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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

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A LABRADOR DOCTOR

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF WILFRED THOMASON GRENFELL

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

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

BOSTON AND NEW" YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN CO^ANY

&fte Rtoer?itie f>tti9 Cambridge

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THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

430489A

AS TOR, LENOX AND

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PREFACE

I have long been resisting the strong pressure from friends that would force me to risk having to live along- side my own autobiography. It seems still an open ques- tion 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 Labra- dor 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

XrV. 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

XrX. 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 con- versation when you are asked to put your name in birth- day 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 nar- rowly 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 sig- nalled 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 King of Spain's beard, men whose exploits never fail to stir the best blood of Englishmen, and among whom my direct ancestors had

2 A LABRADOR DOCTOR

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 pre- cipitous cliffs are a handicap to the development of youth, compared with the broad expanses of tempting sands, which are after all associated with another kins- man, 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

EARLY DAYS 3

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.

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 could n'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 my- self 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

4 A LABRADOR DOCTOR

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 diplo- macy, 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 con- victed of the impiousness of trying to fill the Bottomless Pit. To my childish imagination the upturned wheel- barrows 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 sun- shine 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

EARLY DAYS 5

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 care- fully 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 an- other 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 some- times 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

6 A LABRADOR DOCTOR

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 unob- served. 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.

EARLY DAYS 7

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. Fortu- nately, drifting with the spar, he again found bottom, and was eventually rescued, half full of salt water. I remem- ber 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 un- toward 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

8 A LABRADOR DOCTOR

such was not the case, for our temperaments being en- tirely 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 responsi- bility 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 approach- ing 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 Geo- graphical Society. Here is quite a pretty little effusion of his written at eight years of age:

0, 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

EARLY DAYS 9

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 Rat- tle," 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 re- plying 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 un- usual 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 pas-

10 A LABRADOR DOCTOR

sion 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 our- selves 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 foimd a moment in which to be lonely, but on one occa- sion 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 re- call 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:

EARLY DAYS 11

"Dear Sid. Come down and stay the holidays. Father has gone to Aix." We were somewhat chagrined to re- ceive 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,

12 A LABRADOR DOCTOR

who had come to see about her son's entering my grand father's " House." It so happened that quite uncon- sciously the lady in question had seated herself on an olc1 cane-bottomed armchair in which father had been play- ing, 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 sud- denly 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 worhip 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 eve- ning. But even the mornings were a time of great weari- ness, 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 gor- geous 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

EARLY DAYS 13

through a door in a high wall, over which we could not see; and my youthful brain used to conjure up unright- eous 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 al- though we counted the numbers which we saw going in, and sometimes met them comimg 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 im- piety 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 oc- cupants 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

14 A LABRADOR DOCTOR

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 had n'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 Rep- ton, to the house of an uncle by marriage — an arrange- ment which has persuaded me never to send boys to their relatives for training. My brother's pranks were un- doubtedly 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.

CHAPTER II

SCHOOL LIFE

Marlborough "College," as we say in England for a large University preparatory school, is situated in Wiltshire, in a perfectly beautiful country, close to the Savernake Forest — one of the finest in all England. As everything and everybody was strange to me on my arrival, had I been brought up to be less self-reliant the events of my first day or two would probably have im- pressed themselves more deeply on my memory than is the case. Some Good Samaritan, hearing that I was bound for a certain house, allowed me to follow him from the station to the inn — for a veritable old inn it was. It was one of those lovely old wayside hostels along the main road to the west, which, with the decline of coach- ing days, found its way into the market, and had fallen to the hammer for the education of youth. Exactly how the adaptation had been accomplished I never quite understood. The building formed the end of a long avenue of trees and was approached through high gates from the main road. It was flanked on the east side by other houses, which fitted in somewhat inharmoniously, but served as school-rooms, dining-hall, chapel, racquets and fives courts, studies, and other dwelling-houses. The whole was entirely enclosed so that no one could pass in or out, after the gates were shut, without ringing up the porter from his lodge, and having one's name taken as being out after hours. At least it was supposed that no one could, though we boys soon found that there were more ways than one leading to Rome.

The separate dwelling-houses were named A, B, and C.

16 A LABRADOR DOCTOR

I was detailed to C House, the old inn itself. Each house was again divided into three, with its own house master, and its own special colour and badges. Our three were at the time "Sharps," "Upcutts," and "Bakers." Our particular one occupied the second floor, and was reached by great oak staircases, which, if you were smart, you could ascend at about six steps at a time. This was often a singular desideratum, because until you reached the fifth form, according to law you ascended by the less direct back stairway.

Our colours were white and maroon, and our sign a bishop's mitre — which effigy I still find scribbled all over the few book relics which I have retained, and which emblem, when borne subsequently on my velvet football cap, proved to be the nearest I ever was to ap- proach to that dignified insignia.

My benefactor, on the night of my arrival, having done more for me than a new boy could expect of an old one, was whirled off in the stream of his returning chums long before I had found my resting-place for the night. The dormitory to which I at last found myself assigned contained no less than twenty-five beds, and seemed to me a veritable wilderness. If the coaches which used to stop here could have ascended the stairs, it might have accommodated several. What useful purpose it could have served in those far-off days I never succeeded in deciding. The room most nearly like it which I can recall is the old dining-hall of a great manor, into which the knights in armour rode on horseback to meals, that be- ing far less trouble than removing one's armour, and quite as picturesque. More or less amicably I obtained possession of a bed in a good location, under a big win- dow which looked out over the beautiful gardens below. I cannot remember that I experienced any of those heart-

SCHOOL LIFE 17

searchings or forebodings which sentiment deplores as the inevitable lot of the unprotected innocent.

One informal battle during the first week with a boy possessed of the sanctity of having come up from the lower school, and therefore being an "old boy," achieved for me more privileges than the actual decision perhaps entitled one to enjoy, namely, being left alone. I subsequently became known as the "Beast," owing to my belligerent nature and the undue copiousness of my hair.

The fact that I was placed in the upper fourth form condemned me to do my "prep" in the intolerable bar- rack called "Big School" — a veritable bear-garden to which about three hundred small boys were relegated to study. Order was kept by a master and a few monitors, who wandered to and fro from end to end of the building, while we were supposed to work. For my part, I never tried it, partly because the work came very easy to me, while the "repetition" was more readily learned from a loose page at odd times like dinner and chapel, and partly because, winning a scholarship during the term, I was transferred to a building reserved for twenty- eight such privileged individuals until they gained the further distinction of a place in the house class-room, by getting their transfer into the fifth form.

Besides those who lived in the big quad there were several houses outside the gates, known as "Out- Houses." The boys there fared a good deal better than we who lived in college, and I presume paid more highly for it. Our meals were served in "Big Hall," where the whole four hundred of us were fed. The meals were ex- ceptionally poor; so much so that we boys at the be- ginning of term formed what we called brewing com- panies — which provided as far as possible breakfasts

18 A LABRADOR DOCTOR

and suppers for ourselves all term. As a protection against early bankruptcy, it was our custom to deposit our money with a rotund but popular school official, known always by a corruption of his name as "the Slug." Every Saturday night he would dole out to you your deposit made on return from the holidays, divided into equal portions by the number of weeks in the term. Once one was in the fifth form, brewing became easy, for one had a right to a place on the class-room fire for one's kettle or saucepan. Till then the space over gas stoves in Big School being strictly limited, the right was only acquired "vi et armis." Moreover, most of the fourth form boys and the "Shells," a class between them and the fifth, if they had to work after evening chapel, had to sit behind desks around the house class-room facing the centre, in which as a rule the fifth form boys were lazily cooking and devouring their suppers. Certain parts of those repasts, like sausages, we would import ready cooked from the "Tuck Shop," and hence they only needed warming up. Breakfast in Big School was no comfort to one, and personally I seldom attended it. But at dinner and tea one had to appear, and remain till the doors were opened again. It was a kind of roll-call; and the penalty for being late was fifty lines to be written out. As my own habits were never as regular as they should have been, whenever I was able to keep ahead, I possessed pages of such lines, neatly written out during school hours and ready for emergencies. On other occa- sions I somewhat shamefacedly recall that I employed other boys, who devoted less time to athletics than was my wont, to help me out — their only remuneration being the "joy of service."

The great desire of every boy who could hope to do so was to excel in athletics. This fact has much to commend

SCHOOL LIFE 19

it in such an educational system, for it undoubtedly kept its devotees from innumerable worse troubles and dan- gers. All athletics were compulsory, unless one had ob- tained permanent exemption from the medical officer. If one was not chosen to play on any team during the after- noon, each boy had to go to gymnasium for drill and exercises, or to "flannel" and run round the Aylesbury Arms, an old public house three quarters of a mile dis- tant. Any breach of this law was severely punished by the boys themselves. It involved a "fives batting," that is, a "birching" carried out with a hardwood fives bat, after chapel in the presence of the house. As a breach of patriotism, it carried great disgrace with it, and was very, very seldom necessary.

Experience would make me a firm believer in self- government — determination is the popular term now, I believe. No punishments ever touched the boys one tenth part as much as those administered by themselves. On one occasion two of the Big School monitors, who were themselves notorious far more for their constant breaches of school law than for their observance of it, decided to make capital at the expense of the sixth form. One day, just as the dinner-bell rang, they locked the sixth form door, while a conclave was being held inside. Though everyone was intended to know to whom the credit belonged, it was understood that no one would dream of giving evidence against them. But it so happened that their voices had been recognized from within by one of the sixth form boys — and "bullies" and unpopular though the culprits were, they would n't deny their guilt. Their condign punishment was to be "fives-batted" publicly in Big School — in which, how- ever, they regained very considerable popularity by the way they took a "spanking" without turning a hair,

20 A LABRADOR DOCTOR

though it cost no less than a dozen bats before it was over.

The publicity of Big School was the only redemption of such a bear-garden, but that was a good feature. It served to make us toe the line. After tea, it was the cus- tom to have what we called "Upper School Boxing." A big ring was formed, boxing-gloves provided, and any differences which one might have to settle could be ar- ranged there. There was more energy than science about the few occasions on which I appeared personally in the ring, but it was an excellent safety-valve and quite an evolutionary experience.

The exigency of having to play our games immediately after noon dinner had naturally taught the boys at the head of athletic affairs that it was not wise to eat too much. Dinner was the one solid meal which the college provided, and most of us wanted it badly enough when it came along, especially the suet puddings which went by the name of "bollies" and were particularly satisfying. But whenever any game of importance was scheduled, a remorseless card used to be passed round the table just after the meat stage, bearing the ominous legend "No bolly to-day." To make sure that there were no truants, all hands were forced to "Hooverize." Oddly enough, beer in large blue china jugs was freely served at every dinner. We called it "swipes," and boys, however small, helped themselves to as much as they liked. Moreover, as soon as the game was over, all who had their house colours might come in and get "swipes" served to them freely through the buttery window. Both practices, I believe, have long since fortunately fallen into desuetude.

To encourage the budding athlete there was an ex- cellent custom of classifying not only the players who attained the first team; but beyond them there were "the

SCHOOL LIFE 21

Forty" who wore velvet caps with tassels, "the Sixty" who wore velvet caps with silver braid, "the Eighty," and even "the Hundred" — all of whom were posted from time to time, and so stimulated their members to try for the next grade.

Like every other school there were bounds beyond which one might not go, and therefore beyond which one always wanted to go. Compulsory games limited the temptation in that direction very considerably; and my own breaches were practically always to get an extra swim. We had an excellent open-air swimming pool, made out of a branch of the river Kenneth, and were allowed one bathe a day, besides the dip before morning chapel, which only the few took, and which did not count as a bathe. The punishment for breaking the rule was severe, involving a week off for a first offence. But one was not easily caught, for even a sixth-former found hundreds of naked boys very much alike in the water, and the fact of any one having transgressed the limit was very hard to detect. Nor were we bound to incrim- inate ourselves by replying to leading questions.

"Late for Gates" was a more serious crime, involving detention from beloved games — and many were the expedients to which we resorted to avoid such an un- toward contingency. I remember well waiting for an hour outside the porter's view, hoping for some delivery wagon to give me a chance to get inside. For it was far too light to venture to climb the lofty railings before "prep" time. Good fortune ordained, however, that a four-wheel cab should come along in time, containing the parents of a "hopeful" in the sick-room. It seemed a desperate venture, for to "run" the gate was a worse offence than being late and owning up. But we succeeded by standing on the off step, unquestioned by the person

22 A LABRADOR DOCTOR

inside, who guessed at once what the trouble was, and who proved to be sport enough to engage the porter while we got clear. Later on a scapegrace who had more reason to require some by-way than myself, revealed to me a wav which involved a long detour and a climb over the laundry roof. Of this, on another occasion, I was sincerely glad to avail myself. One of the older boys, I remember, made a much bolder venture. He waited till dusk, and then boldly walked in through the masters' garden. As luck would have it, he met our form master, whom we will call Jones, walking the other way. It so happened he possessed a voice which he knew was much like that of another master, so simply sprinting a little he called out, "Night, night, Jones," and got by without discovery.

Our chapel in those days was not a thing of beauty; but since then it has been rebuilt (out of our stomachs, the boys used to say) and is a model work of art. Attendance at chapel was compulsory, and no "cuts" were allowed. Moreover, once late, you were given lines, besides losing your chapel half-holiday. So the extraordinary zeal ex- hibited to be marked off as present should not be attri- buted to religious fervour. The chapel was entered from quad by two iron gates, with the same lofty railings which guarded the entrance on each side. The bell tolled for five minutes, then was silent one minute, and then a single toll was given, called "stroke." At that instant the two masters who stood by the pillars guarding each gate, jumped across, closing the gates if they could, and every one outside was late. Those inside the open walk — the length of the chapel that led to the doors at the far end — then continued to march in.

During prayers each form master sat opposite his form, all of which faced the central aisle, and marked off those

SCHOOL LIFE 23

present. Almost every morning half-dressed boys, with shirts open and collars unbuttoned, boots unlaced, and jumping into coats and waistcoats as they dashed along, could be seen rushing towards the gate during the omi- nous minute of silence. There was always time to get straight before the mass of boys inside had emptied into chapel; and I never remember a gate master stopping a boy before "stroke" for insufficiency of coverings. Many were the subterfuges employed to get excused, and natu- rally some form masters were themselves less regular than others, though you never could absolutely coimt on any particular one being absent. Twice in my time gates were rushed — that is, when "stroke" went such crowds of flying boys were just at the gate that the masters were unable to stop the onslaught, and were themselves brushed aside or knocked down under the seething mass of panic-stricken would-be worshippers. On one of these occasions we were forgiven — "stroke" was ten seconds early; on the other a half -holiday was stopped, as one of the masters had been injured. To trip one's self up* and get a bloody nose, and possibly a face scratched on the gravel, and then a "sick cut" from the kindly old school doctor, was one of the more common ways boys discov- ered of saving their chapel half — when it was a very close call.

The school surgery was presided over in my day by a much-beloved old physician of the old school, named Fergus, which the boys had so long ago corrupted into "Fungi" that many a lad was caught mistakenly ad- dressing the old gentleman as Dr. Fungi — an error I always fancied to be rather appreciated.

By going to surgery you could very frequently escape evening chapel — a very desirable event if you had a "big brew" coming off in class-room, for you could get

24 A LABRADOR DOCTOR

things cooked a*id have plenty of room on the fire before the others were out. But one always had to pay for the advantage, the old doctor being very much addicted to potions. I never shall forget the horrible tap in the corner, out of which "cough mixture" flowed as "a healing for the nations," but which, nasty as it was, was the cheapest price at which one could purchase the cut. Some boys, anxious to cut lessons, found that by putting a little soap in one's eye, that organ would become red and watery. This they practised so successfully that sometimes for weeks they would be forbidden to do lessons on account of " eye-strain." They had to use lotions, eye-shades, and every spectacle possible was tried, but all to no avail. Sometimes they used so much soap that I was sure the doctor would suspect the bubbles.

I had two periods in sick-room with a worrying cough, where the time was always made so pleasant that one was not tempted to hasten recovery. Diagnosis, more- over, was not so accurate in those days as it might have been, and the dear old doctor took no risks. So at the age of sixteen I was sent off for a winter to the South of France, with the diagnosis of congestion of the lungs.

