A Labrador Doctor

by Sir Wilfred Thomason Grenfell · English · Gutenberg #22372 · 797,204 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: A Labrador Doctor

Author: Sir Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

Release date: August 22, 2007 [eBook #22372]
Most recently updated: January 2, 2021

Language: English

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A LABRADOR DOCTOR

The Autobiography of
Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

[Illustration: (signed) Wilfred Grenfell]

A LABRADOR DOCTOR

The Autobiography of
Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
M.D. (Oxon.), C.M.G.

With Illustrations

[Illustration]

Boston and New York
Houghton Mifflin Company
The Riverside Press Cambridge

PREFACE

I have long been resisting the strong pressure from friends that would
force me to risk having to live alongside my own autobiography. It
seems still an open question whether it is advisable, or even whether
it is right--seeing that it calls for confessions. In the eyes of God
the only alternative is a book of lies. Moreover, sitting down to
write one's own life story has always loomed up before my imagination
as an admission that one was passing the post which marks the last
lap; and though it was a justly celebrated physician who told us that
we might profitably crawl upon the shelf at half a century, that added
no attraction for me to the effort, when I passed that goal.

Thirty-two years spent in work for deep-sea fishermen, twenty-seven of
which years have been passed in Labrador and northern Newfoundland,
have necessarily given me some experiences which may be helpful to
others. I feel that this alone justifies the writing of this story.

To the many helpers who have cooperated with me at one time or another
throughout these years, I owe a debt of gratitude which will never be
forgotten, though it has been impossible to mention each one by name.
Without them this work could never have been.

To my wife, who was willing to leave all the best the civilized world
can offer to share my life on this lonely coast, I want to dedicate
this book. Truth forces me to own that it would never have come into
being without her, and her greater share in the work of its production
declares her courage to face the consequences.

CONTENTS

I. EARLY DAYS 1

II. SCHOOL LIFE 15

III. EARLY WORK IN LONDON 37

IV. AT THE LONDON HOSPITAL 64

V. NORTH SEA WORK 99

VI. THE LURE OF THE LABRADOR 119

VII. THE PEOPLE OF LABRADOR 139

VIII. LECTURING AND CRUISING 159

IX. THE SEAL FISHERY 171

X. THREE YEARS' WORK IN THE BRITISH ISLES 183

XI. FIRST WINTER AT ST. ANTHONY 197

XII. THE COOPERATIVE MOVEMENT 215

XIII. THE MILL AND THE FOX FARM 226

XIV. THE CHILDREN'S HOME 241

XV. PROBLEMS OF EDUCATION 254

XVI. "WHO HATH DESIRED THE SEA?" 270

XVII. THE REINDEER EXPERIMENT 288

XVIII. THE ICE-PAN ADVENTURE 304

XIX. THEY THAT DO BUSINESS IN GREAT WATERS 315

XX. MARRIAGE 331

XXI. NEW VENTURES 344

XXII. PROBLEMS ON LAND AND SEA 357

XXIII. A MONTH'S HOLIDAY IN ASIA MINOR 376

XXIV. THE WAR 384

XXV. FORWARD STEPS 403

XXVI. THE FUTURE OF THE MISSION 411

XXVII. MY RELIGIOUS LIFE 424

INDEX 435

ILLUSTRATIONS

WILFRED THOMASON GRENFELL _Frontispiece_

VIEW FROM MOSTYN HOUSE, THE AUTHOR'S BIRTHPLACE, PARKGATE,
CHESHIRE 2

OXFORD UNIVERSITY RUGBY UNION FOOTBALL TEAM 44

THE LABRADOR COAST 120

ESKIMO WOMAN AND BABY 128

ESKIMO MAN 128

ESKIMO GIRLS 132

BATTLE HARBOUR 140

A LABRADOR BURIAL 156

THE LABRADOR DOCTOR IN SUMMER 164

THE STRATHCONA 192

THREE OF THE DOCTOR'S DOGS 198

A KOMATIK JOURNEY 202

THE FIRST COOPERATIVE STORE 218

ST. ANTHONY 226

INSIDE THE ORPHANAGE 250

FISH ON THE FLAKES 272

DRYING THE SEINES 272

A PART OF THE REINDEER HERD 296

REINDEER TEAMS MEETING A DOG TEAM 296

A SPRING SCENE AT ST. ANTHONY 304

DOG RACE AT ST. ANTHONY 304

ICEBERGS 320

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

THE INSTITUTE, ST. JOHN'S 354

DOG TRAVEL 368

THE LABRADOR DOCTOR IN WINTER 406

ENTRANCE TO ST. ANTHONY HARBOUR 418

A LABRADOR DOCTOR

CHAPTER I

EARLY DAYS

To be born on the 28th of February is not altogether without its
compensations. It affords a subject of conversation when you are asked
to put your name in birthday books. It is evident that many people
suppose it to be almost an intrusion to appear on that day. However,
it was perfectly satisfactory to me so long as it was not the 29th. As
a boy, that was all for which I cared. Still, I used at times to be
oppressed by the danger, so narrowly missed, of growing up with undue
deliberation.

