Dillon Wallace

“ The Sands of Dee, the estuary and the hills of Wales made a fine school of this sort for Grenfell.
The out-of-doors clears the brain, and there a man learns to think straight and to the point. When he is on intimate terms with the woods and mountains, and can laugh at howling gales and the wind beating in his face, and can take care of himself and be happy without the effeminating comforts of steam heat and luxurious beds, a man will prove himself no coward when he comes some day face to face with grave danger. He has been trained in a school of courage. He has learned to depend upon himself. ”

“ There is no sandy beach, no grassy bank, no green field. Nature has been kind to Labrador, however, in one respect. There are innumerable harbors snugly sheltered behind the islands and well out of reach of the rolling breakers and the wind. There is an old saying down on the Labrador that "from one peril there are two ways of escape to three sheltered places." The ice and fog are always perils but the skippers of the coast appear to hold them in disdain and plunge forward through storm and sea when any navigator on earth would expect to meet disaster. ”

“ And so this wilderness has lain since creation, unmarred by the hand of civilized man, clean and unsullied, as God made it. The air, laden with the perfume of spruce and balsam, is pure and wholesome. The water carries no germs from the refuse of man, and one may drink it freely, from river and brook and lake, without fear of contamination. There is no sound to break the silence of ages save the song of river rapids, the thunder of mighty falls, or the whisper or moan of wind in the tree tops ”

“ The pan was too small to admit of sufficient exercise to keep up the circulation of blood, and though he slapped his arms around his shoulders and stamped his feet, a deadening numbness was crawling over him as the sun began to sink in the west and cold increased.
Though, in the end he might drown, Grenfell determined to live as long as he could. Perhaps this was a test of courage that God had given him! It is a man's duty, whatever befalls him, to fight for life to the last ditch, and live as long as he can. ”

“ Hardship, peril and prejudice have fallen to his lot, but he has met them with a courage and determination that never faltered, and he is still "up and at it."
Grenfell's life has been a life of service to others. Freely and joyfully he has given himself and all that was in him to the work of making others happier, and the people of the coast love and trust him. With pathetic confidence they lean upon him and call him in their need, as children lean upon their father, and he has never failed to respond. ”

“ When a man is driven to the wall, as Grenfell was, it is easier to die than live. When God brings a man face to face with death, He robs death of all its terrors, and when that time comes it is no harder for a man who has lived right with God to die than it is for him to lie down at night and sleep. But Grenfell was never a quitter. He was going to fight it out now with the elements as best he could with what he had at hand.
These northern dogs, when driven to desperation by hunger, will turn upon their best friend and master, and here was another danger. ”

“ Like all youngsters running over with the joy of youth and life, he got into his full share of scrapes. If there was anything on foot, mischievous or otherwise, Grenfell was on hand, though his mischief and escapades were all innocent pranks or evasion of rules, such as going out of bounds at prohibited hours to secure goodies. The greater the element of adventure the keener he was for an enterprise. ”

“ It was an ingenious idea to make a flagstaff from the bones of dogs' legs. Hardly one man in a thousand would have thought of it. It was an exemplification of Grenfell's resourcefulness, and in the end it saved his life.
As he had hoped, men were out upon the rocky bluffs scanning the sea for seals. The keen eyes of one of them discovered, far away, something dark and unusual. The men of this land never take anything for granted. ”

“ Every turn a man makes down on The Labrador is likely to carry him into some adventure that will place his life in danger, at sea as on land. But there is no way out of it if a living is to be made.
It is a strange fact that one never recognizes a great deal of danger in the life that one is accustomed to living, no matter how perilous it may seem to others. If a Labradorman were to come to any of our towns or cities his heart would be in his mouth at every turn, for a time at least, dodging automobiles and street cars. ”

“ He moved his tupek in summer, or built his igloo of blocks of snow in winter, wherever hunting and fishing were the best, but always close to the sea.
Here, under the shadow of mighty cliffs and towering, rugged mountains, by the side of the great water, Pomiuk was born and grew into young boyhood, and played and climbed among the mountain crags or along the ocean shore with other boys. He loved the rugged, naked mountains, they stood so firm and solid! No storm or gale could ever make them afraid, or weaken them. ”

“ Always they were the same, towering high into the heavens, untrod and unchanged by man, just as they had stood facing the arctic storms through untold ages.
From the high places he could look out over the sea, where icebergs glistened in the sunshine, and sometimes he could see the sail of a fishing schooner that had come out of the mysterious places beyond the horizon. He loved the sea. Day and night in summer the sound of surf pounding ceaselessly upon the cliffs was in his ears. ”

“ It is an evil coast, with hidden reefs and islands scattered like dust its whole length. "The man who sails the Labrador must know it all like his own back yard—not in sunny weather alone, but in the night, when the headlands are like black clouds ahead, and in the mist, when the noise of breakers tells him all that he may know of his whereabouts. ”

“ This was to be but an incident in the years of labor that lay before Grenfell on The Labrador. He was to have no end of exciting experiences, some of them so thrilling that this one was, in comparison, to fade into insignificance. Labrador is a land of adventures. The man who casts his lot in that bleak country cannot escape them. Adventure lurks in every cove and harbor, on every turn of the trail, ready to spring out upon you and try your mettle, and learn the sort of stuff you are made of. ”

“ When Grenfell set out to do a thing he did it. He never in all his life said, "I will if I can." His motto has always been, "I can if I will." He had determined to plant hospitals on the Labrador coast and to send doctors and nurses there to help the people. When he determined to do a thing there was an end of it. It would be done. A great many people plan to do things, but when they find it is hard to carry out their plans, they give them up. They forget that anything that is worth having is hard to get. If diamonds were as easy to find as pebbles they would be worth no more than pebbles. ”

