Sir Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

“ The ground was still under snow, and we drove over much ice and through much slush as we returned to our base at Boulogne. My colleagues had gone back to America and it was a terribly lonely journey to London, though both steamer and train were crowded. The war was not yet won, and I could not help feeling an intense desire to remain and see it through with the brave, generous-hearted men who were giving their lives for our sakes. Loneliness scarcely describes my sensations; it felt more like desertion. One road to despair would be the awful realization that one is not wanted. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A lecture tour includes some of the most delightful experiences of life, bringing one into direct personal contact with so many people whom it is a privilege to know. But it also has its anxieties and worries, and eternal vigilance is the price of avoiding a breakdown at this the most difficult of all my work. One's memory is taxed far beyond its capacity. To forget some things, and some people and some kindnesses, are unforgivable sins. A new host every night, a new home, a new city, a new audience, alone lead one into lamentable lapses. ”

“ As the sturdy little steamer noses her way into some picturesque harbour and blows a lusty warning of her approach, small boats are seen putting off from the shore and rowing or sculling toward her with almost indecorous rapidity. Lean over the rail for a minute with me, and watch the freight being unloaded into one of these bobbing little craft. The hatch of the steamer is opened, a most unmusical winch commences operations—and a sewing machine emerges de profundis. This is swung giddily out over the sea by the crane and dropped on the thwarts of the waiting punt. ”

“ We were fishing one day in Seyde Fjord on the east coast, when suddenly with much speed and excitement the great net was hauled, and we started with several other trawlers to dash pell-mell for the open sea. The alarm of masts and smoke together on the horizon had been given—the sign manual of the one poor Danish gunboat which was supposed to control the whole swarm of far smarter little pirates, which lived like mosquitoes by sucking their sustenance from others. The water was as a general rule too deep outside the three-mile limit for legitimate fishing. ”

“ The storm of the day had broken the sea ice from the land, and we could not get round the base of the cliffs, though we could see the village lights twinkling away, only a mile or two across the bay. Climbing steep hills through dense woods in deep snow in the dark calls for some endurance, especially as a white snow-bank looks like an open space through the dark trees. ”

“ We now know that it can be done and must be done as a sign manual of real freedom, which is not the leaving of parents or forbears, incompetent for any reason, free to damn their country with a stream of stunted intellects.
America has already honoured herself forever by being a pioneer in this movement for the higher education of the people. Religion surely need not fear mental enlightenment. The dangers of life lie in ignorance, and after all is not true religion a thing of the intellect as well as of the heart? ”

“ The spiritual may be far more real than the material, in spite of the cocksure conceit of the current science of 1918. Immortality may be the complement of mortality, as water becomes steam, and steam becomes power, and power becomes heat, and heat becomes light. The conclusion that life beyond is the conservation of energy of life here may be as scientific as that great natural law for material things. I see knowledge become service, service become joy. I see fear prohibit glands from secreting, hope bring back colour to the face and tone to the blood. ”

“ We have learned at last the vital fact that Nature has set apart her own picture galleries where men may resort if for a time they would forget human contrivances. Such a wilderness is Labrador, a kind of mental and moral sanitarium. The beautiful is but the visible splendor of the true. The enjoyment of a visit to the coast may consist not alone in the impressions of the scenery ”

“ On one occasion, as late in the fall we were creeping up the Straits of Belle Isle in the only motor boat then in use there, our new toy broke down, and with a strong onshore wind we gradually drifted in toward the high cliffs. It was a heavy boat, and though we rowed our best we realized that we must soon be on the rocks, where a strong surf was breaking. So we lashed all our lines together and cast over our anchors, hoping to find bottom. Alas, the water was too deep. Darkness came on and the prospect of a long, weary night struggling for safety made us thrill with excitement. ”

“ Without fire, without food, without sufficient clothing, exposed to the pitiless storm on the frozen sea, they endured thirty-six hours without losing a life. Finally, they dragged their boats ten miles over the ice to the land, where they arrived at last more dead than alive.
It is the physical excitement of travelling over broken loose ice on the bosom of the mighty ocean, and the skill and athletic qualities which the work demands, that makes one love the voyage. ”