One of my aunts, a Miss Hutchinson, living at Hyeres in the South of France, was delighted to receive me.With a widowed friend and two charming and athletic daugh- ters, she had a very pretty villa on the hills overlooking the sea. My orders — to live out of doors — were very literally obeyed. In light flannel costumes we roamed the hills after moths and butterflies, early and late. We kept the frogs in miniature ponds in boxes covered with net- ting, providing them with bamboo ladders to climb, and so tell us when it was going to be wet weather. We had also enclosures in which we kept banks of trap-door spiders, which used to afford us intense interest with

SCHOOL LIFE 25

their clever artifices. To these we added the breeding of the more beautiful butterflies and moths, and so, with- out knowing that we were learning, we were taught many and valuable truths of life. There were horses to ride also, and a beautiful "plage" to bathe upon. It was al- ways sunny and warm, and I invariably look back on that winter as spent in paradise. I was permitted to go over with a young friend to the Carnival at Nice, where, disguised as a clown, and then as a priest, with the abandon of boys, we enjoyed every moment of the time — the world was so big and wonderful. The French that I had very quickly learned, as we always spoke it at our villa, stood me on this occasion in good stead. But better still, I happened, when climbing into one of the flower- bedecked carriages parading in the "bataille de fleurs" — which, being in costume, was quite the right thing to do — to find that the owner was an old friend of my family, one Sir William Hut. He at once carried me to his home for the rest of the Carnival, and, of course, made it doubly enjoyable.

A beautiful expedition, made later in that region which lives in my memory, was to the gardens at La Mortola, over the Italian line, made famous by the fre- quent visits of Queen Victoria to them. They were owned by Sir Thomas Hanbury, whose wife was my aunt's great friend.

The quaintness of the memories which persist longest in one's mind often amuse me. We used, as good Episco- palians, to go every Sunday to the little English Church on the rue des Palmiers. Alas, I can remember only one thing about those services. The clergyman had a pe- culiar impediment in his speech which made him say his h's and s's, both as sh. Thus he always said -s/mman for kman, and invariably prayed that God might be pleased

26 A LABRADOR DOCTOR

to "shave the Queen." He nearly got me into trouble once or twice through it.

About the middle of the winter I realized that I had made a mistake. In writing home I had so enthusiastically assured my father that the place was suiting my health, that he wrote back that he thought in that case I might stand a little tutoring, and forthwith I was despatched every morning to a Mr. B., an Englishman, whose house, called the "Hermitage," was in a thick wood. I soon dis- covered that Mr. B. was obliged to live abroad for his health, and that the coaching of small boys was only a means to that end. He was a good instructor in mathema- tics, a study which I always loved, but he insisted on my taking Latin and French literature, for neither of which i had the slightest taste. I consequently made no effort whatever to improve my mind, a fact which did not in the least disturb his equanimity. The great interest of those journeys to the Hermitage were the fables of La Fontaine — which I learned as repetition and en- joyed — and the enormous number of lizards on the walls, which could disappear with lightning rapidity when seen, though they would stay almost motionless, waiting for a fly to come near, which they then swallowed alive. They were so like the stones one could almost rub one's nose against them without seeing them. Each time I started, I used to cut a little switch for myself and try to switch them off their ledges before they vanished. The attraction to the act lay in that it was almost impos- sible to accomplish. But if you did they scored a bull's- eye by incontinently discarding their tails, which made them much harder to catch next time, and seemed in no way to incommode them, though it served to excuse my conscience of cruelty. At the same time I have no wish to pose as a protector of flies.

SCHOOL LIFE 27

Returning to Marlborough School the following sum- mer, I found that my father, who knew perfectly the thorough groundwork I had received in Greek and Latin, had insisted on my being given a remove into the lower fifth form "in absentia." Both he and I were aware that I could do the work easily; but the form master resented it, and ha.' already protested in vain. I believe he was a very good man in his way, and much liked by those whom he liked. But alas, I was not one of them; and never once, during the whole time I was in his form, did I get one single word of encouragement out of him. My mathematical master, and "stinks," or chemical master, I was very fond of, and in both those departments I made good progress.

The task of keeping order in a chemistry class of boys is never easy. The necessary experiments divert the master's eye from the class, and always give opportunity for fooling. Added to this was the fact that our "stinks" master, like many scientific teachers, was far too good- natured, and half -en joyed himself the diversion which his experiments gave. When obliged to punish a boy caught "flagrante delicto," he invariably looked out for some way to make it up to him later. It was the odd way he did it which endeared him to us, as if apologizing for the kindness. Thus, on one occasion, suddenly in most righteous anger, just as if a parenthesis to the remark he was making, he interposed, "Come and be caned, boy. My study, twelve o'clock." When the boy was leaving, very unrepentant after keeping the appointment, in the same parenthetical way the master remarked, "Go away, boy. Cake and wine, my room, five o'clock" — which proved eventually the most effective part of the correction.

To children there always appears a gap between them

28 A LABRADOR DOCTOR

and "grown-ups" as impassable as that which Abraham is made to describe as so great that they who would pass to and fro cannot. As we grow older, we cease to see it, but it exists all the same. As I write, five children are romping through this old wood on broom-handle horses. One has just fallen. A girl of twelve at once retorts, "Do get up, Willy, your horse is always throwing you off." The joys of life lie in us, not in things; and in childhood imagination is so big, its joys so entirely uncloyed. Sometimes grown-ups are apt to grudge the time and trouble put into apparently transient pleasures. A trivial strawberry feast, given to children on our dear old lawn under the jasmine and rose-bushes, something after the order of a New England clam-bake, still looms as a happy memory of my parents' love for children, punctu- ated by the fact that though by continuing a game in spite of warning I broke a window early in the afternoon, and was banished to the nursery "as advised," my father forgave me an hour later, and himself fetched me down again to the party.

To teach us independence, my father put us on an allowance at a very early age, with a small bank account, to which every birthday he added five pounds on our behalf. We had no pony at that time, indeed had not yet learned to ride, so our deposits always went by the name of "pony money." This was an excellent plan, for we did n't yet value money for itself, and were better able to appreciate the joy of giving because it seemed to postpone the advent of our pony. However, when we were thought to have learned to value so sentient a com- panion and to be likely to treat him properly, a Good Samaritan was permitted to present us with one of our most cherished friends. To us, she was an unparalleled beauty. How many times we fell over her head, and over

SCHOOL LIFE 29

her tail, no one can record. She always waited for you to remount, so it did n't much matter; and we were taught that great lesson in life, not to be afraid of falling, but to learn how to take a fall. My own bent, however, was never for the things of the land, and though gallops on the Dee Sands, and races with our cousins, who owned a broncho and generally beat us, had their fascination, boats were the things which appealed most to me.

Having funds at our disposal, we were allowed to pur- chase material, and under the supervision of a local car- penter, to build a boat ourselves. To this purpose our old back nursery was forthwith allocated. The craft which we desired was a canoe that would enable us to paddle or drift along the deep channels of the river, and allow us to steal upon the flocks of birds feeding at the edges. Often in memory I enjoy those days again — the planning, the modelling, the fitting, the setting-up, and at last, the visit of inspection of our parents. Alas, stiff- necked in our generation, we had insisted on straight lines and a square stern. Never shall I forget the indig- nation aroused in me by a cousin's remark, "It looks awful like a coffin." The resemblance had not previously struck either of us, and father had felt that the joke was too dangerous a one to make, and had said nothing. But the pathos of it was that we now saw it all too clearly. My brother explained that the barque was intended to be not "seen." Ugliness was almost desirable. It might help us if we called it the "Reptile," and painted it red — all of which suggestions were followed. But still I remem- ber feeling a little crestfallen, when after launching it through the window, it lay offensively resplendent against the vivid green of the grass. It served, however, for a time, ending its days honourably by capsizing a friend and me, guns and all, into the half-frozen water of the

30 A LABRADOR DOCTOR

lower estuary while we were stalking some curlew. I had to run home dripping. My friend's gun, moreover, hav- ing been surreptitiously borrowed from my cousin's father, was recovered the following day, to our unutter- able relief. Out of the balance of the money spent on the boat, we purchased a pin-fire, breech-loading gun, the pride of my life for many days. I was being kept back from school at the time on account of a cold, but I was not surprised to find myself next day sitting in a train, bound for Marlborough, and "referred once more to my studies."

A little later my father, not being satisfied, took me away to read with a tutor for the London matriculation, in which without any trouble, I received a first class.

A large boarding-school in England is like a miniature world. One makes many acquaintances, who change as one gets pushed into new classes, so at that stage one makes few lasting friends. Those who remain till they attain the sixth form, and make the school teams, prob- ably form more permanent friendships. I at least think of that period as one when one's bristles were generally up, and though many happy memories linger, and I have found that to be an old Marlburian is a bond of friend- ship all the world over, it is the little oddities which one remembers best.

A new scholarship boy had one day been assigned to the closed corporation of our particular class-room. To me he had many attractions, for he was a genius both in mathematics and chemistry. We used to love talking over the problems that were set us as voluntary tasks for our spare time; and our united excursions in those directions were so successful that we earned our class more than one "hour off," as rewards for the required number of stars given for good pieces of work. My friend

SCHOOL LIFE SI

had, however, no use whatever for athletics. He had never been from home before, had no brothers, and five sisters, was the pet of his parents, and naturally some- what of a square plug in a round hole in our school life. He hated all conventions, and was always in trouble with the boys, for he entirely neglected his personal ap- pearance, while his fingers were always discoloured with chemicals, and he would not even feign an interest in the things for which they cared. I can remember him sitting on the foot of my bed, talking me to sleep more than once with some new plan he had devised for a self-steer- ing torpedo or an absolutely reliable flying machine. He had received the sobriquet of "Mad G.," and there was some justice in it from the opposition point of view. I had not realized, however, that he was being bullied — on such a subject he would never say a syllable — till one day as he left class-room I saw a large lump of coal hit him square on the head, and a rush of blood follow it that made me hustle him off to surgery. Scalp wounds are not so dangerous as they are bloody to heads as thick as ours. His explanation that he had fallen down was too obvious a distortion of truth to deceive even our kindly old doctor. But he asked no further question, seeing that it was a point of honour. The matter, however, forced an estrangement between myself and some of my fellows that I realized afterwards was excellent for me. Forthwith we moved my friend's desk into my corner of the room which was always safe when I was around, though later some practices of the others to which I took exception led to a combination which I thought of then as that made by the Jews to catch Paul, and which I foiled in a similar way, watchfully eluding them when they were in numbers together, but always ready to meet one or two at a time. The fact that I had just taken up "racquets"

32 A LABRADOR DOCTOR

impressed it on my memory, for considering the class- room temporarily unsafe for "prep" work, I used that building as a convenient refuge for necessary study. It would have been far better to have fought it out and taken, if unavoidable, whatever came to me — had it been anywhere else I should probably have done so. But the class-room was a close corporation for Foundation scholars, and not one of my chums had access to it to see fair play.

My friendship for "Mad G." was largely tempered by my own love for anything athletic, and eccentricities paid a very heavy price among all boys. Thus, though I was glad to lend my protection to my friend, we never went about together — as such boys as he always lived the life of hermits in the midst of the crowd. I well re- member one other boy, made eccentric by his peculiar face and an unfortunate impediment of speech. No such boy should have been sent to an English public school as it was in my day. His stutter was no ordinary one, for it consisted, not in repeating the first letter or syllable, but in blowing out both cheeks like a balloon, and mak- ing noises which resembled a back-firing motor engine. It was the custom of our form master to make us say our repetition by each boy taking one line, the last round being always "expressed" — that is, unless you started instantly the boy above you finished, the next boy be- gan, and took your place. I can still see and hear the un- fortunate J. getting up steam for his line four or five boys ahead of time, so that he might explode at the right moment, which desirable end, however, he but very rarely accomplished, and never catching up, he used, like the man in the parable, always to "begin with shame to take the lowest place." Sometimes the master in a merciful mood allowed us to write the line; but that was

SCHOOL LIFE 33

risky, for it was considered no disgrace to circumvent him, and under those circumstances it was very easy for the next boy to write his own and then yours, and pass it along if he saw you were in trouble.

There was, and I think with some reason, a pride among the boys on their appearance on certain occasions. It went by the name of "good form." Thus on Sundays at morning chapel, we always wore a button-hole flower if we could. My dear mother used to post me along a little box of flowers every week — nor was it by any means wasted energy, for not only did the love for flowers become a hobby and a custom with many of us through life, and a help to steer clear of sloppiness in appearance, but it was a habit quite likely to spread to the soul. But beyond that, the picture of my dear mother, with the thousand worries of a large school of small boys on her hands, finding time to gather, pack, address, and post each week with her own hands so fleeting and inessential a token of her love, has a thousand times arisen to my memory, and led me to consider some ap- parently quite unnecessary little labour of love as being well worth the time and trouble. It is these deeds of love — not words, however touching — that never fade from the soul, and to the last make their appeal to the wander- ing boy to "arise" and do things.

Like everything else this fastidiousness can be over- done, and I remember once a boy's legal guardian show- ing me a bill for a hundred pounds sterling that his ward had incurred in a single term for cut flowers. Yet "form" is a part of the life of all English schools, and the boys think much more of it than sin. At Harrow you may not walk in the middle of the road as a freshman; and in American schools and universities, such regulations as the "Fence" laws at Yale show that they have emulated

34 A LABRADOR DOCTOR

and even surpassed us in these. It was, however, a very- potent influence, and we were always ridiculously sensi- tive about breaches of it. Thus, on a certain prize day my friend "Mad G.," having singularly distinguished himself in his studies, his parents came all the way from their home, at great expense to themselves, to see their beloved and only son honoured. I presume that, though wild horses would not drag anything out of the boy at school, he had communicated to them the details of some little service rendered. For to my horror I was stopped by his mother, whom I subsequently learned to love and honour above most people, and actually kissed while walking in the open quad — strutting like a pea- cock, I suppose, for I remember feeling as if the bottom had suddenly fallen out of the earth. The sequel, how- ever, was an invitation to visit their home in North Wales for the Christinas holidays, where there was rough shooting, — the only kind I really cared for, — boating, rock-climbing, bathing, and the companionship of as lively a family as it was possible to meet anywhere. Many a holiday afterwards we shared together, and the kindness showered upon me I shall never be able to for- get, or, alas, return; for my dear friend "Mad G." has long ago gone to his rest, and so have both his parents, whom I loved almost as my own.

Another thing for which I have much to thank my parents is the interest which they encouraged me to take in the collecting and study of natural objects. We were taught that the only excuse that made the taking of animal life honourable was for some useful purpose, like food or study or self-preservation. Several cases of birds stuffed and set up when we were fourteen and sixteen years of age still adorn the old house. Every bit had to be done by ourselves, my brother making the cases, and

SCHOOL LIFE 35

I the rock work and taxidermy. The hammering-up of sandstone and granite; to cover the glue-soaked brown paper that we moulded into rocks, satisfied my keenest instinct for making messes, and only the patience of the old-time domestics would have "stood for it." My brother specialized in birds' eggs, and I in butterflies and moths. Later we added seaweeds, shells, and flowers. Some of our collections have been dissipated ; and though we have not a really scientific acquaintance with either of these kingdoms, we acquired a "hail-fellow-well-met" familiarity with all of them, which has enlivened many a day in many parts of the world as we have journeyed through life. Moreover, though purchased pictures have other values, the old cases set on the walls of one's den bring back memories that are the joy and solace of many idle moments later in life — each rarer egg, each extra butterfly picturing some day or place of keen triumph, otherwise long since forgotten. Here, for instance, is a convolvulus hawk father found killed on a mountain in Switzerland; there an Apollo I caught in the Pyrenees; here a "red burnet" with "five eyes" captured as we raced through the bracken on Clifton Downs; and there are "purple emperors" wired down to "meat" baits on the Surrey Downs.

Many a night at school have I stolen into the great forest, my butterfly net under my coat, to try and add a new specimen to my hoard. We were always supplied with good "key-books," so that we should be able to identify our specimens, and also to search for others more intelligently. One value of my own specialty was that for the moths it demanded going out in the night, and the thrills of out of doors in the beautiful summer evenings, when others were "fugging" in the house or had gone to bed, used actually to make me dance around

36 A LABRADOR DOCTOR

on the grass. The dark lantern, the sugaring of the tree stems with intoxicating potions, and the subsequent ex- citement of searching for specimens, fascinated me ut- terly. Our breeding from the egg, through the cater- pillar stage, taught us many things without our knowing that we were learning.

One of our holidays was memorable, because as soon as our parents left we invited my friend and two sisters as well to come and stay with us. They came, fully ex- pecting that mother had asked them, but were good enough sports to stay when they found it was only us two boys. They greatly added to the enjoyment of the days, and if they had not been such inveterate home letter- writers — a habit of which we were very con- temptuous — it would have saved us boys much good- humoured teasing afterwards, for the matron would have been mum and no one the wiser.