The event occurred in 1865 in Parkgate, near Chester, England, whither
my parents had moved to enable my father to take over the school of
his uncle. I was always told that what might be called boisterous
weather signalled my arrival. Experience has since shown me that that
need not be considered a particularly ominous portent in the winter
season on the Sands of Dee.

It is fortunate that the selection of our birthplace is not left to
ourselves. It would most certainly be one of those small decisions
which would later add to the things over which we worry. I can see how
it would have acted in my own case. For my paternal forbears are
really of Cornish extraction--a corner of our little Island to which
attaches all the romantic aroma of the men, who, in defence of
England, "swept the Spanish Main," and so long successfully singed the
Bang of Spain's beard, men whose exploits never fail to stir the best
blood of Englishmen, and among whom my direct ancestors had the
privilege of playing no undistinguished part. On the other hand, my
visits thither have--romance aside--convinced me that the restricted
foreshore and the precipitous cliffs are a handicap to the development
of youth, compared with the broad expanses of tempting sands, which
are after all associated with another kinsman, whose songs have helped
to make them famous, Charles Kingsley.

My mother was born in India, her father being a colonel of many
campaigns, and her brother an engineer officer in charge during the
siege of Lucknow till relieved by Sir Henry Havelock. At the first
Delhi Durbar no less than forty-eight of my cousins met, all being
officers either of the Indian military or civil service.

To the modern progressive mind the wide sands are a stumbling-block.
Silting up with the years, they have closed the river to navigation,
and converted our once famous Roman city of Chester into a sleepy,
second-rate market-town. The great flood of commerce from the New
World sweeps contemptuously past our estuary, and finds its
clearing-house under the eternal, assertive smoke clouds which
camouflage the miles of throbbing docks and slums called
Liverpool--little more than a dozen miles distant. But the
heather-clad hills of Heswall, and the old red sandstone ridge, which
form the ancient borough of the "Hundred of Wirral," afford an
efficient shelter from the insistent taint of out-of-the-worldness.

Every inch of the Sands of Dee were dear to me. I learned to know
their every bank and gutter. Away beyond them there was a mystery in
the blue hills of the Welsh shore, only cut off from us children in
reality by the narrow, rapid water of the channel we called the Deep.
Yet they seemed so high and so far away. The people there spoke a
different language from ours, and all their instincts seemed
diverse. Our humble neighbours lived by the seafaring genius which we
ourselves loved so much. They made their living from the fisheries of
the river mouth; and scores of times we children would slip away, and
spend the day and night with them in their boats.

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

While I was still quite a small boy, a terrible blizzard struck the
estuary while the boats were out, and for twenty-four hours one of the
fishing craft was missing. Only a lad of sixteen was in charge of
her--a boy whom we knew, and with whom we had often sailed. All my
family were away from home at the time except myself; and I can still
remember the thrill I experienced when, as representative of the "Big
House," I was taken to see the poor lad, who had been brought home at
last, frozen to death.

The men of the opposite shores were shopkeepers and miners. Somehow we
knew that they couldn't help it. The nursery rhyme about "Taffy was a
Welshman; Taffy was a thief," because familiar, had not led us to hold
any unduly inflated estimate of the Welsh character. One of my old
nurses did much to redeem it, however. She had undertaken the burden
of my brother and myself during a long vacation, and carried us off
bodily to her home in Wales. Her clean little cottage stood by the
side of a road leading to the village school of the State Mining
District of Festiniog. We soon learned that the local boys resented
the intrusion of the two English lads, and they so frequently chased
us off the village green, which was the only playground offered us,
that we at last decided to give battle. We had stored up a pile of
slates behind our garden wall, and luring the enemy to the gates by
the simple method of retiring before their advance, we saluted them
with artillery fire from a comparatively safe entrenchment. To my
horror, one of the first missiles struck a medium-sized boy right over
the eye, and I saw the blood flow instantly. The awful comparison of
David and Goliath flashed across my terror-stricken mind, and I fled
incontinently to my nurse's protection. Subsequently by her adroit
diplomacy, we were not only delivered from justice, but gained the
freedom of the green as well.