“ Every real man wishes to stand squarely upon his own feet, and pay for what he receives. To accept charity from others always makes a man feel that he has lost out in the battle of life. It robs him of ambition for future effort and of self-reliance and self-respect.
Doctor Grenfell has always recognized this human characteristic. It was evident to him when he entered the mission field in Labrador that in seasons when the fisheries failed and no fur could be trapped a great many of the people in Labrador and some in northern Newfoundland would be left without a means of earning their living. ”

“ Then it would be, as Grenfell knew full well, his life or theirs.
The dogs wore good warm coats of fur, and if he had a coat made of dog skins it would keep him warm enough to protect his life, at least, from the cold. Now the animals were docile enough. Clustered about his feet, they were looking up into his face expectantly and confidently. He loved them as a good man always loves the beasts that serve him. They had hauled him over many a weary mile of snow and ice, and had been his companions and shared with him the hardships of many a winter's storm. ”

“ The traveler must make his own trails, and he must depend in summer upon his canoe or boat, and in winter upon his snowshoes and his sledge, hauled by great wolf dogs.
With his gun and traps and fishing gear he must glean his living from the wilderness or from the sea. If he would have a shelter he must fell trees with his axe and build it with his own skill. He has little that his own hands and brain do not provide. He must be resourceful and self-reliant. ”

“ Good luck to Uncle Willie Wolfrey and his spirit, which cannot be downed.
As Dr. Grenfell has often said, the Labradorman is a fountain of faith and hope and inspiration. If the fishing season is a failure he turns to his winter's trapping with unwavering faith that it will yield him well. If his trapping fails his hope and faith are none the less when he sets out in the spring to hunt seals. Seals may be scarce and the reward poor, but never mind! The summer fishing is at hand, and this year it will certainly bring a good catch! ”

“ The fishing fleets keep to the sea in winter as well as in summer, and it is a hard life indeed when decks and rigging are covered with ice, and fierce north winds blow the snow down, and the cold is bitter enough to freeze a man's very blood. Seas run high and rough, which is always the case in shallow waters, and great rollers sweep over the decks of the little craft, which of necessity have small draft and low freeboard. ”

“ This is the team that hauls Doctor Grenfell in long winter journeys, when he visits the coast settlements of northern Newfoundland, in every one of which he finds no end of eager folk welcoming him and calling him to their homes to heal their sick.
In the scattered hamlets and sparsely settled coast of northern Newfoundland the folk have no doctor to call upon at a moment's notice when they are sick, as we have. They live apart and isolated from many of the conveniences of life that we look upon as necessities. ”

“ It requires a lot of physical energy for any man to tramp the trails day after day through a frigid, snow-covered wilderness, and months of it at a stretch. It is a big job for a young and hearty man, and a tremendous one for a man of Uncle Willie's years. And it is a man's job, too, to handle a boat in all weather, in calm and in gale, in clear and in fog, sixteen to twenty hours a day, and the fisherman's day is seldom shorter than that. ”

“ For a principle, and because he was well aware of his influence upon the folk of the settlement, Skipper Tom had made his decision to sacrifice his cod trap and the earnings of his lifetime. His conscience told him it would be wrong to do a thing that might lead others to do wrong. When our conscience tells us it is wrong to do a thing, it is wrong for us to do it. Conscience is the voice of God. ”

“ If there is such a thing as luck, Wilfred Thomason Grenfell, as his parents named him, fell into luck, when he was born on February twenty-eighth, 1865. He might have been born on February twenty-ninth one year earlier, and that would have been little short of a catastrophe, for in that case his birthdays would have been separated by intervals of four years, and every boy knows what a hardship it would be to wait four years for a birthday, when every one else is having one every year. There are people, to be sure, who would like their birthdays to be four years apart, but they are not boys. ”

“ Year after year, since that summer's day when the Albert anchored in Domino Run and Grenfell first met the men of the Newfoundland fishing fleet and the liveyeres of the Labrador coast, winter and summer, Grenfell himself and the doctors that assist him have patrolled that long desolate coast giving the best that was in them to the people that lived there. Grenfell has preached the Word, fed the hungry, clothed the naked, sheltered the homeless and righted many wrongs. He has fought disease and poverty, evil and oppression. ”

“ Doctor Grenfell had heard all this before, but now as he looked at the dreary desolation of the rocks it seemed almost incredible that children could be born and grow to manhood and womanhood and live their lives here, forever fighting for mere existence, and die at last without ever once knowing the comforts that we who live in kindlier warmer lands enjoy. ”

“ From the beginning this thought troubled Doctor Grenfell. And in winter when the ice shuts the whole coast off from the rest of the world, he turned his attention to efforts to secure the help of good people the world over in his work. Making others happy is the greatest happiness that any one can experience, and Grenfell wished others to share his happiness with him. ”

“ In every city and town and village of our great and prosperous country people throw away clothing and many things that would help to make the lives of the Longs and the hundreds of other liveyeres of the coast who are toiling for bare existence easier to endure. Enough is wasted every year, indeed, in any one of our cities to make the whole population of Labrador happy and comfortable. ”

“ Swimming in the ice-clogged water must have been well nigh impossible. The shock of the ice-cold water itself, even had there been no ice, was enough to paralyze a man. But Grenfell, accustomed to cold, and with nerves of iron as a result of keeping his body always in the pink of physical condition, succeeded finally in reaching a pan that would support both himself and the dogs. ”

“ At various periods of his youthful career nearly every boy has an ambition to be an Indian fighter, or a pirate, or a locomotive engineer, or a fireman and save people from burning buildings at the risk of his own life, or to be a hunter of ferocious wild animals. Grenfell had dreamed of a romantic and adventurous career. ”