“ 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 apparently 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 wandering boy to "arise" and do things. ”

“ 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. ”

“ How the returning tide used to sweep through that to us fathomless gulch! It made the old river seem ever so much more wonderful, and ever so much more filled with adventure.
Many a time, just to dare it, I would dive into the very cauldron, and let the swirling current carry me to the grassy sward beyond—along which I would run till the narrowing channel permitted my crossing to the Great Cop again. I would be drying myself in the sunshine as I went, and all ready for my scanty garments when I reached my clothing once more. ”

“ We had made a fine voyage, visiting all along the coast as we journeyed, and had turned in from sea through the last "run," or passage between islands. We had polished our brass-work, cleaned up our decks, hoisted our flags, all that we might make a triumphant entry on our arrival a few minutes later—when suddenly, Buff—Bur-r—Buff, we rose, staggered, and fell over on a horrible submerged shoal. Our side was gored, our propeller and shaft gone, our keel badly splintered, and the ship left high and dry. ”

“ The life of the sea, with all its attractions, is at best a hazardous calling, and it speaks loud in the praise of the capacity and simple faith of our people that in the midst of a trying and often perilous environment, they retain so quiet and kindly a temper of mind. During my voyage to the seal fishery I recall that one day at three o'clock the men were all called in. ”

“ At night we showed them some distress rockets and some red and blue port flares. The way those Indians fled from the port flares was really amusing, and no one enjoyed it more than they did, for the shouting and laughter, after they had picked themselves out of the scuppers where they had been rolling on top of one another, wakened the very hills with their echoes. Next morning one lonely-looking brave came on board, and explained to me by signs and grunts that during the entertainment a white counter, or Hudson Bay dollar, had rolled out of the lining of his hat into our woodpile. ”

“ Idleness is not rest to some natures, either to body or mind, and when at night we all turned in at ten o'clock, wet through—for it had rained in the evening—and tired out, we were able to say our prayers with just as light hearts, feeling that we had put sixty-eight deer aboard, as if we had enjoyed that foretaste of what some still believe to be the rest of heaven. ”

“ The pathos of the scene as we rowed the poor child's body ashore for interment on a rocky and lonely headland, looking out over the great Atlantic, wrapped simply in the flag of her country, will never be forgotten by any of us—the silent but unanswerable reproach on man's utter selfishness. Many such scenes must rise to the memory of the general practitioner; at times, thank God, affording those opportunities of doing more for the patients than simply patching up their bodies—opportunities which are the real reward for the "art of healing." ”

“ Winter travelling on this coast oftentimes involves considerable hardships, as when once our doctor lost the track and he and his men had to spend several nights in the woods. They were so reduced by hunger that they were obliged to chew pieces of green sealskin which they cut from their boots and to broil their skin gloves over a fire which they had kindled.
One great joy which comes with the work is the sympathy one gets with the really poor, whether in intelligence, physical make-up, or worldly assets. ”

“ An independent life has somehow left me with an instinctive dislike for asking casual acquaintances the way to any place that I am seeking. The aversion is more or less justified by the fact that outside the police force very exceptional persons can direct you, especially if they know the way themselves. On my first visit to New York I could see how easy a city it was to navigate, and returned to my host's house near Eighth Street in good time to dress for dinner after a long side trip near Columbia University and thence to the Bellevue Hospital. ”

“ For centuries these inexhaustible hordes have followed their long pathways of the sea, swimming by some strange instinct always more or less over the same courses—ever with their tireless enemies, both in and out of the water, hot foot on their tracks. Sharks, dog-fish, wolf-fish, cod, and every fish large enough to swallow them, gulls, divers, auks, and almost every bird of the air, to say nothing of the nets set now from steam-propelled ships, might well threaten their speedy extermination. ”

“ In this I cruised north to Eskimo Bay, harbouring at nights if possible, getting a local pilot when I could, and once being taken bodily on board, craft and all, by a big friendly fishing schooner. It proved a most profitable summer. I was so dependent on the settlers and fishermen for food and hospitality that I learned to know them as would otherwise have been impossible. Far the best road to a seaman's heart is to let him do something for you. Our impressions of a landscape, like our estimates of character, all depend on our viewpoint. ”