CHAPTER III

EARLY WORK IN LONDON

In 1883 my father became anxious to give up teaching boys and to confine himself more exclusively to the work of a clergyman. With this in view he contemplated mov- ing to London where he had been offered the chaplaincy of the huge London Hospital. I remember his talking it over with me, and then asking if I had any idea what I wanted to do in life. It came to me as a new conun- drum. It had never occurred to me to look forward to a profession; except that I knew that the heads of tigers, deer, and all sorts of trophies of the chase which adorned our house came from soldier uncles and others who hunted them in India, and I had always thought that their occupation would suit my taste admirably. It never dawned on me that I would have to earn my bread and butter — that had always come along. Moreover, I had never seen real poverty in others, for all the fisher- folk in our village seemed to have enough. I hated dress and frills, and envied no one. At school, and on the Ri- viera, and even in Wales, I had never noticed any want. It is true that a number of dear old ladies from the village came in the winter months to our house once or twice a week to get soup. They used to sit in the back hall, each with a round tin can with a bucket handle. These were filled with hot broth, and the old ladies were given a repast as well before leaving. As a matter of fact I very seldom actually saw them, for that part of the house was cut off entirely by large double green-baize covered doors. But I often knew that they must have been there, because our Skye terrier, though fed to overflowing,

38 A LABRADOR DOCTOR

usually attended these seances, and I presume, while the old ladies were occupied with lunch, sampled the cans of soup that stood in rows along the floor. He used to come along with dripping whiskers which betrayed his excursion, and the look of a connoisseur in his large round eyes — as if he were certifying that justice had been done once more in the kitchen.

While I was in France the mother of my best chum in school had been passing through Marseilles on her way home from India, and had most kindly taken me on a jolly trip to Aries, Avignon, and other historical places. She was the wife of a famous missionary in India. She spoke eight languages fluently, including Arabic, and was a perfect "vade mecum" of interesting information which she well knew how to impart. She had known my mother's family all her life, they being Anglo-Indians in the army service.

About the time of my rather's question, my friend's mother was staying in Chester with her brother-in-law, the Lord Lieutenant of Denbighshire. It was decided that as she was a citizeness of the world, no one could suggest better for what profession my peculiar talents fitted me. The interview I have long ago forgotten, but I recall coming home with a confused idea that tiger hunting would not support me, and that she thought I ought to become a clergyman, though it had no attrac- tion for me, and I decided against it.

None of our family on either side, so far as I can find out, had ever practised medicine. My own experience of doctors had been rather a chequered one, but at my father's suggestion I gladly went up and discussed the matter with our country family doctor. He was a fine man, and we boys were very fond of him and his family, his daughter being our best girl friend near by. He had

EARLY WORK IN LONDON 39

an enormous practice, in which he was eminently suc- cessful. The number of horses he kept, and the miles he covered with them, were phenomenal in my mind. He had always a kind word for every one, and never gave us boys away, though he must have known many of our pranks played in our parents' absence. The only remain- ing memory of that visit was that the old doctor brought down from one of his shelves a large jar, out of which he produced a pickled human brain. I was thrilled with en- tirely new emotions. I had never thought of man's body as a machine. That this weird, white, puckered-up mass could be the producer or transmitter of all that made man, that it controlled our physical strength and growth, and our responses to life, that it made one into "Mad G." and another into me — why, it was absolutely marvel- lous. It attracted me as did the gramophone, the camera, the automobile.

My father saw at once on my return that I had found my real interest, and put before me two alternative plans, one to go to Oxford, where my brother had just entered, or to join him in London and take up work in the Lon- don Hospital and University, preparatory to going in for medicine. I chose the latter at once — a decision I have never regretted. I ought to say that business as a career was not suggested. In England, especially in those days, these things were more or less hereditary. My forbears were all fighters or educators, except for an occasional statesman or banker. Probably there is some advantage in this plan.

The school had been leased for a period of seven years to a very delightful successor, it being rightly supposed that after that time my brother would wish to assume the responsibility.

Some of the subjects for the London matriculation

40 A LABRADOR DOCTOR

were quite new to me, especially "English." But with the fresh incentive and new vision of responsibility I set to work with a will, and soon had mastered the ten re- quired subjects sufficiently to pass the examination with credit. But I must say here that Professor Huxley's criti- cisms of English public school teaching of that period were none too stringent. I wish with all my heart that others had spoken out as bravely, for in those days that wonderful man was held up to our scorn as an atheist and iconoclast. He was, however, perfectly right. We spent years of life and heaps of money on our education, and came out knowing nothing to fit us for life, except that which we picked up incidentally.

I now followed my father to London, and found every subject except my chemistry entirely new. I was not familiar with one word of botany, zoology, physics, phys- iology, or comparative anatomy. About the universe which I inhabited I knew as little as I did about cunei- form writings. Except for my mathematics and a mere modicum of chemistry I had nothing on which to base my new work; and students coming from Government free schools, or almost anywhere, had a great advantage over men of my previous education; I did not even know how to study wisely. Again, as Huxley showed, medical education in London was so divided, there being no teaching university, that the curriculum was ridiculously inadequate. There were still being foisted upon the world far too many medical men of the type of Bob Sawyer.

There were fourteen hospitals in London to which medical schools were attached. Our hospital was the largest in the British Isles, and in the midst of the poor- est population in England, being located in the famous Whitechapel Road, and surrounded by all the purlieus of the East End of the great city. Patients came from.

EARLY WORK IN LONDON 41

Tilbury Docks to Billingsgate Market, and all the river haunts between; from Shadwell, Deptford, Wapping, Poplar, from Petticoat Lane and Radcliffe Highway, made famous by crime and by Charles Dickens. They came from Bethnal Green, where once queens had their courts, now the squalid and crowded home of poverty; from Stratford and Bow, and a hundred other slums.

The hospital had some nine hundred beds, which were always so full that the last surgeon admitting to his wards constantly found himself with extra beds poked in between the regulation number through sheer neces- sity. It afforded an unrivalled field for clinical experience and practical teaching. In my day, however, owing to its position in London, and the fact that its school was only just emerging from primeval chaos, it attracted very few indeed of the medical students from Oxford and Cam- bridge, who are obliged to come to London for their last two or three years' hospital work — the scope in those small university towns being decidedly limited.

Looking back I am grateful to my alma mater, and have that real affection for her that every loyal son should have. But even that does not conceal from me how poor a teaching establishment it was. Those who had natural genius, and the advantages of previous scientific training, who were sons of medical men, or had served apprenticeships to them, need not have suf- fered so much through its utter inefficiency. But men in my position suffered quite unconsciously a terrible handicap, and it was only the influences for which I had nothing whatever to thank the hospital that saved me from the catastrophes which overtook so many who started with me.

To begin with, there was no supervision of our lives whatever. We were flung into a coarse and evil environ-

42 A LABRADOR DOCTOR

ment, among men who too often took pride in their shame, just to sink or swim. Not one soul cared which you did. I can still remember numerous cases where it simply meant that men paid quite large sums for the privilege of sending the sons they loved direct to the devil. I recall one lad whom I had known at school. His father lavished money upon him, and sincerely believed that his son was doing him credit and would soon return to share his large practice, and bring to it all the many new advances he had learned. The reports of examin- ations successfully passed he fully accepted; and the non-return of his son at vacation times he put down to professional zeal. It was not till the time came for the boy to get his degree and return that the father discov- ered that he had lived exactly the life of the prodigal in the parable, and had neither attended college nor at- tempted a single examination of any kind whatever. It broke the father's heart and he died.

Examinations for degrees were held by the London University, or the Royal College of Physicians and Sur- geons, never by the hospital schools. These were practi- cally race committees; they did no teaching, but when you had done certain things, they allowed you to come up and be examined, and if you got through a written and "viva voce" examination you were inflicted on an unsuspecting public "qualified to kill" — often only too literally so.

It is obvious on the face of it that this could be no proper criterion for so important a decision as to qualifi- cations; special crammers studied the examiners, their questions, and their teachings, and luck had a great deal to do with success. While some men never did them- selves justice in examinations, others were exactly the reverse. Thus I can remember one resident accoucheur

EARLY WORK IN LONDON 43

being "ploughed," as we called it, in his special subject, obstetrics — and men to whom you would n't trust your cat getting through with flying colours.

Of the things to be done: First you had to be signed up for attending courses of lectures on certain subjects. This was simply a matter of tipping the beadle, who marked you off. I personally attended only two botany lectures during the whole course. At the first some prac- tical joker had spilled a solution of carbon bisulphide all over the professor's platform, and the smell was so in- tolerable that the lecture was prorogued. At the second, some wag let loose a couple of pigeons, whereupon every one started either to capture them or stir them up with pea-shooters. The professor said, "Gentlemen, if you do not wish to learn, you are at liberty to leave." The entire class walked out. The insignificant sum of two and six- pence secured me my sign-up for the remainder of the course.

Materia medica was almost identical; and while we had better fortune with physiology, no experience and no apparatus for verifying its teachings were ever shown us.

Our chemistry professor was a very clever man, but extremely eccentric, and his class was pandemonium. I have seen him so frequently pelted with peas, when his head was turned, as to force him to leave the amphi- theatre in despair. I well remember also an unpopular student being pushed down from the top row almost on to the experiment table.

There was practically no histology taught, and little or no pathology. Almost every bit of the microscope which I did was learned on my own instrument at home. Anatomy, however, we were well taught in the dissect- ing-room, where we could easily obtain all the work we needed. But not till Sir Frederick Treves became our

44 A LABRADOR DOCTOR

lecturer in anatomy and surgery was it worth while do- ing more than pay the necessary sum to get signed up.

In the second place we had to attend in the dispensary, actually to handle drugs and learn about them — an admirable rule. Personally I went once, fooled around making egg-nogg, and arranged with a considerate drug- gist to do the rest that was necessary. Yet I satisfied the examiners at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, those of the London University at the examinations for Bachelor of Medicine — the only ones which they gave which carried questions in any of these subjects.

In the athletic life of the University, however, I took great interest, and was secretary in succession of the cricket, football, and rowing clubs. I helped remove the latter from the old river Lea to the Thames, to raise the inter-hospital rowing championship and start the united hospitals' rowing club. I found time to row in the inter- hospital race for two years and to play on the football team in the two years of which we won the inter- hospital football cup. A few times I played with the united hospitals' team; but I found that their ways were not mine, as I had been taught to despise alcohol as a beverage and to respect all kinds of womanhood. For three years I played regularly for Richmond — the best of the London clubs at the time — and subsequently for Oxford, being put on the team the only term I was in residence. I also threw the hammer for the hospital in the united hospitals' sports, winning second place for two years. Indeed, athletics in some form occupied every moment of my spare time.

It was in my second year, 1885, that returning from an out-patient case one night, I turned into a large tent erected in a purlieu of Shad well, the district to which I happened to have been called. It proved to be an evangel-

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istic meeting of the then famous Moody and Sankey. It was so new to me that when a tedious prayer-bore began with a long oration, I started to leave. Suddenly the leader, whom I learned afterwards was D. L. Moody, called out to the audience, "Let us sing a hymn while our brother finishes his prayer." His practicality inter- ested me, and I stayed the service out. When eventually I left, it was with a determination either to make reli- gion a real effort to do as I thought Christ would do in my place as a doctor, or frankly abandon it. That could only have one issue while I still lived with a mother like mine. For she had always been my ideal of unselfish love. So I decided to make the attempt, and later went down to hear the brothers J. E. and C. T. Studd speak at some subsidiary meeting of the Moody campaign. They were natural athletes, and I felt that I could listen to them. I could not have listened to a sensuous-looking man, a man who was not a master of his own body, any more than I could to a precentor, who coming to sing the prayers at college chapel dedication, I saw get drunk on sherry which he abstracted from the banquet table just before the service. Never shall I forget, at the meeting of the Studd brothers, the audience being asked to stand up if they intended to try and follow Christ. It appeared a very sensible question to me, but I was amazed how hard I found it to stand up. At last one boy, out of a hundred or more in sailor rig, from an industrial or reformatory ship on the Thames, suddenly rose. It seemed to me such a wonderfully courageous act — for I knew perfectly what it would mean to him — that I immediately found myself on my feet, and went out feeling that I had crossed the Rubicon, and must do something to prove it.

We were Church of England people, and I always at-

46 A LABRADOR DOCTOR

tended service with my mother at an Episcopal church of the evangelical type. At her suggestion I asked the minister if I could in any way help. He offered me a class of small boys in his Sunday School, which I accepted with much hesitation. The boys, derived from houses in the neighbourhood, were as smart as any I have known. With every faculty sharpened by the competition of the street, they so tried my patience with their pranks that I often wondered what strange attraction induced them to come at all. The school and church were the property of a society known by the uninviting title of the "Epis- copal Society for the promotion of Christianity among the Jews." It owned a large court, shut off from the road by high gates, around which stood about a dozen houses — with the church facing the gates at one end of a pretty avenue of trees. It was an oasis in the desert of that dismal region. It possessed also an industrial institution for helping its converts to make a living, when driven out of their own homes; and its main work was carried on for the most part by superannuated missionaries. One was from Bagdad, I remember, and one from Palestine, both themselves Jews by extraction. These missionaries were paid such miserable salaries that in their old age they were always left very poor.

One instance of a baptism I have never forgotten. I was then living in the court, having hired a nice separate house under the trees after my father had died and my mother had moved to Hampstead. In such a district the house was a Godsend. One Sunday I was strolling in the court when the clergyman came rushing out of the church and called to me in great excitement, "The church is full of Jews. They are going to carry off Abra- ham. Can't you go in and help while I fetch the police?" My friend and I therefore rushed in as directed to a

EARLY WORK IN LONDON 47

narrow alleyway between high box pews which led into the vestry, into which "Abraham" had been spirited. The door being shut and our backs put to it, it was a very easy matter to hold back the crowd, who probably supposed at first that we were leading the abduction party. There being only room for two to come on at once, "those behind cried forward, and those in front back," till after very little blood spilt, we heard the police in the church, and the crowd at once took to flight. I regret to say that we expedited the rear-guard by football rather than strictly Christian methods. His friends then charged Abraham with theft, expecting to get him out of his place of refuge and then trap him, as we were told they had a previous convert. We therefore accompanied him personally through the mean streets, both to and fro, spoiling for more fun. But they displayed more discre- tion than valour, and to the best of my belief he escaped their machinations.

My Sunday-School efforts did not satisfy me. The boys were few, and I failed to see any progress. But I had resolved that I would do no work on Sundays except for others, so I joined a young Australian of my class in hospital in holding services on Sunday nights in half a dozen of the underground lodging-houses along the Radcliffe Highway. He was a good musician, so he pur- chased a fine little portable harmonium, and whatever else the lodgers thought of us, they always liked the music. We used to meet for evening tea at a place in the famous Highway known as "The Stranger's Rest," out- side of which an open-air service was always held for the sailors wandering up and down the docks. At these a number of ladies would sing; and after the meetings a certain number of the sailors were asked to come in and have refreshments. There were always some who had

48 A LABRADOR DOCTOR

spent their money on drink, or been robbed, or were out of ships, and many of them were very fine men. Some were foreigners — so much so that a bit farther down the road a Norwegian lady carried on another similar work, especially for Scandinavians.

A single story will illustrate the good points which some of these men displayed. My hospital chief, Sir Frederick Treves, had operated on a great big Norwegian, and the man had left the hospital cured. As a rule such patients do not even know the name of their surgeon. Some three weeks later, however, this man called at Sir Frederick Treves's house late one dark night. Having asked if he were the surgeon who had operated on him and getting a reply in the affirmative, he said he had come to return thanks, that since he left hospital he had been wandering about without a penny to his name, wait- ing for a ship, but had secured a place on that day. He proceeded to cut out from the upper edge of his trousers a gold Norwegian five-kronen piece which his wife had sewed in there to be his stand-by in case of absolute need. He had been so hungry that he had been tempted to use it, but now had come to present it as a token of gratitude — upon which he bowed and disappeared. Sir Frederick said that he was so utterly taken aback that he found himself standing in the hall, holding the coin, and bowing his visitor out. He said he could no more return it than you could offer your teacher a "tip," and he has pre- served it as a much-prized possession.

The underground lodging-house work did me lots of good. It brought me into touch with real poverty — a very graveyard of life I had never surmised. The den- izens of those miserable haunts were men from almost every rank of life. They were shipwrecks from the ocean of humanity, drifted up on the last beach. There were

EARLY WORK IN LONDON 49

large open fireplaces in the dens, over which those who had any food cooked it. Often while the other doctor or I was holding services, one of us would have to sit down on some drunken man to keep him from making the proceedings impossible; but there was always a modicum who gathered around and really enjoyed the singing.

We soon found that there were no depths of con- temptible treachery which some among these new ac- quaintances would not attempt. We became gradually hardened to the piteous tales of ill luck, of malignant per- secution, and of purely temporary embarrassments, and learned soon to leave behind us purses, and watches, and anything else of value, and to keep some specially worn clothing for this service.