Far away up the river came the great salt-water marshes which seemed
so endless to our tiny selves. There was also the Great Cop, an
embankment miles long, intended to reach "from England to Wales," but
which was never finished because the quicksand swallowed up all that
the workmen could pour into it. Many a time I have stood on the broken
end, where the discouraged labourers had left their very shovels and
picks and trucks and had apparently fled in dismay, as if convicted of
the impiousness of trying to fill the Bottomless Pit. To my childish
imagination the upturned wheelbarrows and wasted trucks and rails
always suggested the banks of the Red Sea after the awful disaster had
swept over Pharoah and his host. How the returning tide used to sweep
through that to us fathomless gulch! It made the old river seem ever
so much more wonderful, and ever so much more filled with adventure.

Many a time, just to dare it, I would dive into the very cauldron, and
let the swirling current carry me to the grassy sward beyond--along
which I would run till the narrowing channel permitted my crossing to
the Great Cop again. I would be drying myself in the sunshine as I
went, and all ready for my scanty garments when I reached my clothing
once more.

Then came the great days when the heavy nor'westers howled over the
Sands--our sea-front was exposed to all the power of the sea right
away to the Point of Ayr--the days when they came in with big spring
tides, when we saw the fishermen doubling their anchors, and carefully
overhauling the holding gear of their boats, before the flooding tide
drove them ashore, powerless to do more than watch them battling at
their moorings like living things--the possessions upon which their
very bread depended. And then this one would sink, and another would
part her cable and come hurtling before the gale, until she crashed
right into the great upright blocks of sandstone which, riveted with
iron bands to their copings, were relied upon to hold the main road
from destruction. Sometimes in fragments, and sometimes almost entire,
the craft would be slung clean over the torturing battlements, and be
left stranded high and dry on our one village street, a menace to
traffic, but a huge joy to us children.

The fascination of the Sands was greatly enhanced by the numerous
birds which at all times frequented them, in search of the abundant
food which lay buried along the edges of the muddy gutters. There were
thousands of sandpipers in enormous flocks, mixed with king plovers,
dunlins, and turnstones, which followed the ebb tides, and returned
again in whirling clouds before the oncoming floods. Black-and-white
oyster-catchers were always to be found chattering over the great
mussel patches at low water. With their reddish bills, what a trophy a
bunch of them made as we bore them proudly home over our shoulders!
Then there were the big long-billed curlews. What a triumph when one
outwitted them! One of my clearest recollections is discovering a
place to which they were flighting at night by the water's edge; how,
having no dog, I swam out for bird after bird as they fell to my
gun--shooting some before I had even time to put on my shirt again;
and my consequent blue-black shoulder, which had to be carefully
hidden next day. There were wild ducks, too, to be surprised in the
pools of the big salt marshes.

From daylight to dark I would wander, quite alone, over endless miles,
entirely satisfied to come back with a single bird, and not in the
least disheartened if I got none. All sense of time used to be lost,
and often enough the sandwich and biscuit for lunch forgotten, so that
I would be forced occasionally to resort to a solitary public house
near a colliery on our side of the water, for "tea-biscuits," all that
they offered, except endless beer for the miners. I can even remember,
when very hard driven, crossing to the Welsh side for bread and
cheese.

These expeditions were made barefoot as long as the cold was not too
great. A diary that I assayed to keep in my eighth year reminds me
that on my birthday, five miles from home in the marshes, I fell head
over heels into a deep hole, while wading out, gun in hand, after some
oyster-catchers which I had shot. The snow was still deep on the
countryside, and the long trot home has never been quite forgotten. My
grief, however, was all for the gun. There was always the joy of
venture in those dear old Sands. The channels cut in them by the
flowing tides ran deep, and often intersected. Moreover, they changed
with the varying storms. The rapidly rising tide, which sent a bore up
the main channel as far as Chester, twelve miles above us, filled
first of all these treacherous waterways, quite silently, and often
unobserved. To us, taught to be as much at home in the water as on the
land, they only added spice to our wanderings. They were nowhere very
wide, so by keeping one's head, and being able to swim, only our
clothes suffered by it, and they, being built for that purpose, did
not complain.

