Word

got about just too late, and already there was half a mile of water,

beyond which, through our telescopes, we could see the poor fellow

making frantic signals to the shore. There was no boat out there, and

a big bank intervening, there seemed no way to get to him. Watching

through our glasses, we saw him drive the long handle of his net deep

into the sand, and cling to it, while the tide rose speedily around

him. Meanwhile a whole bevy of his mates had rowed out to the bank,

and were literally carrying over its treacherous surface one of their

clumsy and heavy fishing punts. It was a veritable race for life; and

never have I watched one with keener excitement. We actually saw his

post give way, and wash downstream with him clinging to it, just

before his friends got near. Fortunately, drifting with the spar, he

again found bottom, and was eventually rescued, half full of salt

water. I remember how he fell in my estimation as a seaman--though I

was only a boy at the time.

There were four of us boys in all, of whom I was the second. My next

brother Maurice died when he was only seven, and the fourth, Cecil,

being five years younger than I, left my brother Algernon and myself

as the only real companions for each other. Moreover, an untoward

accident, of which I was the unwitting cause, left my younger brother

unable to share our play for many years. Having no sisters, and

scarcely any boy friends, in the holidays, when all the boys in the

school went home, it might be supposed that my elder brother and I

were much thrown together. But as a matter of fact such was not the

case, for our temperaments being entirely different, and neither of us

having any idea of giving way to the other, we seldom or ever found

our pleasures together. And yet most of the worst scrapes into which

we fell were cooperative affairs. Though I am only anxious to shoulder

my share of the responsibility in the escapades, as well as in every

other line of life, my brother Algernon possessed any genius to which

the family could lay claim, in that as in every other line. He was my

father over again, while I was a second edition of my mother. Father

was waiting to get into the sixth form at Rugby when he was only

thirteen years old. He was a brilliant scholar at Balliol, but had

been compelled to give up study and leave the University temporarily

owing to brain trouble. He never published anything, but would reel

off brilliant short poems or essays for friends at a moment's notice.

I used always to remark that in whatever company he was, he was always

deferred to as an authority in anything approaching classics. He could

read and quote Greek and Latin like English, spoke German and French

fluently, while he was an excellent geologist, and Fellow of the

Geographical Society. Here is quite a pretty little effusion of his

written at eight years of age:

O, Glorious Sun, in thy palace of light,

To behold thee methinks is a beautiful sight.

O, Glorious Sun, come out of thy cloud,

No longer thy brightness in darkness shroud.

Let thy glorious beams like a golden Flood

Pour over the hills and the valleys and wood.

See! Mountains of light around him rise,

While he in a golden ocean lies:

O, Glorious Sun, in thy Palace of Light

To behold thee methinks is a beautiful sight.

Algernon Sydney Grenfell

Aged eight years

Some of my brother's poems and hymns have been published in the school

magazine, or printed privately; but he, too, has only published a

Spanish grammar, a Greek lexicon, and a few articles in the papers.

While at Oxford he ran daily, with some friends, during one "eights

week" a cynical comic paper called "The Rattle," to boost some

theories he held, and which he wished to enforce, and also to "score"

a few of the dons to whom he objected. This would have resulted in his

being asked to retire for a season from the seat of learning at the

request of his enemies, had not our beloved provost routed the special

cause of the whole trouble, who was himself contributing to a London

society paper, by replying that it was not to be wondered at if the

scurrilous rags of London found an echo in Oxford. Moreover, a set of

"The Rattle" was ordered to be bound and placed in the college

archives, where it may still be seen.

My father having a very great deal of responsibility and worry during

the long school terms, as he was not only head master, but owned the

school as well, which he had purchased from his great-uncle, used to

leave almost the day the holidays began and travel abroad with my

mother. This partly accounts for the very unusual latitude allowed to

us boys in coming and going from the house--no one being anxious if

now and again we did not return at night. The school matron was left

in charge of the vast empty barracks, and we had the run of

play-field, gymnasium, and everything else we wanted. To outwit the

matron was always considered fair play by us boys, and on many

occasions we were more than successful.

One time, when we had been acquiring some new lines of thought from

some trashy boys' books of the period, we became fired with the desire

to enjoy the ruling passion of the professional burglar. Though never

kept short of anything, we decided that one night we would raid the

large school storeroom while the matron slept. As always, the planning

was entrusted to my brother. It was, of course, a perfectly easy

affair, but we played the whole game "according to Cavendish." We let

ourselves out of the window at midnight, glued brown paper to the

window panes, cut out the putty, forced the catch, and stole sugar,

currants, biscuits, and I am ashamed to say port wine--which we mulled

in a tin can over the renovated fire in the matron's own sanctum. In

the morning the remainder was turned over to fishermen friends who

were passing along shore on their way to catch the early tide.

I had no share in two other of my brother's famous escapades, though

at the time it was a source of keen regret, for we were sent to

different public schools, as being, I suppose, incompatible. But we

heard with pride how he had extracted phosphorus from the chemical

laboratory and while drawing luminous ghosts on the wall for the

benefit of the timorous, had set fire to the large dormitory and the

boys' underclothing neatly laid out on the beds, besides burning

himself badly. Later he pleaded guilty to beeswaxing the seat of the

boys in front of him in chapel, much to the detriment of their

trousers and the destruction of the dignity of Sunday worship.

During the time that my parents were away we never found a moment in

which to be lonely, but on one occasion it occurred to us that the

company of some friends would add to our enjoyment. Why we waited till

my father and mother departed I do not know, but I recall that

immediately they had gone we spent a much-valued sixpence in

telegraphing to a cousin in London to come down to us for the

holidays. Our message read: "Dear Sid. Come down and stay the

holidays. Father has gone to Aix." We were somewhat chagrined to

receive the following day an answer, also by wire: "Not gone yet.