There was always a narrow passage from the front door to the staircase which led down into those huge underground basements. The guardians had a room inside the door, with a ticket window, where they took five or possibly eight cents from the boarders for their night's lodging. At about eleven o'clock a "chucker out" would go down and clear out all the gentlemen who had not paid in advance for the night. This was always a very melancholy period of the evening, and in spite of our hardened hearts, we always had a score against us there. That, however, had to be given in person, for there were plenty among our audiences who had taken special courses in imitative calligraphy. I.O.U.'s on odd bits of paper were a menace to our banking accounts till we sorrowfully abandoned that convenient way of helping often a really deserving case.

In those houses, somewhat to my astonishment, we never once received any physical opposition. We knew that some considered us harmless and gullible imbeciles; but the great majority were still able to see that it was

50 A LABRADOR DOCTOR

an attempt, however poor, to help them. Drink, of course, was the chief cause of the downfall of most; but as I have already said, there were cases of genuine, undeserved poverty — like our sailor friend, overtaken with sickness in a foreign port. We induced some to sign the pledge and to keep it, if only temporarily, but I think that we ourselves got most out of the work, both in pleasure and uplift. I recall one clergyman, one doctor, and many men from the business world and clerk's life in the flotsam and jetsam.

One poor creature, in the last stage of poverty and dirt, proved to be an honours man in Oxford. We looked up his record in the University. He assured us that he intended to begin again a new life, and we agreed to help start him. We took him to a respectable, temperance lodging-house, paid for a bed, a bath, and a supper, and purchased a good second-hand outfit of clothing for him. We were wise enough only to give this to him after we had taken away his own while he was having a bath in the tub. We did not give him a penny of money, fearing his lack of control. Next morning, however, when we went for him, he was gone — no one knew where. We had the neighbouring saloons searched, and soon got track of him. Some "friend" in the temperance house had given him sixpence. The barman offered him the whiskey ; his hands trembled so that he could not lift the glass to his mouth, and the barman kindly poured it down his throat. We never saw him again.

In this lodging-house work a friend, now a well-known artist and successful business man, often joined us two doctors.

My growing experience had shown me that there was a better way to the hearts of my Sunday-School boys than merely talking to them. Like myself, they wor-

EARLY WORK IN LONDON 51

shipped the athlete, whether he were a prize-fighter or a big football player. There were no Y.M.C.A.'s or other places for them to get any physical culture, so we ar- ranged to clear our dining-room every Saturday evening, and give boxing lessons and parallel-bar work : the ceiling was too low for the horizontal. The transformation of the room was easily accomplished. The furniture was very primitive, largely our own construction, and we could throw out through the window every scrap of it except the table, which was soon "adapted." We also put up a quoit pitch in our garden.

This is no place to discuss the spiritual influences of the "noble art of boxing." Personally I have always be- lieved in its value; and my Sunday-School class soon learned the graces of fair play, how to take defeat and to be generous in victory. They began at once bringing "pals" whom my exegesis on Scripture would never have lured within my reach. We ourselves began to look for- ward to Saturday night and Sunday afternoon with an entirely new joy. We all learned to respect and so to love one another more — indeed, lifelong friendships were developed and that irrespective of our hereditary credal affiliations. The well-meaning clergyman, however, could not see the situation in that light, and declining all in- vitations to come and sample an evening's fun instead of condemning it unheard, or I should say, unseen, he delivered an ultimatum which I accepted — and re- signed from his school.

My Australian friend was at that time wrestling with a real ragged school on the Highway on Sunday after- noons. The poor children there were street waifs and as wild as untamed animals. So, being temporarily out of a Sunday job, I consented to join him.

Our school-room this time owed no allegiance to any

52 A LABRADOR DOCTOR

one but ourselves, and the work certainly proved a real labour of love. If the boys were allowed in a minute be- fore there was a force to cope with them, the room would be wrecked. Everything movable was stolen immediately opportunity arose. Boys turned out or locked out during session would climb to the windows, and triumphantly wave stolen articles. On one occasion when I had "chucked out" a specially obstreperous youth, I was met with a shower of mud and stones as I passed through a narrow alley on my return home. The police were always at war with the boys, who annoyed them in similar and many other ways. I remember two scholars whose eyes were blacked and badly beaten by a "cop" who hap- pened to catch them in our doorway, as they declared, "only waiting for Sunday School to open." Old scores were paid off by both parties whenever possible. My own boys did not stay in the old school long after I left, but came and asked me to keep a class on Sunday in our dining-room — an arrangement in which I gladly ac- quiesced, though it involved my eventually abandoning the ragged school, which was at least two miles distant. With the night work at the lodging-houses, we used to combine a very aggressive total abstinence campaign. The saloon-keepers as a rule looked upon us as harmless cranks, and I have no doubt were grateful for the leaflets we used to distribute to their customers. These served admirably for kindling purposes. At times, however, they got ugly, and once my friend, who was in a saloon talking to a customer, was trapped and whiskey poured into his mouth. On another occasion I noticed that the outer doors were shut and a couple of men backed up against them while I was talking to the bartender over the counter, and that a few other customers were closing in to repeat the same experiment on me. However, they

EARLY WORK IN LONDON 53

greatly overrated their own stock of fitness and equally underrated my good training, for the scrimmage went all my own way in a very short time.

If ever I told my football chums (for in those days I was playing hard) of these adventures in a nether world, they always wanted to come and cooperate; but I have always felt that reliance on physical strength alone is only a menace when the odds are so universally in favour of our friend the enemy. At this time also at St. Andrew's Church, just across the Whitechapel Road from the hospital, the clergyman was a fine athlete and good boxer. He was a brother of Lord Wenlock, and was one night returning from a mission service in the Highway when he was set upon by footpads and robbed of every- thing, including the boots off his feet. Meantime "Jack the Ripper" was also giving our residential section a most unsavoury reputation.

My long vacations at this time were always taken on the sea. My brother and I used to hire an old fishing smack called the "Oyster," which we rechristened the "Roysterer." This we fitted out, provisioned, and put to sea in with an entirely untrained crew, and without even the convention of caring where we were bound so long as the winds bore us cheerily along. My brother was always cook — and never was there a better. We believed that he would have made a mark in the world as a chef, from his ability to satisfy our appetites and cater to our desires out of so ill-supplied a galley. We always took our departure from the north coast of Anglesea — a beauti- ful spot, and to us especially attractive as being so entirely out of the run of traffic that we could do exactly as we pleased. We invariably took our fishing gear with us, and thus never wanted for fresh food. We could replenish our bread, milk, butter, and egg supply at the numerous

54 A LABRADOR DOCTOR

small ports at which we called. The first year the crew consisted of my brother and me — skipper, mate, and cook between us — and an Oxford boating friend as second mate. For a deckhand we had a young East Lon- don parson, whom we always knew as "the Puffin," be- cause he so closely resembled that particular bird when he had his vestments on. We sailed first for Ireland, but the wind coming ahead we ran instead for the Isle of Man. The first night at sea the very tall undergraduate as second mate had the 12 p.m. to 4 a.m. night watch. The tiller handle was very low, and when I gave him his course at midnight before turning in myself, he asked me if it would be a breach of nautical etiquette to sit down to steer, as that was the only alternative to directing the ship's course with his ankles. No land was in sight, and the wind had died out when I came on deck for my 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. watch. I found the second mate sitting up rubbing his eyes as I emerged from the companion hatch.

"Well, where are we now? How is her head? What's my course?"

"Don't worry about such commonplace details," he replied. "I have made an original discovery about these parts that I have never seen mentioned before."

"What's that?" I asked innocently.

"Well," he replied, "when I sat down to steer the course you gave brought a bright star right over the top- mast head and that's what I started to steer by. It's a perfect marvel what a game these heavenly bodies play. We must be in some place like Alice in Wonderland. I just shut my eyes for a second and when next I opened them the sun was exactly where I had left that star — ': and he fled for shelter.

It is a wonder that we ever got anywhere, for we had

EARLY WORK IN LONDON 55

not so much as a chronometer watch, and so in spite of a decrepit sextant even our latitude was often an uncer- tain quantity. However, we made the port of Douglas, whence we visited quite a part of the historic island. As our parson was called home from there, we wired for and secured another chum to share our labours. Our generally unconventional attire in fashionable summer resorts was at times quite embarrassing. Barelegged, bareheaded, and "tanned to a chip," I was carrying my friend's bag along the fashionable pier to see him off on his home- ward journey, when a lady stopped me and asked me if I were an Eskimo, offering me a job if I needed one. I have wondered sometimes if it were a seat in a sideshow which she had designed for me.

We spent that holiday cruising around the island. It included getting ashore off the north point of land and nearly losing the craft; and also in Ramsey Harbour a fracas with the harbour authorities. We had run that night on top of the full spring tide. Not knowing the harbour, we had tied up to the first bollard, and gone incontinently to sleep. We were awakened by the sound of water thundering on top of us, and rushing up found to our dismay that we were lying in the mud, and a large sewer was discharging right on to our decks. Before we had time to get away or clean up, the harbour master, coming alongside, called on us to pay harbour duties. We stoutly protested that as a pleasure yacht we were not liable and intended to resist to the death any such insult being put upon us. He was really able to see at once that we were just young fellows out for a holiday, but he had the last word before a crowd of sight-seers who had gathered on the quay above us.

"Pleasure yacht, pleasure yacht, indeed!" he shouted as he rode away. "I can prove to any man with half an

56 A LABRADOR DOCTOR

eye that you are nothing but one of them old coal or mud barges."

The following year the wind suited better the other way. We were practically all young doctors this time, the cook being a very athletic chum in whose rooms were collected as trophies, in almost every branch of athletics, over seventy of what we called silver "pots." As a cook he proved a failure except in zeal. It did n't really interest him, especially when the weather was lively. On one occasion I reported to the galley, though I was the skip- per that year, in search of the rice-pudding for dinner — Dennis, our cook, being temporarily indisposed. Such a sight as met my view ! Had I been superstitious I should have fled. A great black column the circumference of the boiler had risen not less than a foot above the top rim, and was wearing the iron cover jauntily on one side as a helmet. It proved to be rice. He had filled the saucepan with dry rice, crowded in a little water, forced the lid on very tight and left it to its own devices!

Nor, in his subsequent capacity as deckhand, did he redeem in our eyes the high qualities of seamanship which we had anticipated from him.

Our tour took us this time through the Menai Straits, via Carnarvon and the Welsh coast, down the Irish Channel to Milford Haven. In the region of very heavy tides and dangerous rocks near the south Welsh coast, we doubled our watch at night. One night the wind fell very light, and we had stood close inshore in order to pass inside the Bishop Rocks. The wind died out at that very moment, and the heavy current driving us down on the rocky islands threatened prematurely to termi- nate our cruise. The cook was asleep, as usual when called, and at last aroused to the nature of the alarm, Was found leaning forward over the ship's bows with a

EARLY WORK IN LONDON 57

lighted candle. When asked what he was doing, he ex- plained, "Why, looking for those bishops, of course."

No holiday anywhere could be better sport than those cruises. There was responsibility, yet rest, mutual de- pendence, and a charming, unconventional way of getting acquainted with one's own country. We visited Car- narvon, Harlech, and other castles, lost our boat in a breeze of wind off Dynllyn, climbed Snowden from Pwllheli Harbour, and visited a dozen little out-of-the- world harbours that one would otherwise never see. Fishing and shooting for the pot, bathing and rowing, and every kind of healthy out-of-doors pleasure was indulged in along the road of travel. Moreover, it was all made to cost just as much or as little as you liked.

Another amusing memory which still remains with me was at one little seaport where a very small man not over five feet high had married a woman considerably over six. He was an idle, drunken little rascal, and I met her one day striding down the street with her intoxicated little spouse wrapped up in her apron and feebly pro- testing.

One result of these holidays was that I told my London boys about them, using one's experiences as illustrations; till suddenly it struck me that this was shabby Christianity. Why should n't these town cage- lings share our holidays? Thirteen accompanied me the following summer. We had three tents, an old deserted factory, and an uninhabited gorge by the sea, all to our- selves on the Anglesea coast, among people who spoke only Welsh. Thus we had all the joys of foreign travel at very little cost.

Among the many tricks the boys "got away with" was one at the big railway junction at Bangor, where we had an hour to wait. They apparently got into the

58 A LABRADOR DOCTOR

baggage-room and stole a varied assortment of labels, which they industriously pasted over those on a large pile of luggage stacked on the platform. The subsequent tangle of destinations can better be imagined than de- scribed.

Camp rules were simple — no clothing allowed except short blue knickers and gray flannel shirts, no shoes, stockings, or caps except on Sundays. The uniform was provided and was as a rule the amateur production of numerous friends, for our finances were strictly limited. The knickers were not particularly successful, the legs frequently being carried so high up that there was no space into which the body could be inserted. Every one had to bathe in the sea before he got any breakfast. I can still see ravenous boys staving off the evil hour till as near midday as possible. No one was allowed in the boats who could n't swim, an art which they all quickly acquired. There was, of course, a regular fatigue party each day for the household duties. We had no beds — sleeping on long, burlap bags stuffed with hay. A very favourite pastime was afforded by our big lifeboat, an old one hired from the National Lifeboat Society. The tides flowed very strongly alongshore, east on the flood tide and west on the ebb. Food, fishing lines, and a skipper for the day being provided, the old boat would go off with the tide in the morning, the boys had a picnic somewhere during the slack-water interim, and came back with the return tide.

When our numbers grew, as they did to thirty the second year, and nearly a hundred in subsequent sea- sons, thirty or more boys would be packed off daily in that way — and yet we never lost one of them. If they had not had as many lives as cats it would have been quite another story. The boat had sufficient sails to give

EARLY WORK IN LONDON 59

the appearance to their unfamiliar eyes of being a sailing vessel, but the real work was done with twelve huge oars, two boys to an oar being the rule. At nights they used to come drifting homeward on the returning tides singing their dirges, like some historic barge of old. There was one familiar hymn called "Bringing in the Sheaves," which like everything else these rascals adapted for the use of the moment; and many a time the returning barge would be announced to us cooking supper in the old factory or in the silent gorge, by the ringing echoes of many voices beating with their oars as they came on to the words:

"Pulling at the sweeps, Pulling at the sweeps; Here we come rejoicing, Pulling at the sweeps."

As soon as the old boat's keel slid up upon the beach, there would be a rush of as appreciative a supper party as ever a cook had the pleasure of catering for.

An annual expedition was to the top of Mount Snow- don, the highest in England or Wales. It was attempted by land and water. Half of us tramped overland in forced marches to the beautiful Menai Straits, crossed the suspension bridge, and were given splendid hospital- ity and good beds on the straw of the large stables at the beautiful country seat of a friend at Treborth. Here the boat section who came around the island were to meet us, anchoring their craft on the south side of the Straits. Our second year the naval division did not turn up, and some had qualms of conscience that evil might have overtaken them. Nor did they arrive until we by land had conquered the summit, travelling by Bethesda and the famous slate quarries, and returning for the second evening at Treborth. We then found that they had been

60 A LABRADOR DOCTOR

stranded on the sands in Red Wharf Bay, so far from shore that they could neither go forward nor back; had thus spent their first night in a somewhat chilly manner in old bathing machines by the land wash, and supped off the superfluous hard biscuit which they had been re- serving for the return voyage. They were none the worse, however, our genial host making it up to them in an extra generous provision and a special evening entertain- ment. One of my smartest boys (a Jew by nationality, for we made no distinctions in election to our class), in recounting his adventures to me next day, said: "My! Doctor, I did have some fun kidding that waiter in the white choker. He took a liking to me so I let him pal up. I told him my name wTas Lord Shaftesbury when I was home, but I asked him not to let it out, and the old bloke promised he wouldn't." The "old bloke" happened to be our host, who was always in dress-clothes in the evening, the only time we were at his house.

These holidays were the best lessons of love I could show my boys. It drew us very closely together; and to make the boys feel it less a charitable affair, every one was encouraged to save up his railway fare and as much more as possible. By special arrangement with the rail- way and other friends, and by very simple living, the per caput charges were so much reduced that many of the boys not only paid their own expenses, but even helped their friends. The start was always attended by a crowd of relatives, all helping with the baggage. The father of one of my boys was a costermonger, and had a horse that he had obtained very cheap because it had a disease of the legs. He always kept it in the downstairs portion of his house, which it entered by. the front door. It was a great pleasure to him to come and cart our things free to the station. The boys used to load his cart

EARLY WORK IN LONDON 61

at our house, and I remember one time that they made him haul unconsciously all the way to the big London terminal at Euston half our furniture, including our coal boxes. His son, a most charming boy, made good in life in Australia and bought a nice house in one of the sub- urbs for his father and mother. I had the pleasure one night of meeting them all there. The father was terribly uneasy, for he said he just could not get accustomed to it. All his old "pals" were gone, and his neighbours' tastes and interests were a great gulf between them. I heard later that as soon as his son left England again the old man sold the house, and returned to the more con- genial associations of a costermonger's life, where I be- lieve he died in harness.

