With Grenfell on the LabradorWaldo, Fullerton L. (Fullerton Leonard)
History
With Grenfell on the Labrador
Waldo, Fullerton L. (Fullerton Leonard)
Grenfell, Wilfred Thomason, Sir, 1865-1940
A typical interior gladdened by the Doctor’s presence is this on the
Southern Labrador. A drudge from Nancy Jobble (Lance-au-Diable) is
scrubbing the floor, for the mother is too ill to look to the ways of
her household. The drudge instead of singing is chewing on something
that may be tobacco, paper or gum, and as she slings the brush about
heartlessly she gives furtive eyes and ears to the visitors. The walls
are bestuck with staled and yellowed newspapers. There are no pictures
or books. There is a wooden bench before the linoleum-covered table, on
which are loaves of bread, ill-baked. There is a stove, of the
“Favourite” brand with kettle and teapot simmering. A tarnished
alarm-clock from Ansonia, a mirror, a wash-stand, shelves with china,
tin cans and shreds of bread, a baby’s crib, a rocking-chair and two
more benches forlornly complete the inventory. There is nothing green in
sight from the besmirched windows but grass and people.
A telegraph operator was reading a volume of the addresses of Russell
Conwell when we entered his not overtasked laboratory. The book bore the
title “How to Get Rich Honestly.” “’Fraid I’ll never get any further
than reading about it!” exclaimed the man of the keys and wires. Dr.
Grenfell took the book and presently became engrossed in the famous
address called “Acres of Diamonds.” It seemed to him the sort of
literature to fire the ambition of his neighbours under the Northern
Lights, with its instances of those who made their way defiant of the
odds and in spite of all opposition.
A very young minister at another Labrador watering-place said to the
Doctor: “You needn’t leave any of your books here. I’m not interested in
libraries. I’m only interested in the spiritual welfare of the people.”
A run of six miles by power-boat across Lewis Inlet took us to Fox
Harbour and the house of Uncle George Holley. In recent years the
power-boat, even with gasoline at the prevailing high prices, has become
the fisherman’s taxicab or tin Lizzie, and Oh! the difference to him. He
bobs and prances out over the war-dance of the waves with his barrels
and boxes easily, where once it was a mighty toiling with the sweeps to
make his way. The run across the inlet went swiftly and surely past an
iceberg white as an angel’s wing though with the malign suggestion of
the devil behind it: and there were plenty of chances to take
photographs from every possible angle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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