Father." It appeared that my father and mother had stayed the night in

London in the very house to which we had wired, and Sid. having to ask

his father's permission in order to get his railway fare, our uncle

had shown the invitation to my father. It was characteristic of my

parents that Sid. came duly along, but they could not keep from

sharing the joke with my uncle.

During term-time some of our grown-up relatives would occasionally

visit us. But alas, it was only their idiosyncrasies which used to

make any impression upon us. One, a great-uncle, and a very

distinguished person, being Professor of Political Economy at Oxford,

and a great friend of the famous Dr. Jowett, the chancellor, was the

only man we knew who ever, at any time, stood up long to my father in

argument. It was only on rare occasions that we ever witnessed such a

contest, but I shall never forget one which took place in the evening

in our drawing-room. My great-uncle was a small man, rather stout and

pink, and almost bald-headed. He got so absorbed in his arguments,

which he always delivered walking up and down, that on this occasion,

coming to an old-fashioned sofa, he stepped right up onto the seat,

climbed over the back, and went on all the time with his remarks, as

if only punctuating them thereby.

Whether some of our pranks were suggested by those of which we heard,

I do not remember. One of my father's yarns, however, always stuck in

my memory. For once, being in a very good humour, he told us how when

some distinguished old lady had come to call on his father--a house

master with Arnold at Rugby--he had been especially warned not to

interrupt this important person, who had come to see about her son's

entering my grandfather's "House." It so happened that quite

unconsciously the lady in question had seated herself on an old

cane-bottomed armchair in which father had been playing, thus

depriving him temporarily of a toy with which he desired to amuse

himself. He never, even in later life, was noted for undue patience,

and after endeavouring in vain to await her departure, he somehow

secured a long pin. With this he crawled from behind under the seat,

and by discreetly probing upwards, succeeded suddenly in dislodging

his enemy.

Our devotions on Sunday were carried out in the parish church of the

village of Neston, there being no place of worship of the Established

Church in our little village. In term-time we were obliged to go

morning and evening to the long services, which never made any

concessions to youthful capacities. So in holiday-time, though it was

essential that we should go in the morning to represent the house, we

were permitted to stay home in the evening. But even the mornings were

a time of great weariness, and oft-recurrent sermons on the terrible

fate which awaited those who never went to church, and the still more

untoward end which was in store for frequenters of dissenting

meeting-houses, failed to awaken in us the respect due to the

occasion.

On the way to church we had generally to pass by those who dared even

the awful fate of the latter. It was our idea that to tantalize us

they wore especially gorgeous apparel while we had to wear black Etons

and a top hat--which, by the way, greatly annoyed us. One waistcoat

especially excited our animosity, and from it we conceived the title

"specklebelly," by which we ever afterwards designated the whole

"genus nonconformist." The entrance to the chapel (ours was the

Church!) was through a door in a high wall, over which we could not

see; and my youthful brain used to conjure up unrighteous and strange

orgies which we felt must take place in those precincts which we were

never permitted to enter. Our Sunday Scripture lessons had grounded us

very familiarly with the perverse habits of that section of the Chosen

People who _would_ serve Baal and Moloch, when it obviously paid so

much better not to do so. But although we counted the numbers which we

saw going in, and sometimes met them coming out, they seemed never to

lessen perceptibly. On this account our minds, with the merciless

logic of childhood, gradually discounted the threatened calamities.

This must have accounted for the lapse in our own conduct, and a sort

of comfortable satisfaction that the Almighty contented Himself in

merely counting noses in the pews. For even though it was my brother

who got into trouble, I shall never forget the harangue on impiety

that awaited us when a most unchristian sexton reported to our father

that the pew in front of ours had been found chalked on the back, so

as to make its occupants the object of undisguised attention from the

rest of the congregation. As circumstantial evidence also against us,

he offered some tell-tale squares of silver paper, on which we had

been cooking chocolates on the steam pipes during the sermon.

In all my childhood I can only remember one single punishment, among

not a few which I received, which I resented--and for years I never

quite forgot it. Some one had robbed a very favourite apple tree in

our orchard--an escapade of which I was perfectly capable, but in this

instance had not had the satisfaction of sharing. Some evidence had

been lodged against me, of which I was not informed, and I therefore

had no opportunity to challenge it. I was asked before a whole class

of my schoolmates if I had committed the act, and at once denied it.

Without any hearing I was adjudged guilty, and promptly subjected to

the punishment of the day--a good birching. On every occasion on which

we were offered the alternative of detention, we invariably "plumped"

for the rod, and got it over quickly, and, as we considered,

creditably--taking it smiling as long as we could. But that one act of

injustice, the disgrace which it carried of making me a liar before my

friends, seared my very soul. I vowed I would get even whatever it

cost, and I regret to say that I hadn't long to wait the opportunity.

For I scored both the apples and the lie against the punishment before

many months. Nor was I satisfied then. It rankled in my mind both by

day and by night; and it taught me an invaluable lesson--never to

suspect or condemn rashly. It was one of Dr. Arnold's boys at Rugby, I

believe, who summed up his master's character by saying, "The head was

a beast, but he was always a just beast."

At fourteen years of age my brother was sent to Repton, to the house

of an uncle by marriage--an arrangement which has persuaded me never

to send boys to their relatives for training. My brother's pranks were

undoubtedly many, but they were all boyish and legitimate ones. After

a time, however, he was removed at his own request, and sent to

Clifton, where he was head of the school, and the school house also,

under Dr. Percival, the late Bishop of Hereford. From there he took an

open scholarship for Oxford.

It was most wisely decided to send us to separate schools, and

therefore at fourteen I found myself at Marlborough--a school of

nearly six hundred resident boys, on entering which I had won a

scholarship.

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