The last two years of my stay in London being occu- pied with resident work at hospital, I could not find time for such far-off holidays, and at the suggestion of my chief, Sir Frederick Treves, himself a Dorsetshire man, we camped by permission of our friends, the owners, in the grounds of Lul worth Castle, close by the sea. The class had now developed into a semi-military organization. We had acquired real rifles — old-timers from the Tower of London — and our athletic clubs were portions of the Anglesey Boys' Brigade, which antedated the Boys' Brigade of Glasgow, forerunner of the Church Lads' Brigade, and the Boy Scouts.

One of the great attractions of the new camping- ground was the exquisite country and the splendid coast, with chalk cliffs over which almost any one could fall with impunity. Lulworth Cove, one of the most pic- turesque in England, was the summer resort of my chief, and he being an expert mariner and swimmer used not only very often to join us at camp, but always gave the boys a fine regatta and picnic at his cottage. Our water

62 A LABRADOR DOCTOR

polo games were also a great feature here, the water being warm and enabling us easily to play out the games. There are also numerous beautiful castles and country houses all the way between Swanage and Weymouth, and we had such kindness extended to us wherever we went that every day was a dream of joy to the lads. Without any question they acquired new visions and ideals through these experiences.

We always struck camp at the end of a fortnight, hav- ing sometimes arranged with other friends with classes of their own to step into our shoes. The present head master of Shrewsbury and many other distinguished persons shared with us some of the educative joys of those days. Among the many other more selfish portions of the holidays none stand out more clearly in my mem- ory than the August days when partridge and grouse shooting used to open. Most of my shooting was done over the delightful highlands around Bishop's Castle in Shropshire, on the outskirts of the Welsh hills, in Clun Forest, and on the heather-covered Longmynds. How I loved those days, and the friends who made them pos- sible — the sound of the beaters, the intelligent setters and retrievers, the keepers in velveteens, the lunches under the shade of the great hedges or in lovely cottages, where the ladies used to meet us at midday, and every one used to jolly you about not shooting straight, and you had to take refuge in a thousand "ifs."

As one looks back on it all from Labrador, it breathes the aroma of an old civilization and ancient customs. Much of the shooting was over the old lands of the Walcotts of Walcott Hall, a family estate that had been bought up by Earl Clive on his return from India, and was now in the hands of his descendant, an old bache- lor who shot very little, riding from one good stand

EARLY WORK IN LONDON 63

to another on a steady old pony. There were many such estates, another close by being that of the Oakovers of Oakover, a family that has since sold their heritage.

A thousand time-honoured old customs, only made acceptable by their hoary age, added, and still continue to add in the pleasures of memory, to the joys of those days, with which golf and tennis and all the wonderful luxury of the modern summer hotel seem never able to compete. It is right, however, that such eras should pass.

The beautiful forest of Savernake, that in my school days I had loved so well, and which meant so much to us boys, spoke only too loudly of the evil heirloom of the laws of entail. Spendthrift and dissolute heirs had made it impossible for the land to be utilized for the benefit of the people, and yet kept it in the hands of utterly un- deserving persons. Being of royal descent they still bore a royal name even in my day; but it was told of them that the last, who had been asked to withdraw from the school, on one occasion when, half drunk, he was de- fending himself from the gibes and jeers of grooms and 'ostlers whom he had made his companions, rose with ill- assumed dignity and with an oath declared that he was their king by divine right if only he had his dues. Look- ing back it seems to me that the germs of democratic tendencies were sown in me by just those very incideuts.

CHAPTER IV

AT THE LONDON HOSPITAL

I have never ceased to regret that there was not more corporate life in our medical school, but I believe that conditions have been greatly improved since my day. Here and there two or three classmates would "dig" to- gether, but otherwise, except at lectures or in hospitals, we seldom met unless it was on the athletic teams. We had no playground of our own, and so, unable to get other hospitals to combine, when a now famous St. Thomas man and myself hired part of the justly cele- brated London Rowing Club Headquarters at Putney for a united hospitals' headquarters, we used to take our blazers and more cherished possessions home with us at night for fear of distraint of rent.

They were great days. Rowing on the Thames about Putney is not like that at Oxford on a mill-pond, or as at Cambridge on what we nicknamed a drain that should be roofed over. Its turgid waters were often rough enough to sink a rowing shell, and its busy traffic was a thing with which to reckon. But it offered associations with all kinds of interesting places, historical and otherwise, from the Star and Garter at Richmond and the famous Park away to Boulter's Lock and Cleveden Woods, to the bathing pools about Taplow Court, the seat of the senior branch of our family, and to Marlow and Goring where our annual club outings were held. Twice I rowed in the inter-hospital race from Putney to Mortlake, once as bow and again as stroke. During those early days the "London" frequently had the best boat on the river.

Having now finished my second year at hospital and

AT THE LONDON HOSPITAL 65

taken my preliminary examinations, including the sci- entific preliminary, and my first bachelor of medicine for the University of London degree, I had advanced to the dignity of "walking the hospitals," carried a large shining stethoscope, and spent much time following the famous physicians and surgeons around the wards.

Our first appointment was clerking in the medical wards. We had each so many beds allotted to us, and it was our business to know everything about the patients who occupied them, to keep accurate "histories" of all developments, and to be ready to be quizzed and queried by our resident house physician, or our visiting con- sultant on the afternoon when he made his rounds, fol- lowed by larger or smaller crowds of students according to the value which was placed upon his teaching. I was lucky enough to work under the famous Sir Andrew Clark, Mr. Gladstone's great physician. He was a Scotchman greatly beloved, and always with a huge following to whom he imparted far more valuable truths than even the medical science of thirty years ago afforded. His constant message, repeated and repeated at the risk of wearying, was: "Gentlemen, you must observe for yourselves. It is your observation and not your memory which counts. It is the patient and not the disease whom you are treating."

Compared with the methods of diagnosis to-day those then were very limited, but Sir Andrew's message was the more important, showing the greatness of the man, who, though at the very top of the tree, never for a mo- ment tried to convey to his followers that his knowledge was final, but that any moment he stood ready to aban- don his position for a better one. On one occasion, to illus- trate this point, while he was in one of the largest of our Wards (one with four divisions and twenty beds each) he

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was examining a lung case, while a huge class of fifty young doctors stood around.

"What about the sputum, Mr. Jones?" he asked. "What have you observed coming from these lungs? "

"There is not much quantity, sir. It is greenish in colour."

"But what about the microscope, Mr. Jones? What does that show?"

"No examination has been made, sir."

"Gentlemen," he said, "I will now go to the other ward, and you shall choose a specimen of the sputum of some of these cases. When I return we will examine it and see what we can learn."

When he returned, four specimens awaited him, the history and diagnoses of the cases being known only to. the class. The class never forgot how by dissolving and boiling, and with the microscope, he told us almost more from his examination of each case than we knew from all our other information. His was real teaching, and re- minds one of the Glasgow professor who, in order to emphasize the same point of the value of observation, prepared a little cupful of kerosene, mustard, and castor oil, and calling the attention of his class to it, dipped a finger into the atrocious compound and then sucked his finger. He then passed the mixture around to the stu- dents who all did the same with most dire results. When the cup returned and he observed the faces of his students, he remarked: "Gentlemen, I am afraid you did not use your powers of obsairvation. The finger that I put into the cup was no the same one that I stuck in my mouth afterwards."

Sir Stephen Mackenzie, who operated on the Emperor Frederick, was another excellent teacher under whom we had the good fortune to study. Indeed, whatever could

AT THE LONDON HOSPITAL 67

be said against the teaching of our college, in this much more important field of learning, the London Hospital was most signally fortunate, and, moreover, was famed not only in London, but all the world over. Our "walking class" used to number men from the United States to Australia, insomuch that the crowds became so large that the teachers could not get room to pass along. It was this fact which led to the practice, now almost uni- versal, of carrying the patient in his bed with a nurse in attendance into the theatre for observation as more comfortable and profitable for all concerned.

On changing over to the surgical side in the hospital, we were employed in a very similar manner, only we were called "dressers," and under the house surgeon had all the care of a number of surgical patients. My good fortune now brought me under the chieftaincy of Sir Frederick Treves, the doyen of teachers. His great mes- sage was self-reliance. He taught dogmatically as one having authority, and always insisted that we should make up our minds, have a clear idea of what we were doing, and then do it. His ritual was always thought out, no detail being omitted, and each person had exactly his share of work and his share of responsibility. It used greatly to impress patients, and he never underestimated the psychical value of having their complete confidence. Thus, on one occasion asking a dresser for his diagnosis, the student replied:

"It might be a fracture, sir, or it might be only sprained."

"The patient is not interested to know that it might be measles, or it might be toothache. The patient wants to know what is the matter, and it is your business to tell it to him or he will go to a quack who will inform him at once."

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All his teachings were, like Mark Twain's, enhanced by such over-emphasis or exaggeration. He could make an article in the "British Medical Journal" on Cholecys- tenterostomy amusing to a general reader, and make an ordinary remark as cutting as an amputation knife. He never permitted laxity of any kind in personal appear- ance or dress, or any imposing on the patients. His habit of saying openly exactly what he meant made many people fear, as much as they respected, him. However, he was always, in spite of it, the most popular of all the chiefs because he was so worth while.

One incident recurs to my mind which I must recount as an example when psychology failed. A Whitechapel "lady," suffering with a very violent form of delirium tremens, was lying screeching in a strait- jacket on the cushioned floor of the padded room. With the usual huge queue of students following, he had gone in to see her, as I had been unable to get the results desired with a reasonable quantity of sedatives and soporifics. It was a very rare occasion, for cases which did not involve active surgery he left strictly alone. After giving a talk on psy- chical influence he had the jacket removed as "a relic of barbarism," and in a very impressive way looking into her glaring eyes and shaking his forefinger at her, he said: "Now, you are comfortable, my good woman, and will sleep. You will make no more disturbance whatever." There was an unusual silence. The woman remained absolutely passive, and we all turned to follow the chief out. Suddenly the "lady" called out, "Hi, hi," — and some perverse spirit induced Sir Frederick to return. Looking back with defiant eyes she screamed out, "You!

You with a f aice ! You do think yerself clever,

don't yer?" The strange situation was only relieved by his bursting into a genuine fit of laughter.

AT THE LONDON HOSPITAL 69

Among other celebrated men who were admired and revered was Mr. Harry Fenwick on the surgical side, for whom I had the honour of illustrating in colours his prize Jacksonian essay. Any talent for sketching, especially in colours, is of great value to the student of medicine. Once you have sketched a case from nature, with the object of showing the peculiarity of the abnormality, it remains permanently in your mind. Besides this, it forces you to note small differences; in other words, it teaches you to "obsairve." Thus, in the skin department I was sent to reproduce a case of anthrax of the neck, a rare disease in England, though all men handling raw hides are liable to contract it. The area had to be immediately excised; yet one never could forget the picture on one's mind. On another occasion a case of genuine leprosy was brought in, with all the dreadful signs of the disease. The macula rash was entirely unique so far as I knew, but a sketch greatly helped to fix it on one's memory. The poor pa- tient proved to be one of the men who was handling the meat in London's greatest market at Smithfield. A tre- mendous hue and cry spread over London when some- how the news got into the paper, and vegetarianism received a temporary boost which in my opinion it still badly needs for the benefit of the popular welfare.

Among the prophets of that day certainly should be numbered another of our teachers, Dr. Sutton, an author, and very much of a personality. For while being one of the consulting physicians of the largest of London hos- pitals, he was naturally scientific and strictly profes- sional. He was very far, however, from being the con- ventionalist of those days, and the younger students used to look greatly askance at him. His message always was: "Drugs are very little use whatever. Nature is the source of healing. Give her a chance." Thus, a careful

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history would be read over to him; all the certain signs of typhoid would be noted — and his comment almost always was: "This case won't benefit by drugs. We will have the bed wheeled out into the sunshine." The next case would be acute lobar pneumonia and the same treatment would be adopted. "This patient needs air, gentlemen. We must wheel him out into the sunshine" — and so on. How near we are coming to his teaching in these days is already impressing itself upon our minds. Unfortunately the fact that the doctors realize that medicines are not so potent as our forbears thought has not left the public with the increased confidence in the profession which the infinitely more rational treatment of to-day justifies, and valuable time is wasted and fatal delays incurred, by a return of the more impressionable public to quacks with high-sounding titles, or to cults where faith is almost credulity.

Truly one has lived through wonderful days in the history of the healing art. The first operations which I saw performed at our hospitals were before Lord Lister's teaching was practised; though even in my boyhood I remember getting leave to run up from Marlborough to London to see my brother, on whom Sir Joseph Lister had operated for osteomyelitis of the leg. Our most famous surgeon in 1880 was Sir Walter Rivington; and to-day there rises in memory the picture of him removing a leg at the thigh, clad in a blood-stained, black velvet coat, and without any attempt at or idea of asepsis. The main thing was speed, although the patient was under ether, and in quickly turning round the tip of the sword- like amputation knife, he made a gash in the patient's other leg. The whole thing seemed horrible enough to us students, but the surgeon smiled, saying, "Fortunately it is of no importance, gentlemen. The man will not live."

AT THE LONDON HOSPITAL 71

The day came when every one worked under clouds of carbolic steam which fizzed and spouted from large brass boilers over everything; and then the time when every one was criticizing the new, young surgeon, Treves, who was daring to discard it, and getting as good results by scrupulous cleanliness. His aphorism was, "Gentlemen, the secret of surgery is the nailbrush." Now with blood examinations, germ cultures, sera tests, X-rays, and a hundred added improvements, one can say to a fisher- man in far-off Labrador arriving on a mail steamer, and to whom every hour lost in the fishing season spells calamity, "Yes, brother, you can be operated on and the wound will be healed and you will be ready to go back by the next steamer, unless some utterly unforeseen cir- cumstance arises."

The fallibility of diagnosis was at this very impres- sionable time fixed upon my mind — a fact that has since served me in good stead. For what can be more reactionary in human life than the man who thinks he knows it all, whether it be in science, philosophy, or religion?

During my Christmas vacation I was asked to go north and visit my father's brother, a well-known cap- tain in Her Majesty's Navy, who was also an inventor in gun machinery and sighting apparatus, and who had been appointed the naval head of Lord Armstrong's great works at Yarrow-on-the-Tyne. All that I was told was that he had been taken with such severe pains in the back that he needed some one with him, and my new-fledged dignity of "walking the hospitals" was sup- posed to qualify me especially for the post. Already my uncle had seen many doctors in London and had been ordered to the Continent for rest. After some months, not a bit improved, he had again returned to London.

72 A LABRADOR DOCTOR

This time the doctor told his wife that it was a mental trouble, and that he should be sent to an asylum. This she most indignantly denied, and yet desired my com- pany as the only medical Grenfell, who at such a crisis could stay in the house without being looked upon as a warder or keeper. Meantime they had consulted Sir C. P., who had told my uncle that he had an aneurism of his aorta, and that he must be prepared to have it break and kill him any minute. His preparations were accordingly all made, and personally I fully anticipated that he would fall dead before I left. He put up a won- derful fight against excruciating pain, of which I was frequently a witness. But the days went by and nothing happened, so I returned to town and another young doctor took my place. He also got tired of waiting and suggested it might be some spinal trouble. He induced them once more to visit London and see Sir Victor Horsley, whose work on the brains of animals and men had marked an epoch in our knowledge of the central nervous system. Some new symptoms had now super- vened, and the famous neurologist at once diagnosed a tumour in the spinal canal. Such a case had never pre- viously been operated on successfully, but there was no alternative. The operation was brilliantly performed and a wonderful success obtained. The case was quoted in the next edition of our surgical textbooks.

A little later my father's health began to fail in London, the worries and troubles of a clergyman's work among the poor creatures who were constantly passing under his care utterly overwhelming him. We had agreed that a long change of thought was necessary and he and I started for a fishing and sight-seeing tour in Norway. Our steamer was to sail from the Tyne, and we went up to Newcastle to catch it. There some evil fiend persuaded

AT THE LONDON HOSPITAL 73

my father to go and consult a doctor about his illness, for Newcastle has produced some well-known names in medicine. Thus, while I waited at the hotel to start, my father became persuaded that he had some occult dis- ease of the liver, and must remain in Newcastle for treatment. I, however, happened to be treasurer of the voyage, and for the first time asserting my professional powers, insisted that I was family physician for the time, and turned up in the evening with all our round-trip tickets and reservations taken and paid for. In the morn- ing I had the trunks packed and conveyed aboard, and we sailed together for one of the most enjoyable holidays I ever spent. We travelled much afoot and in the little native carriages called " stolkjserre," just jogging along, staying anywhere, fishing in streams, and living an open-air life which the increasing flood of tourists in after years have made much less possible. We both came back fitter in body and soul for our winter's work.