One day, however, I remember great excitement. The tide had risen
rapidly in the channel along the parade front, and the shrimp
fishermen, who used push-nets in the channels at low tide, had
returned without noticing that one of their number was missing. Word
got about just too late, and already there was half a mile of water,
beyond which, through our telescopes, we could see the poor fellow
making frantic signals to the shore. There was no boat out there, and
a big bank intervening, there seemed no way to get to him. Watching
through our glasses, we saw him drive the long handle of his net deep
into the sand, and cling to it, while the tide rose speedily around
him. Meanwhile a whole bevy of his mates had rowed out to the bank,
and were literally carrying over its treacherous surface one of their
clumsy and heavy fishing punts. It was a veritable race for life; and
never have I watched one with keener excitement. We actually saw his
post give way, and wash downstream with him clinging to it, just
before his friends got near. Fortunately, drifting with the spar, he
again found bottom, and was eventually rescued, half full of salt
water. I remember how he fell in my estimation as a seaman--though I
was only a boy at the time.

There were four of us boys in all, of whom I was the second. My next
brother Maurice died when he was only seven, and the fourth, Cecil,
being five years younger than I, left my brother Algernon and myself
as the only real companions for each other. Moreover, an untoward
accident, of which I was the unwitting cause, left my younger brother
unable to share our play for many years. Having no sisters, and
scarcely any boy friends, in the holidays, when all the boys in the
school went home, it might be supposed that my elder brother and I
were much thrown together. But as a matter of fact such was not the
case, for our temperaments being entirely different, and neither of us
having any idea of giving way to the other, we seldom or ever found
our pleasures together. And yet most of the worst scrapes into which
we fell were cooperative affairs. Though I am only anxious to shoulder
my share of the responsibility in the escapades, as well as in every
other line of life, my brother Algernon possessed any genius to which
the family could lay claim, in that as in every other line. He was my
father over again, while I was a second edition of my mother. Father
was waiting to get into the sixth form at Rugby when he was only
thirteen years old. He was a brilliant scholar at Balliol, but had
been compelled to give up study and leave the University temporarily
owing to brain trouble. He never published anything, but would reel
off brilliant short poems or essays for friends at a moment's notice.
I used always to remark that in whatever company he was, he was always
deferred to as an authority in anything approaching classics. He could
read and quote Greek and Latin like English, spoke German and French
fluently, while he was an excellent geologist, and Fellow of the
Geographical Society. Here is quite a pretty little effusion of his
written at eight years of age:

O, Glorious Sun, in thy palace of light,
To behold thee methinks is a beautiful sight.
O, Glorious Sun, come out of thy cloud,
No longer thy brightness in darkness shroud.
Let thy glorious beams like a golden Flood
Pour over the hills and the valleys and wood.
See! Mountains of light around him rise,
While he in a golden ocean lies:
O, Glorious Sun, in thy Palace of Light
To behold thee methinks is a beautiful sight.

Algernon Sydney Grenfell
Aged eight years

Some of my brother's poems and hymns have been published in the school
magazine, or printed privately; but he, too, has only published a
Spanish grammar, a Greek lexicon, and a few articles in the papers.
While at Oxford he ran daily, with some friends, during one "eights
week" a cynical comic paper called "The Rattle," to boost some
theories he held, and which he wished to enforce, and also to "score"
a few of the dons to whom he objected. This would have resulted in his
being asked to retire for a season from the seat of learning at the
request of his enemies, had not our beloved provost routed the special
cause of the whole trouble, who was himself contributing to a London
society paper, by replying that it was not to be wondered at if the
scurrilous rags of London found an echo in Oxford. Moreover, a set of
"The Rattle" was ordered to be bound and placed in the college
archives, where it may still be seen.

My father having a very great deal of responsibility and worry during
the long school terms, as he was not only head master, but owned the
school as well, which he had purchased from his great-uncle, used to
leave almost the day the holidays began and travel abroad with my
mother. This partly accounts for the very unusual latitude allowed to
us boys in coming and going from the house--no one being anxious if
now and again we did not return at night. The school matron was left
in charge of the vast empty barracks, and we had the run of
play-field, gymnasium, and everything else we wanted. To outwit the
matron was always considered fair play by us boys, and on many
occasions we were more than successful.