My father's death a year later made a great difference to me, my mother removing to live with my grandmother at Hampstead, it being too lonely and not safe for her to live alone in East London. Twice our house had been broken into by burglars, though both times fruitlessly. The second occasion was in open daylight during the hour of evening service on a Sunday. Only a couple of maids would have been in the house had I not been suffering from two black eyes contracted during the Saturday's football game. Though I had accompanied the others out, decidedly my appearance might have led to misinterpretations in church, and I had returned unnoticed. The men escaped by some method which they had discovered of scaling a high fence, but I was close behind following them through the window by which they had entered. Shortly afterward I happened

74 A LABRADOR DOCTOR

to be giving evidence at the Old Bailey on one of the many cases of assault and even murder where the victims were brought into hospital as patients. London was ring- ing with the tale of a barefaced murder at Murray Hill in North London, where an exceedingly clever piece of de- tective work, an old lantern discovered in a pawnbroker's shop in Whitechapel — miles away from the scene of the crime — was the means of bringing to trial four of the most rascally looking villains I ever saw. The trial pre- ceded ours and we had to witness it. One of the gang had turned "Queen's evidence" to save his own neck. So great was the hatred of the others for him and the desire for revenge that even in the court they were hand- cuffed and in separate stands. Fresh from my own little fracas I learned what a fool I had been, for in this case also the deed was done in open daylight, and the lawn had tight wires stretched across it. The young son, giving chase as I did, had been tripped up and shot through his abdomen for his pains. He had, however, crawled back, made his will, and was subsequently only saved by a big operation. He looked in terrible shape when giving evidence at the trial.

The giving of expert evidence on such occasions was the only opportunity which the young sawbones had of earning money. True we only got a guinea a day and expenses, but there were no other movie shows in those days, and we learned a lot about medical jurisprudence, a subject which always greatly interested me. It was no uncommon sight either at the "London" or the "Pop- lar," at both of which I did interne work, to see a police- man always sitting behind the screen at the foot of the patient's bed. One man, quite a nice fellow when not occupied in crime, had when furiously drunk killed his wife and cut his own throat. By the curious custom of

AT THE LONDON HOSPITAL 75

society all the skill and money that the hospital could offer to save a most valuable life was as usual devoted to restoring this man to health. He was weaned slowly back from the grave by special nurses and treatment, till it began to dawn upon him that he might have to stand his trial. He would ask me if I thought he would have to undergo a long term, for he had not been conscious of what he was doing. As he grew better, and the policeman arrived to watch him, he decided that it would probably be quite a long time. He had a little place of his own somewhere, and he used to have chickens and other presents sent up to fellow patients, and would have done so to the nurses, only they could not receive them. I was not personally present at his trial, but I felt really sorry to hear that they hanged him.

Many of these poor fellows were only prevented from ending their own lives by our using extreme care. The case of one wretched man, driven to desperation, I still remember. "Patient male; age forty-five; domestic trouble — fired revolver into his mouth. Finding no phenomena of interest develop, fired a second chamber into his right ear. Still no symptoms worthy of notice. Patient threw away pistol and walked to hospital." Both bullets had lodged in the thick parts of his skull, and doing no damage were left there. A subsequent note read: "Patient to-day tried to cut his throat with a dinner-knife which he had hidden in his bed. Patient met with no success." Another of my cases which inter- ested me considerably was that of a professional burglar who had been operated upon in almost every part of the kingdom, and was inclined to be communicative, as the job which had brought him to hospital had cost him a broken spine. Very little hope was held out to him that he would ever walk again. He was clear of murder, for

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he said it was never his practice to carry firearms, being a nervous man and apt to use them if he had them and got alarmed when busy burglaring. He relied chiefly on his extraordinary agility and steady head to escape. His only yarn, however, was his last. He and a friend had been detailed by the gang to the job of plundering one of a row of houses. The plans of the house and of the enterprise were all in order, but some unexpected alarm was given and he fled upstairs, climbed through a sky- light onto the roof, and ran along the gables of the tiles, not far ahead of the police, who were armed and firing at him. He could easily have gotten away, as he could run along the coping of the brick parapet without turn- ing a hair, but he was brought up by a narrow side street on which he had not counted, not having anticipated, like cats, a battle on the tiles. It was only some twelve or fifteen feet across the gap, and the landing on the other side was a flat roof. Taking it all at a rush he cleared the street successfully, but the flat roof, black with ages of soot, proved to be a glass skylight, and he entered a house in a way new even to him. His falling on a stone floor many feet below accounted for his "unfortunate accident " ! After many months in bed, the man took an unexpected turn, his back mended, and with only a slight leg paralysis he was able to return to the outside world. His long suffering and incarceration in hospital were accepted by the law as his punishment, and he assured me by all that he held sacred that he intended to retire into private life. Oddly enough, however, while on another case, I saw him again in the prisoner's dock and at once went over and spoke to him.

"Drink this time, Doctor," he said. "I was down on my luck and the barkeeper went out and left his till open. I climbed over and got the cash, but there was so

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little space between the bar and the wall that with my stiff back I could n't for the life of me get back. I was jammed like a stopper in a bottle."

Among many interesting experiences, one especially I shall never forget. Like the others, it occurred during my service for Sir Frederick Treves as house-surgeon, and I believe he told the story. A very badly burned woman had been brought into hospital. Her dress had somehow got soaked in paraffin and had then taken fire. Her terribly extensive burns left no hope whatever of her recovery, and only the conventions of society kept us from giving the poor creature the relief of euthanasia, or some cup of laudanum negus. But the law was inter- ested. A magistrate was brought to the bedside and the husband sent for. The nature of the evidence, the mean- ing of an oath, the importance of the poor creature acknowledging that her words were spoken "in hopeless fear of immediate death," were all duly impressed upon what remained of her mind. The police then brought in the savage, degraded-looking husband, and made him stand between two policemen at the foot of the bed, fac- ing his mangled wife. The magistrate, after preliminary questions, asked her to make her dying statement as to how she came by her death. There was a terrible moment of silence. It seemed as if her spirit were no longer able to respond to the stimuli of life on earth. Then a sudden rebound appeared to take place, her eyes lit up with a flash of light, and even endeavouring to raise her piteous body, she said, "It was an accident, Judge. I upset the lamp myself, so help me God"; and just for one moment her eyes met those of her miserable husband. It was the last time she spoke.

Tragedy and comedy ran hand in hand even in this work. St. Patrick's Day always made the hospital busy,

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just as Christmas was the season for burned children. Beer in an East London "pub" was generally served in pewter pots, as they were not easily broken. A common head injury was a circular scalp cut made by the heavy bottom rim, a wound which bled horribly. A woman was brought in on one St. Patrick's Day, her scalp turned for- ward over her face and her long hair a mass of clotted blood from such a stroke, made while she was on the ground. When the necessary readjustments had been made and she was leaving hospital cured, we asked her what had been the cause of the trouble. ' ' 'T was just an accidint, yer know. Sure, me an' another loidy was just havin' a few words."

On another occasion late at night, we were called out of bed by a cantankerous, half-drunken fellow whom the night porter could not pacify. "I'm a regular sub- scriber to this hospital, and I have never had my dues yet," he kept protesting. A new drug to produce im- mediate vomiting had just been put on the market, and as it was exactly the treatment he required, we gave him an injection. To our dismay, though the medicine is in common use to-day, either the poison which he had been drinking or the drug itself caused a collapse followed by head symptoms. He was admitted, his head shaved and icebags applied, with the result that next day he was quite well again. But when he left he had, instead of a superabundance of curly, auburn hair, a polished white knob oiled and shining like a State House at night. We debated whether his subscription would be as regular in future, though he professed to be profoundly grateful.

I have digressed, but the intimacy which grew up be- tween some of my patients and myself seemed worth while recounting, for they showed me what I never in any other way could have understood about the seamy

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side of life in great cities, of its terrible tragedies and pathos, of how much good there is in the worst, and how much need of courage, and what vast opportunities lie before those who accept the service of man as their serv- ice to God. It proved to me how infinitely more needed are unselfish deeds than orthodox words, and how much the churches must learn from the Labour Party, the Socialist Party, the Trades-Union, before tens of thou- sands of our fellow beings, with all their hopes and fears, loves and aspirations, have a fair chance to make good. I learned also to hate the liquor traffic with a loathing of my soul. I met peers of the realm honoured with titles because they had grown rich on the degradation of my friends. I saw lives damned, cruelties of every kind per- petrated, jails and hospitals filled, misery, want, starva- tion, murder, all caused by men who fattened off the profits and posed as gentlemen and great people. I have seen men's mouths closed whose business in life it was to speak out against this accursed trade. I have seen men driven from the profession of priests of God, mak- ing the Church a stench in the nostrils of men who knew values just as well as those trained in the universities do, all through alcohol, alcohol, alcohol. This awful war has been dragging its weary course for over four years now, and yet England has not tackled this curse which is throttling her. We sing "God save the King," and pre- tend to believe in the prayer, and yet we will not face this glaring demon in our midst. Words may clothe ideas, but it takes deeds to realize them.

My parents having gone, it became necessary for me to find lodgings — which I did, "unfurnished," in the house of a Portuguese widow. Her husband, who had a good family name, had gone down in the world, and had

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disappeared with another "lady." The eldest son, a mathematical genius, had been able to pay his way through Cambridge University by the scholarships and prizes which he had won. One beautiful little dark-eyed daughter of seven was playing in a West End Theatre as the dormouse in "Alice in Wonderland." She was second fiddle to Alice herself, also, and could sing all her songs. Her pay was some five pounds a week, poor enough for the attraction she proved, but more than all the rest of the family put together earned. At that time I never went to theatres. Acquaintances had persuaded me that so many of the girls were ruined on the stage that for a man taking any interest in Christian work whatever, it was wrong to attend. Moreover, among my acquaintances there were not a few theatre fans, and I had nothing in common with them. The "dormouse," however, used to come up and say her parts for my benefit, and that of occasional friends, and was so modest and winsome, and her earnings so invaluable to the family, that I entirely altered my opinion. Then and there I came to the con- clusion that the drama was an essential part of art, and that those who were trying to elevate and cleanse it, like Sir Henry Irving, whose son I had met at Marlborough, must have the support of a public who demanded clean plays and good conditions both in front and behind the screen. When I came to London my father had asked me not to go to anything but Shakespearian or equally well-recognized plays until I was twenty-one. Only once did I enter a music hall and I had plenty to satisfy me in a very few minutes. Vaudevilles are better than in those days. The censor does good work, but it is still the demand which creates the supply, and whatever im- provement has occurred has been largely due to the taste of the patrons. Medical students need all the open air

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they can get in order to keep body and soul fit, and our contempt for the theatre fan was justifiable.

My new lodgings being close to Victoria Park afforded the opportunity for training if one were unconventional. To practise throwing the sixteen-pound hammer re- quires rough ground and plenty of space, and as I was scheduled for that at the inter-hospital sports, it was necessary to work when not too many disinterested parties were around. Even an East-Ender's skull is not hammer-proof, as I had seen when a poor woman was brought into hospital with five circular holes in her head, the result of blows inflicted by her husband with a ham- mer. The only excuse which the ruffian offered for the murder was that she had forgotten to wake him, he had been late, and lost his job.

A number of the boys in my class were learning to swim. There was only one bathing lake and once the waters were troubled we drew the line at going in to give lessons. So we used to meet at the gate at the hour of opening in the morning, and thus be going back before most folks were moving. Nor did we always wait for the park keeper, but often scaled the gates and so obtained an even more exclusive dip. Many an evening we would also "flannel," and train round and round the park, or Hackney Common, to improve one's wind before some big event. For diet at that time I used oatmeal, milk, and eggs, and very little or no meat. It was cheaper and seemed to give me more endurance; and the real value of money was dawning on me.

Victoria Park is one of those open forums where every man with a sore spot goes out to air his grievance. On Sundays there were little groups around the trees where orators debated on everything from a patent medicine to the nature of God. Charles Bradlaugh and Mrs. Annie

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Besant were associated together in iconoclastic efforts against orthodox religion, and there was so much truth in some of their contentions that they were making no little disturbance. Hanging on their skirts were a whole crowd of ignorant, dogmatic atheists, who published a paper called "The Freethinker," which, while it was a villainous and contemptible rag, appealed to the passions and prejudices of the partially educated. To answer the specious arguments of their propaganda an association known as the Christian Evidence Society used to send out lecturers. One of them became quite famous for his clever arguments and answers, his ready wit, and really extensive reading. He was an Antiguan, a black man named Edwards, and had been a sailor before the mast. I met him at the parish house of an Episcopal clergyman of a near-by church, who, under the caption of Christian socialism, ran all kinds of social agencies that really found their way to the hearts of the people. His messages were so much more in deeds than in words that he greatly appealed to me, and I transferred my allegiance to his church, which was always well filled. I particularly re- member among his efforts the weekly parish dance. My religious acquaintances were apt to class all such simple amusements in a sort of general category as "works of the Devil," and turn deaf ears to every invitation to point out any evil results, being satisfied with their own statement that it was the "thin edge of the wedge." This good man, however, was very obviously driving a wedge into the hearts of many of his poor neighbours who in those days found no opportunity for relief in innocent pleasures from the sordid round of life in the drab pur- lieus of Bethnal Green. This clergyman was a forerunner of his neighbour, the famous Samuel Barnett of Mile End, who thought out, started, and for many years pre*

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sided over Toynbee House, the first big university settle- ment in East London. His workers preached their gospel through phrases and creeds which they accepted with mental reservations, but just exactly in such ways as they believed in absolutely. At first it used to send a shiver down my spine to find a church worker who did n't believe in the Creed, and stumbled over all our funda- mentals. At first it amazed me that such men would pay their own expenses to live in a place like Whitechapel, only to work on drain committees, as delinquent land- lord mentors, or just to give special educational chances to promising minds, or physical training to unfit bodies. Yet one saw in their efforts undeniable messages of real love. Personally I could only occasionally run up there to meet friends in residence or attend an art exhibition, but they taught me many lessons.

Exactly opposite the hospital was Oxford House, only two minutes distant, which combined definite doctrinal religion with social work. Being an Oxford effort it had great attractions for me. Moreover, right alongside it in the middle of a disused sugar refinery I had hired the yard, converted it into a couple of lawn-tennis courts, and ran a small club. There I first met the famous Dr. Hensley Henson, now Bishop of Hereford, and also the present Bishop of London, Dr. Winnington-Ingram — a good all-round athlete. He used to visit in our wards, and as we had a couple of fives courts, a game which takes little time and gives much exercise, we used to have an afternoon off together, once a week, when he came over to hospital. Neither of these splendid men were dignitaries in those days, or I am afraid they would have found us medicals much more stand-offish. I may as well admit that we had not then learned to have any respect for bishops or church magnates generally. We

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liked both of these men because they were unconven- tional and good sports, and especially in that they were not afraid to tackle the atheist's propaganda in the open. I have seen Dr. Henson in Whitechapel debating alone against a hall full of opponents and with a fairness and infinite restraint, convincing those open to reason that they were mistaken. Moreover, I have seen Dr. Ingram doing just the same thing standing on a stone in the open park. It may all sound very silly when one knows that by human minds, or to the human mind, the In- finite can never be demonstrated as a mathematical proposition. But the point was that these clergy were proving that they were real men — men who had courage as well as faith, who believed in themselves and their message, who deserved the living which they were sup- posed to make out of orthodoxy. This the audience knew was more than could be said of many of the opponents. Christ himself showed his superb manhood in just such speaking out.

Indelibly impressed on my mind still is an occasion when one of the most blatant and vicious of these op- ponents of religion fell ill. A Salvation Army lass found him deserted and in poverty, nursed and looked after him and eventually made a new man of him.

Far and away the most popular of the Park speakers was the Antiguan. His arguments were so clever it was obvious that he was well and widely read. His absolute understanding of the crowd and his witty repartee used frequently to cause his opponents to lose their tempers, and that was always their undoing. The crowd as a rule was very fair and could easily distinguish arguments from abuse. Thus, on one Sunday the debate was as to whether nature was God. The atheist representative was a very loud-voiced demagogue, who when angry betrayed

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his Hibernian origin very markedly. Having been com- pletely worsted and the laugh turned against him by a clever correction of some one's, he used the few minutes given him to reply in violent abuse, ending up that "ladies and gentlemen did not come out on holidays to spend their time being taught English by a damned nigger."

"Sir," Edwards answered from the crowd, "I am a British subject, born on the island of Antigua, and as much an Englishman as any Irishman in the country."

Edwards possessed an inexhaustible stock of good- humour and his laugh could be heard halfway across the Park. As soon as his turn came to mount the stone, he got the crowd so good-natured that they became angry at the interruptions of the enemy, and when some one suggested that if nature were that man's God, the near-by duckpond was the natural place for him, there was a rush for him, and for several subsequent Sundays he was not in evidence. Edwards was a poor man, his small salary and incessant generosity left him nothing for holidays, and he was killing himself with overwork. So we asked him to join us in the new house which we were fitting up in Palestine Place. He most gladly did so and added enormously to our fun. Unfortunately tubercu- losis long ago got its grip upon him, and removed a val- uable life from East London.

It was a queer little beehive in which we lived in those days, and a more cosmopolitan crowd could hardly have been found: one young doctor who has since made his name and fortune in Australia; another in whose rooms were nearly a hundred cups for prowess in nearly every form of athletics, and who also has "made good" in professional life, besides several others who for shorter or longer periods were allotted rooms in our house.

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Among the more unusual was the "C. M.," a Brahmin from India, a priest in his youth, who had been brought back to England by some society to be educated in med- ical missionary work, but whom for some reason they had dropped. For a short time a clever young Russian of Hebrew extraction who was studying for the Church helped to render our common-room social engagements almost international affairs.

As I write this I am at Charleston, South Carolina, and I see how hard it will be for an American to under- stand the possibility of such a motley assembly being reasonable or even proper. It seems to me down here that there must have been odd feelings sometimes in those days. I can only say, however, that I never per- sonally even thought of it. East London is so democratic that one's standards are simply those of the value of the man's soul as we saw it. If he had been yellow with pink stripes it honestly would not have mattered one iota to most of us.

It so happened that there was at that time in hospital under my care a patient known as "the elephant man." He had been starring under that title in a cheap vaude- ville, had been seen by some of the students, and invited over to be shown to and studied by our best physicians. The poor fellow was really exceedingly sensitive about his most extraordinary appearance. The disease was called "leontiasis," and consisted of an enormous over-devel- opment of bone and skin on one side. His head and face were so deformed as really to resemble a big animal's head with a trunk. My arms would not reach around his hat. A special room in a yard was allotted to him, and several famous people came to see him — among them Queen Alexandra, then the Princess of Wales, who after- ward sent him an autographed photograph of herself.

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He kept it in his room, which was known as the "ele- phant house," and it always suggested beauty and the beast. Only at night could the man venture out of doors, and it was no unusual thing in the dusk of nightfall to meet him walking up and down in the little courtyard. He used to talk freely of how he would look in a huge bottle of alcohol — an end to which in his imagination he was fated to come. He was of a very cheerful disposi- tion and pathetically proud of his left side which was normal. Very suddenly one day he died — the reason assigned being that his head fell forward and choked him, being too heavy for him to lift up.

In 1886 I passed my examinations and duly became a member of the College of Physicians and of the Royal College of Surgeons of England; and sought some field for change and rest, where also I could use my newly acquired license to my own, if to no one else's, benefit. Among the patients who came to the London Hospital, there were now and again fishermen from the large fishing fleets of the North Sea. They lived out, as it were, on floating villages, sending their fish to market every day by fast cutters. Every two or three months, as their turn came round, a vessel would leave for the home port on the east coast, being permitted, or supposed to be per- mitted, a day at home for each full week at sea. As the fleets kept the sea summer and winter and the boats were small, not averaging over sixty tons, it was a haz- ardous calling. The North Sea is nowhere deeper than thirty fathoms, much of it being under twenty, and in some places only five. Indeed, it is a recently sunken and still sinking portion of Europe, so much so that the coasts on both sides are constantly receding, and when Heligoland was handed over by the English to the Kaiser, it was said that he would have to keep jacking

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it up or soon there would be none left. Shallow waters exposed to the fierce gales which sweep the German Ocean make deep and dangerous seas, which readily break and wash the decks of craft with low freeboard, such as the North Sea vessels are obliged to have in order to get boats in and out to ferry their fish to the cutter.

There being no skilled aid at hand, the quickest way to get help used to be to send an injured man to market with the fish. Often it was a long journey of many days, simple fractures became compound, and limbs and facul- ties were often thus lost. It so happened that Sir Fred- erick Treves had himself a love for navigating in small sailing craft. He had made it a practice to cross the English Channel to Calais in a sailing lugger every Box- ing Day — that is, the day after Christmas. He was especially interested in those "that go down to the sea in ships" and had recently made a trip among the fishing fleets. He told me that a small body of men, interested in the religious and social welfare of the deep-sea fisher- men, had chartered a small fishing smack, sent her out among the fishermen to hold religious services of a simple, unconventional type, in order to afford the men an al- ternative to the grog vessels when fishing was slack, and to carry first aid, the skipper of the vessel being taught ambulance work. They wanted, however, very much to get a young doctor to go out, who cared also for the spiritual side of the work, to see if they could use the additional attraction of proper medical aid to gain the men's sympathies. His advice to me was to go and have a look at it. "If you go in January you will see some fine seascapes, anyhow. Don't go in summer when all of the old ladies go for a rest."

I therefore applied to go out the following January, and that fall, while working near the Great London

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docks, I used often to look at the tall East Indiamen, thinking that I soon should be aboard just such a vessel in the North Sea. It was dark and raining when my train ran into Yarmouth, and a dripping, stout fisherman in a blue uniform met me at that then unattractive and ill-lighted terminus. He had brought a forlorn "growler" or four-wheeled cab. Climbing in we drove a mile or more along a deserted road, and drew up at last apparently at the back of beyond.

"Where is the ship?" I asked.

"Why, those are her topmasts," replied my guide, pointing to two posts projecting from the sand. "The tide is low and she is hidden by the quay."

"Heavens!" I thought; "she's no tea clipper, any- how."

I climbed up the bank and peered down in the dark- ness at the hull of a small craft, a little larger than our old Roysterer. She was just discernible by the dim rays of the anchor light. I was hesitating as to whether I should n't drive back to Yarmouth and return to London when a cheery voice on deck called out a hearty welcome. What big things hang on a smile and a cheery word no man can ever say. But it broke the spell this time and I had my cabby unload my bags on the bank and bade him good-night. As his wheels rumbled away into the rain and dark, I felt that my cables were cut beyond recall. Too late to save me, the cheery voice shouted, "Mind the rigging, it's just tarred and greased." I was already sliding down and sticking to it as I went. Small as the vessel was she was absolutely spotless. Her steward, who cooked for all hands, was smart and in a snow-white suit. The contrast between-decks and that above was very comforting, though my quarters were small. The crew were all stocky, good-humoured, and independent.

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Democratic as East London had made me, they im- pressed me very favourably, and I began to look forward to the venture with real pleasure.

Drink was the worst enemy of these men. The quay- sides of the fisherman's quarters teemed with low saloons. Wages were even paid off in them or their annexes, and grog vessels, luring the men aboard with cheap tobacco and low literature, plied their nefarious calling with the fleets, and were the death, body and soul, of many of these fine specimens of manhood.

There was never any question as to the real object of the Mission to Deep-Sea Fishermen. The words "Heal the sick" carved in large letters adorned the starboard bow. "Preach the Word" was on the port, and around the brass rim of the wheel ran the legend, "Jesus said, Follow me and I will make you fishers of men." Thirty years ago we were more conventional than to-day, and I was much surprised to learn from our skipper that we were bound to Ostend to ship four tons of tobacco, sent over from England for us in bond, as he might not take it out consigned to the high seas. In Belgium, however, no duty was paid. The only trouble was that our vessel, to help pay its expenses, carried fishing gear, and as a fishing vessel could not get a clearance in Belgium. Our nets and beams, therefore, had to go out to the fishing grounds in a friendly trawler while we passed as a mercantile marine during the time we took on our cargo.

So bitter was the cold that in the harbour we got frozen in and were able to skate up the canals. We had event- ually to get a steamer to go around us and smash our ice bonds when we were again ready for sea. During the next two months we saw no land except Heligoland and Terschelling — or Skilling, as the fishermen called it —

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far away in the offing. Nor was our deck once clear of ice and snow during all the time.

Our duty was to visit as many fleets as we could, and arrange with some reliable vessel to take a stock of to- bacco for the use of their special fleet. The ship was to carry about six feet of blue bunting on her foretopmast stay, a couple of fathoms above her bowsprit end, so that all the fleet might know her. She was to sell the tobacco at a fixed price that just covered the cost, and undersold the "coper" by fifty per cent. She was to hoist her flag for business every morning, while the small boats were out boarding fish on the carrier, and was to lie as far to leeward of the coper as possible so that the men could not go to both. Nineteen such floating depots were eventually arranged for, with the precaution that if any one of them had to return to port, he should bring no tobacco home, but hand over his stock and accounts to a reliable friend.

These deep-sea fisheries were a revelation to me, and every hour of the long trip I enjoyed. It was amazing to me to find over twenty thousand men and boys afloat — the merriest, cheerfullest lot which I had ever met. They were hail-fellow-well-met with every one, and never thought of deprivation or danger. Clothing, food, cus- toms, were all subordinated to utility. They were the nearest possible thing to a community of big boys, only needing a leader. In efficiency and for their daring re- sourcefulness in physical difficulties and dangers, they were absolutely in a class by themselves, embodying all the traits of character which make men love to read the stories of the buccaneers and other seamen of the six- teenth-century period.

Each fleet had its admiral and vice-admiral, appointed partly by the owner, and partly by the skippers of the

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vessels. The devil-may -care spirit was always a great factor with the men. The admiral directed operations by flags in the daytime and by rockets at night, thus indi- cating what the fleet was to do and where they were to fish. Generally he had the fastest boat, and the cutters, hunting for the fleet always lay just astern of the ad- miral, the morning after their arrival. Hundreds of men would come for letters, packages, to load fish, to get the news of what their last assignment fetched in market. Moreover, a kind of Parliament was held aboard to con- sider policies and hear complaints.

At first it was a great surprise to me how these men knew where they were, for we never saw anything but sky and sea, and not even the admirals carried a chro- nometer or could work out a longitude; and only a small percentage of the skippers could read or write. They all, however, carried a sextant and could by rule of thumb find a latitude roughly. But that was only done at a pinch. The armed lead was the fisherman's friend. It was a heavy lead with a cup on the bottom filled fresh each time with sticky grease. When used, the depth was always called out by the watch, and the kind of sand, mud, or rock which stuck to the grease shown to the skipper. "Fifteen fathoms and coffee grounds — must be on the tail end of the Dogger. Put her a bit more to the west- ward, boy," he would remark, and think no more about it, though he might have been three or four days looking for his fleet, and not spoken to a soul since he left land. I remember one skipper used to have the lead brought down below, and he could tell by the grit between his teeth after a couple of soundings which way to steer. It sounds strange even now, but it was so universal, being just second-nature to the men, who from boyhood had lived on the sea, that we soon ceased to marvel at it.

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Skippers were only just being obliged to have certificates. These they obtained by viva voce examinations. You would sometimes hear an aspiring student, a great black- bearded pirate over forty-seven inches around the chest, and possibly the father of eight or ten children, as he stamped about in his watch keeping warm, repeating the courses — "East end of the Dogger to Horn S.E. by E. 2 and W. point of the island [Heligoland] to Barkum S. h W. Ower Light to Hazebrough N.N.W." — and so on. Their memories were not burdened by a vast range of facts, but in these things they were the nearest imag- inable to Blind Tom, the famous slave musician.

Our long round only occupied us about a month, and after that we settled down with the fleet known as the Great Northerners. Others were the Short Blues, the Rashers (because they were streaked like a piece of bacon), the Columbia, the Red Cross, and so on. Some- times during the night while we were fishing into the west, a hundred sail or more of vessels, we would pass through another big fleet coming the other way, and some of our long trawls and warps would tangle with theirs. Beyond the beautiful spectacle of the myriads of lights bobbing up and down often enough on mighty rough seas — for it needed good breezes to haul our trawls — would be the rockets and flares of the en- tangled boats, and often enough also rockets and flares from friends, and from cutters. One soon became so friendly with the men that one would not return at night to the ship, but visit around and rejoin the Mission ship boarding fish next day, to see patients coming for aid. Though it was strictly against sea rules for skippers to be off their vessels all night, that was a rule, like all others on the North Sea, as often marked in the breach as in the observance. A goodly company would get to-

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gether yarning and often singing and playing games until it was time to haul the trawl and light enough to find their own vessel and signal, for the boat.

The relation of my new friends to religion was a very characteristic one. Whatever they did, they did hard. Thus one of the admirals, being a thirsty soul, and the grog vessels having been adrift for a longer while than he fancied, conceived the fine idea of holding up the Heligoland saloons. So one bright morning he "hove his fleet to" under the lee of the island and a number of boats went ashore, presumably to sell fish. Altogether they landed some five hundred men, who held up the few saloons for two or three days. As a result subsequently only one crew selling fish to the island was allowed ashore at one time. The very gamble of their occupation made them do things hard. Thus it was a dangerous task to throw out a small boat in half a gale of wind, fill her up with heavy boxes of fish, and send her to put these over the rail of a steamer wallowing in the trough of a mountainous sea.

But it was on these very days when less fish was sent to market that the best prices were realized, and so there were always a number of dare-devils, who did not care if lives were lost so long as good prices were obtained and their record stood high on the weekly list of sales which was forwarded to both owners and men. I have known as many as fourteen men upset in one morning out of these boats; and the annual loss of some three hundred and fifty men was mostly from this cause. Conditions were subsequently improved by the Board of Trade, who made it manslaughter against the skipper if any man was drowned boarding fish, unless the admiral had shown his flags to give the fleet permission to do so. In those days, however, I often saw twenty to thirty boats all

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tied up alongside the cutter at one time, the heavy seas every now and again rolling the cutter's sail right under water, and when she righted again it might come up under the keels of some of the boats and tip them upside down. Thus any one in them was caught like a mouse under a trap or knocked to pieces trying to swim among the rushing, tossing boats.

As a rule we hauled at midnight, and it was always a fresh source of wonder, for the trawl was catholic in its embrace and brought up anything that came in its way. To emphasize how comparatively recently the Channel had been dry land, many teeth and tusks of mammoths who used to roam its now buried forests were given up to the trawls by the ever-shifting sands. Old wreckage of every description, ancient crockery, and even a water- logged, old square-rigger that must have sunk years before were brought one day as far as the surface by the stout wire warp. After the loss of a large steamer called the Elbe many of the passengers who had been drowned were hauled up in this way; and on one occasion great excitement was caused in Hull by a fisher lad from that port being picked up with his hands tied behind his back and a heavy weight on his feet. The defence was that the boy had died, and was thus buried to save breaking the voyage — supported by the fact that another vessel had also picked up the boy and thrown him overboard again for the same reason. But those who were a bit superstitious thought otherwise, and more especially as cruelty to these boys was not unknown.

These lads were apprenticed to the fishery masters largely from industrial or reformatory schools, had no relations to look after them, and often no doubt gave the limit of trouble and irritation. On the whole, however, the system worked well, and a most excellent class of

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capable seamen was developed. At times, however, they were badly exploited. During their apprenticeship years they were not entitled to pay, only to pocket money, and yet sometimes the whole crew including the skipper were apprentices and under twenty-one years of age. Even after that they were fitted for no other calling but to follow the sea, and had to accept the master's terms. There were no fishermen's unions, and the men being very largely illiterate were often left victims of a peonage system in spite of the Truck Acts. The master of a vessel has to keep discipline, especially in a fleet, and the best of boys have faults and need punishing while on land. These skippers themselves were brought up in a rough school, and those who fell vicitms to drink and made the acquaintance of the remedial measures of our penal sys- tem of that day were only further brutalized by it. Re- ligion scarcely touched the majority; for their brief periods of leave ashore were not unnaturally spent in having a good time. To those poisoned by the villainous beverages sold on the sordid grog vessels no excess was too great. Owners were in sympathy with the Mission in trying to oust the coper, because their property, in the form of fish, nets, stores, and even sails, were sometimes bartered on the high seas for liquor. On one occasion dur- ing a drunken quarrel in the coper's cabin one skipper threw the kerosene lamp over another lying intoxicated on the floor. His heavy wool jersey soaked in kerosene caught fire. He rushed for the deck, and then, a dancing mass of flames, leaped overboard and disappeared.