One time, when we had been acquiring some new lines of thought from
some trashy boys' books of the period, we became fired with the desire
to enjoy the ruling passion of the professional burglar. Though never
kept short of anything, we decided that one night we would raid the
large school storeroom while the matron slept. As always, the planning
was entrusted to my brother. It was, of course, a perfectly easy
affair, but we played the whole game "according to Cavendish." We let
ourselves out of the window at midnight, glued brown paper to the
window panes, cut out the putty, forced the catch, and stole sugar,
currants, biscuits, and I am ashamed to say port wine--which we mulled
in a tin can over the renovated fire in the matron's own sanctum. In
the morning the remainder was turned over to fishermen friends who
were passing along shore on their way to catch the early tide.

I had no share in two other of my brother's famous escapades, though
at the time it was a source of keen regret, for we were sent to
different public schools, as being, I suppose, incompatible. But we
heard with pride how he had extracted phosphorus from the chemical
laboratory and while drawing luminous ghosts on the wall for the
benefit of the timorous, had set fire to the large dormitory and the
boys' underclothing neatly laid out on the beds, besides burning
himself badly. Later he pleaded guilty to beeswaxing the seat of the
boys in front of him in chapel, much to the detriment of their
trousers and the destruction of the dignity of Sunday worship.

During the time that my parents were away we never found a moment in
which to be lonely, but on one occasion it occurred to us that the
company of some friends would add to our enjoyment. Why we waited till
my father and mother departed I do not know, but I recall that
immediately they had gone we spent a much-valued sixpence in
telegraphing to a cousin in London to come down to us for the
holidays. Our message read: "Dear Sid. Come down and stay the
holidays. Father has gone to Aix." We were somewhat chagrined to
receive the following day an answer, also by wire: "Not gone yet.
Father." It appeared that my father and mother had stayed the night in
London in the very house to which we had wired, and Sid. having to ask
his father's permission in order to get his railway fare, our uncle
had shown the invitation to my father. It was characteristic of my
parents that Sid. came duly along, but they could not keep from
sharing the joke with my uncle.

During term-time some of our grown-up relatives would occasionally
visit us. But alas, it was only their idiosyncrasies which used to
make any impression upon us. One, a great-uncle, and a very
distinguished person, being Professor of Political Economy at Oxford,
and a great friend of the famous Dr. Jowett, the chancellor, was the
only man we knew who ever, at any time, stood up long to my father in
argument. It was only on rare occasions that we ever witnessed such a
contest, but I shall never forget one which took place in the evening
in our drawing-room. My great-uncle was a small man, rather stout and
pink, and almost bald-headed. He got so absorbed in his arguments,
which he always delivered walking up and down, that on this occasion,
coming to an old-fashioned sofa, he stepped right up onto the seat,
climbed over the back, and went on all the time with his remarks, as
if only punctuating them thereby.

Whether some of our pranks were suggested by those of which we heard,
I do not remember. One of my father's yarns, however, always stuck in
my memory. For once, being in a very good humour, he told us how when
some distinguished old lady had come to call on his father--a house
master with Arnold at Rugby--he had been especially warned not to
interrupt this important person, who had come to see about her son's
entering my grandfather's "House." It so happened that quite
unconsciously the lady in question had seated herself on an old
cane-bottomed armchair in which father had been playing, thus
depriving him temporarily of a toy with which he desired to amuse
himself. He never, even in later life, was noted for undue patience,
and after endeavouring in vain to await her departure, he somehow
secured a long pin. With this he crawled from behind under the seat,
and by discreetly probing upwards, succeeded suddenly in dislodging
his enemy.

Our devotions on Sunday were carried out in the parish church of the
village of Neston, there being no place of worship of the Established
Church in our little village. In term-time we were obliged to go
morning and evening to the long services, which never made any
concessions to youthful capacities. So in holiday-time, though it was
essential that we should go in the morning to represent the house, we
were permitted to stay home in the evening. But even the mornings were
a time of great weariness, and oft-recurrent sermons on the terrible
fate which awaited those who never went to church, and the still more
untoward end which was in store for frequenters of dissenting
meeting-houses, failed to awaken in us the respect due to the
occasion.

On the way to church we had generally to pass by those who dared even
the awful fate of the latter. It was our idea that to tantalize us
they wore especially gorgeous apparel while we had to wear black Etons
and a top hat--which, by the way, greatly annoyed us. One waistcoat
especially excited our animosity, and from it we conceived the title
"specklebelly," by which we ever afterwards designated the whole
"genus nonconformist." The entrance to the chapel (ours was the
Church!) was through a door in a high wall, over which we could not
see; and my youthful brain used to conjure up unrighteous and strange
orgies which we felt must take place in those precincts which we were
never permitted to enter. Our Sunday Scripture lessons had grounded us
very familiarly with the perverse habits of that section of the Chosen
People who _would_ serve Baal and Moloch, when it obviously paid so
much better not to do so. But although we counted the numbers which we
saw going in, and sometimes met them coming out, they seemed never to
lessen perceptibly. On this account our minds, with the merciless
logic of childhood, gradually discounted the threatened calamities.