Occasionally skippers devised punishments with a view to remedying the defects of character. Thus one lad, who through carelessness had on more than one oc- casion cooked the "duff" for dinner badly, was made to take his cinders on deck when it was his time to turn

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in, and go forward to the fore-rigging. Then he had to take one cinder, go up to the cross-tree, and throw it over into the sea, come down the opposite rigging and repeat the act until he had emptied his scuttle. Another who had failed to clean the cabin properly had one night, instead of going to bed, to take a bucketful of sea water and empty it with a teaspoon into another, and so to and fro until morning. On one occasion a poor boy was put under the ballast deck, that is, the cabin floor, and forgotten. He was subsequently found dead, drowned in the bilge water. It was easy to hide the results of cruelty, for being washed overboard was by no means an uncommon way of disappearing from vessels with low freeboards in the shallow water of the North Sea.

A very practical outcome in the mission work was the organization of the Fisher Lads' Letter- Writing Associa- tion. The members accepted so many names of orphan lads at sea and pledged themselves to write regularly to them. Also, if possible, they were to look them up when they returned to land, and indeed do for them much as the War Camp Community League members are to-day trying to accomplish for our soldiers and sailors. As every practical exposition of love must, it met with a very real response, and brought, moreover, new interests and joys into many selfish lives.

I remember one lady whose whole care in life had been her own health. She had nursed it, and worried over it, and enjoyed ill health so long, that only the constant re- course to the most refined stimulants postponed the end which would have been a merciful relief — to others. The effort of letter-writing remade her. Doctors were forgot- ten, stimulants were tabooed, the insignia of invalidism banished, and to my intense surprise I ran across her at a fishing port surrounded by a bevy of blue-jerseyed lads,

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who were some of those whom she was being blessed by helping.

The best of efforts, however, sometimes "gang aft agley." One day I received a letter, evidently written in great consternation, from an elderly spinster of singu- larly aristocratic connections and an irreproachableness of life which was almost painful. The name sent to her by one of our skippers as a correspondent who needed help and encouragement was one of those which would be characterized as common — let us say John Jones. By some perverse fate the wrong ship was given as an address, and the skipper of it happened to have exactly the same name. It appeared that lack of experience in just such work had made her letter possibly more affec- tionate than she would have wished for under the cir- cumstances which developed. For in writing to me she enclosed a ferocious letter from a lady of Billingsgate threatening, not death, but mutilation, if she continued making overtures to "her John."

CHAPTER V

NORTH SEA WORK

I have dwelt at length upon the experiences of the North Sea, because trivial as they appear on the surface, they concern the biggest problem of human life — the belief that man is not of the earth, but only a temporary so- journer upon it. This belief, that he is destined to go on living elsewhere, makes a vast difference to one's esti- mate of values. Life becomes a school instead of a mere stage, the object of which is that our capacities for useful- ness should develop through using them until we reach graduation. What life gives to us can only be of permanent importance as it develops our souls, thus enabling us to give more back to it, and leaves us better prepared for any opportunities than may lie beyond this world. The most valuable asset for this assumption is love for the people among whom one lives.

The best teachers in life are far from being those who know most, or who think themselves wisest. Show me a schoolmaster who does not love his boys and you show me one who is of no use. Our faith in our sonship of God is immensely strengthened by the puzzling fact that even God cannot force goodness into us, His sons, be- cause we share His nature.

These convictions, anyhow, were the mental assets with which I had to begin work, and no others. A scien- tific training had impressed upon me that big and little are very relative terms; that one piece of work becomes unexpectedly permanent and big, while that which ap- pears to be great, but is merely diffuse, will be temporary and ineffective. Experience has taught me that one

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human life has its limits of direct impetus, but that its most lasting value is its indirect influence. The greatest Life ever lived was no smaller for being in a carpenter's shop, and largely spent among a few ignorant fishermen. The Scarabee had a valid apologia pro vita sua in spite of Dr. Holmes. Tolstoy on his farm, Milton without his sight, Bunyan in his prison, Pasteur in his laboratory, all did great things for the world.

There is so much that is manly about the lives of those who follow the sea, so much less artificiality than in many other callings, and with our fishermen so many fewer of what we call loosely "chances in life," that to sympathize with them was easy — and sympathy is a long step toward love. Life at sea also gives time and opportunity for really knowing a man. It breaks down conventional barriers, and indeed almost compels fellow- ship and thus an intelligent understanding of the diffi- culties and tragedies of the soul of our neighbour. That rare faculty of imagination which is the inspiration of all great lovers of men is not alone indispensable. Hand in hand with this inevitably goes the vision of one's own opportunity to help and not to hinder others, even though it be through the unattractive medium of the collection box — for that gives satisfaction only in pro- portion to the sacrifice which we make.

In plain words the field of work offered me was at- tractive. It seemed to promise me the most remunerative returns for my abilities, or, to put it in another way, it aroused my ambitions sufficiently to make me believe that my special capacities and training could be used to make new men as well as new bodies. Any idea of sacri- fice was balanced by the fact that I never cared very much for the frills of life so long as the necessities were forthcoming.

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The attention that Harold Regbie's book "Twice- Born Men" received, was to me later in life a source of surprise. One forgets that the various religions and sects which aimed at the healing of men's souls have concerned themselves more with intellectual creeds than material, Christ-like ends. At first it was not so. Paul rejoiced that he was a new man. There can be no question but that the Gospels show us truly that the change in Christ's first followers was from men, the slaves of every ordinary human passion, into men who were self -mastered — that Christ taught by what he was and did rather than by insistence on creeds and words. It has been seeing these changes in men's lives, not only in their surroundings, though those improve immediately, that reconcile one to our environment, and has induced me to live a life- time in the wilds.

Another movement that was just starting at this time also interested me considerably. A number of keen young men from Oxford and Cambridge, having experienced the dangers that beset boys from big English public schools who enter the universities without anv definite help as to their attitude toward the spiritual relation- ships of life, got together to discuss the question. They recognized that the formation of the Boys' Brigade in our conservative social life only touched the youth of the poorer classes. Like our English Y.M.C.A., it was not then aristocratic enough for gentlemen. They saw, how- ever, that athletic attainments carried great weight, and that all outdoor accomplishments had a strong attrac- tion for boys from every class. Thus it happened that an organization called the Public School Camps came into being. Its ideal was the uplift of character, and the move- ment has grown with immense strides on both sides of the Atlantic.

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An integral part of my summer holidays during these years was spent as medical officer at one of these camps. For many reasons it was wise in England to run them on military lines, for besides the added dignity, it insured the ability to maintain order and discipline. Some well- known commandant was chosen who was a soldier also in the good fight of faith. Special sites were selected, generally on the grounds of some big country seat which were loaned by the interested lord of the manor, and every kind of outdoor attraction was provided which could be secured. Besides organized competitive games, there was usually a yacht, good bathing, always a gym- khana, and numerous expeditions and "hikes." Not a moment was left unoccupied. All of the work of the camp was done by the boys, who served in turn on orderly duty. The officers were always, if possible, prominent athletes, to whom the boys could look up as being capable in physical as well as spiritual fields. There was a brief address each night before "taps" in the big marquee used for mess; and one night was always a straight talk on the problems of sex by the medical officers, whom the boys were advised to consult in their perplexities. These camps were among the happiest memories of my life, and many of the men to-day gratefully acknowledge that the camps were the turning-point of their whole lives. The secret was unconventionally and absolute naturalness with no "shibboleths." The boys were al- lowed to be boys absolutely in an atmosphere of sincere if not omniscient fervour. On one occasion when breaking up camp, a curly-headed young rascal in my tent, being late on the last morning — unknown to anv one — went to the train in his pajamas, hidden only by his raincoat. At a small wayside station over a hundred miles from London, whither he was bound, leaving his coat in the

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carriage, he ventured into the refreshment stall of the waiting-room. Unfortunately, however, he came out only to find his train departed and himself in his night- clothes on the platform without a penny, a ticket, or a friend. Eluding the authorities he reached the huge Liverpool terminus by night to find a faithful friend waiting on the platform for him with the sorely needed overgarment.

No one was ever ashamed to be a Christian, or of what Christ was, or what he did and stood for. However, to ignore the fact that the mere word "missionary" aroused suspicion in the average English unconventional mind — such as those of these clean, natural-minded boys — would be a great mistake. Unquestionably, as in the case of Dickens, a missionary was unpractical if not hypocritical, and mildly incompetent if not secretly vicious. I found myself always fighting against the idea that I was termed a missionary. The men I loved and admired, especially such men as those on our athletic teams, felt really strongly about it. Henry Martyn — as a scholar — was a hero to those who read of him, though few did. Moreover, who does not love Charles Kingsley? Even as boys, we want to be "a man," though Kingsley was a "Parson Lot." It always seemed that a missionary was naturally discounted until he had proved his right to be received as an ordinary being. Once after being the guest of a bank president, he told me that my stay was followed by that of their bishop, who was a person of great importance. When the bishop had gone, he asked his two boys one day. "Well, which do you like best, the bishop or the doctor?" "Ach," was the reply, "the bishop can't stand on his head." On another occasion during a visit — while lecturing on behalf of the fishermen — and doing my usual evening physical

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drill in my bedroom, by a great mischance I missed a straight-arm-balance on a chair, fell over, and nearly brought the chandelier of the drawing-room down on the heads of some guests. That a so-called "missionary" should be so worldly as to wish to keep his body fit seemed so unusual that I heard of that trifle a hundred

times.

The Church of Christ that is coming will be interested in the forces that make for peace and righteousness in this world rather than in academic theories as to how to get rewards in another. That will be a real stimulus to fitness and capacity all round instead of a dope for failures. It is that element in missions to-day, such as the up-to-date work of the Rockefeller Institute and other medical missions in China and India, which alone holds the respect of the mass of the people. The value of going out merely to make men of different races think as we think is being proportionately discounted with the in- crease of education.

Our North Sea work grew apace. Vessel after vessel was added to the fleet. Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, became interested, and besides subscribing personally toward the first hospital boat, permitted it to be named in her honour. According to custom the builders had a beautiful little model made which Her Majesty agreed to accept. It was decided that it should be presented to her in Buckingham Palace by the two senior mission captains.

The journey to them was a far more serious under- taking than a winter voyage on the Dogger Bank. How- ever, arrayed in smart blue suits and new guernseys and polished to the last degree, they set out on the eventful expedition. On their return every one was as anxious to know "how the voyage had turned out-' as if they had

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been exploring new fishing grounds around the North Cape in the White Sea. "Nothing to complain of, boys, till just as we had her in the wind's eye to shoot the gear," said the senior skipper. "A big swell in knee-breeches opened the door and called out our names, when I was brought up all standing, for I saw that the peak halliard was fast on the port side. The blame thing was too small for me to shift over, so I had to leave it. But, believe me, she never said a word about it. That's what I call some- thing of a lady."

At this time we had begun two new ventures, an in- stitute at Yarmouth for fishermen ashore and a dis- pensary vessel to be sent out each spring among the thousands of Scotch, Manx, Irish, and French fishermen, who carried on the herring and mackerel fishery off the south and west coast of Ireland.

The south Irish spring fishery is wonderfully interest- ing. Herring and mackerel are in huge shoals anywhere from five to forty miles off the land, and the vessels run in and out each day bringing back the catch of the night. Each vessel shoots out about two miles of net, while some French ones will shoot out five miles. Thus the aggregate of nets used would with ease stretch from Ireland to New York and back. Yet the undaunted herring return year after year to the disastrous rendez- vous. The vessels come from all parts. Many are the large tan-sailed luggers from the Scottish coasts, their sails and hulls marked "B.F." for Banff, "M.E." for Montrose, "C.N." for Campbelltown, etc. With these come the plucky little Ulster boats from Belfast and Larne, Loch Swilly and Loch Foyle; and not a few of the hereditary seafaring men from Cornwall, Devon, and Dorset. Others also come from Falmouth, Penzance, and Exmouth. Besides these are the Irish boats — few

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enough, alas, for Paddy is not a sailor. A good priest had tried to induce his people to share this rich harvest by starting a fishery school for boys at Baltimore, where net-making and every other branch of the industry was taught. It was to little purpose, for I have met men hungry on the west coast, who were trying to live on potato-raising on that bog land who were graduates of Father D.'s school.

There was one year when we ourselves were trying out the trawling in Clew Bay and Blacksod, and getting marvellous catches; so much so that I remember one small trawler from Grimsby on the east coast of England making two thousand dollars in two days' work, while the Countess of Z. fund was distributing charity to the poverty-stricken men who lived around the bay itself. The Government of Ireland also made serious efforts to make its people take up the fishery business. About one million dollars obtained out of the escheated funds of the Church of England in Ireland, when that organiza- tion was disestablished by Mr. Gladstone, was used as a loan fund which was available for fishermen, resident six months, at two per cent interest. They were permitted to purchase their own boat and gear for the fishery out of the money thus provided.

While we lay in Durham Harbour at the entrance to Waterford Harbour, we met manv Cornishmen who were temporarily resident there, having come over from Corn- wall to qualify for borrowing the money to get boats and outfit. During one week in which we were working from that port, there were so many saints' days on which the Irish crews would not go out fishing, but were having good times on the land, that the skippers, who were Cornishmen, had to form a crew out of their own num- bers and take one of their boats to sea.

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One day we had landed on the Arran Islands, and I was hunting ferns in the rock crevices, for owing to the warmth of the Gulf current the growth is luxuriant. On the top of the cliffs about three hundred feet high, I fell in with two Irishmen smoking their pipes and sprawling on the edge of the precipice. The water below was very deep and they were fishing. I had the fun of seeing dan- gling codfish hauled leisurely up all that long distance, and if one fell off on the passage, it was amusing to note the absolute insouciance of the fishermen, who assured me that there were plenty more in the sea.

It has always been a puzzle to me why so few tourists and yachtsmen visit the south and west coast of Ireland. Its marvellous wild, rock scenery, its exquisite bays, — no other words describe them, — its emerald verdure, and its interesting and hospitable people have given me, during the spring fishing seasons that I spent on that coast, some of the happiest memories of my life. On the contrary, most of the yachts hang around the Solent, and the piers of Ryde, Cowes, and Southampton, instead of the magnificent coast from Queenstown to Donegal Cliffs, and from there all along West Scotland to the Hebrides.

About this time our work established a dispensary and social centre at Crookhaven, just inside the Fastnet Lighthouse, and another in Tralee on the Kerry coast, north of Cape Clear. Gatherings for worship and singing were also held on Sundays on the boats, for on that day neither Scotch, Manx, nor English went fishing. The men loved the music, the singing of hymns, and the con- versational addresses. Many would take some part in the service, and my memories of those gatherings are still very pleasant ones.

On this wild coast calls for help frequently came from

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the poor settlers as well as from the seafarers. A summons coming in one day from the Fastnet Light, we rowed out in a small boat to that lovely rock in the Atlantic. A heavy sea, however, making landing impossible, we caught hold of a buoy, anchored off from the rock, and then rowing in almost to the surf, caught a line from the high overhanging crane. A few moments later one was picked out of the tumbling, tossing boat like a winkle out of a shell, by a noose at the end of a line from a crane a hundred and fifty feet above, swung perpendicularly up into the air, and then round and into a trap-door in the side of the lighthouse. On leaving one was swung out again in the same fashion, and dangled over the tum- bling boat until caught and pulled in by the oarsmen.

Another day we rowed out nine miles in an Irish craft to visit the Skerry Islands, famous for the old Beehive Monastery, and the countless nests of gannets and other large sea-birds. The cliffs rise to a great height almost precipitously, and the ceaseless thunder of the Atlantic swell jealously guards any landing. There being no davit or crane, we had just to fling ourselves into the sea, and climb up as best we could, carrying a line to haul up our clothing from the boat and other apparatus after landing, while the oarsmen kept her outside the surf. To hold on to the slippery rock we needed but little clothing, any- how, for it was a slow matter, and the clinging power of one's bare toes was essential. The innumerable gannets sitting on their nests gave the island the appearance of a snowdrift; and we soon had all the eggs that we needed lowered by a line. But some of the gulls, of whose eggs we wanted specimens also, built so cleverly onto the actual faces of the cliffs, that we had to adopt the old plan of hanging over the edge and raising the eggs on the back of one's foot, which is an exploit not devoid of

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excitement. The chief difficulty was, however, with one of our number, who literally stuck on the top, being unable to descend, at least in a way compatible with comfort or safety. The upshot was that he had to be blindfolded and helped.

One of our Council, being connected at this time with the Irish Poor-Relief Board and greatly interested in the Government efforts to relieve distress in Ireland, arranged that we should make a voyage around the entire island in one of our vessels, trying the trawling grounds everywhere, and also the local markets available for making our catch remunerative. There has been con- siderable activity in these waters of late years, but it was practically pioneer work in those days, the fishery being almost entirely composed of drift nets and long lines. It was supposed that the water was too deep and the bottom too uneven and rocky to make trawling possible. We had only a sailing vessel of about sixty tons, and the old heavy beam trawl, for the other