This must have accounted for the lapse in our own conduct, and a sort
of comfortable satisfaction that the Almighty contented Himself in
merely counting noses in the pews. For even though it was my brother
who got into trouble, I shall never forget the harangue on impiety
that awaited us when a most unchristian sexton reported to our father
that the pew in front of ours had been found chalked on the back, so
as to make its occupants the object of undisguised attention from the
rest of the congregation. As circumstantial evidence also against us,
he offered some tell-tale squares of silver paper, on which we had
been cooking chocolates on the steam pipes during the sermon.

In all my childhood I can only remember one single punishment, among
not a few which I received, which I resented--and for years I never
quite forgot it. Some one had robbed a very favourite apple tree in
our orchard--an escapade of which I was perfectly capable, but in this
instance had not had the satisfaction of sharing. Some evidence had
been lodged against me, of which I was not informed, and I therefore
had no opportunity to challenge it. I was asked before a whole class
of my schoolmates if I had committed the act, and at once denied it.
Without any hearing I was adjudged guilty, and promptly subjected to
the punishment of the day--a good birching. On every occasion on which
we were offered the alternative of detention, we invariably "plumped"
for the rod, and got it over quickly, and, as we considered,
creditably--taking it smiling as long as we could. But that one act of
injustice, the disgrace which it carried of making me a liar before my
friends, seared my very soul. I vowed I would get even whatever it
cost, and I regret to say that I hadn't long to wait the opportunity.
For I scored both the apples and the lie against the punishment before
many months. Nor was I satisfied then. It rankled in my mind both by
day and by night; and it taught me an invaluable lesson--never to
suspect or condemn rashly. It was one of Dr. Arnold's boys at Rugby, I
believe, who summed up his master's character by saying, "The head was
a beast, but he was always a just beast."

At fourteen years of age my brother was sent to Repton, to the house
of an uncle by marriage--an arrangement which has persuaded me never
to send boys to their relatives for training. My brother's pranks were
undoubtedly many, but they were all boyish and legitimate ones. After
a time, however, he was removed at his own request, and sent to
Clifton, where he was head of the school, and the school house also,
under Dr. Percival, the late Bishop of Hereford. From there he took an
open scholarship for Oxford.

It was most wisely decided to send us to separate schools, and
therefore at fourteen I found myself at Marlborough--a school of
nearly six hundred resident boys, on entering which I had won a
scholarship.

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 impressed 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 coaching 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. 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 approach 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 being 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 window which looked out over the
beautiful gardens below. I cannot remember that I experienced any of
those heart-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 barrack 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 exceptionally poor; so
much so that we boys at the beginning of term formed what we called
brewing companies--which provided as far as possible breakfasts 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 occasions 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 it in such an educational
system, for it undoubtedly kept its devotees from innumerable worse
troubles and dangers. All athletics were compulsory, unless one had
obtained permanent exemption from the medical officer. If one was not
chosen to play on any team during the afternoon, 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 distant.
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 wouldn't deny
their guilt. Their condign punishment was to be "fives-batted"
publicly in Big School--in which, however, they regained very
considerable popularity by the way they took a "spanking" without
turning a hair, 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 custom 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 arranged 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 excellent custom of
classifying not only the players who attained the first team; but
beyond them there were "the 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 incriminate 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 untoward 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 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 way 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 exhibited
to be marked off as present should not be attributed 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 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 ominous
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
naturally some form masters were themselves less regular than others,
though you never could absolutely count 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 discovered 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
addressing 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 things cooked and 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, moreover, 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 daughters, 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 netting, 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 their clever artifices.
To these we added the breeding of the more beautiful butterflies and
moths, and so, without 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 always 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 frequent 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 Episcopalians, 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
peculiar impediment in his speech which made him say his _h_'s and
_s_'s, both as _sh_. Thus he always said _sh_uman for _h_uman, and
invariably prayed that God might be pleased 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 discovered 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 mathematics, 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
enjoyed--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 impossible 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.

Returning to Marlborough School the following summer, 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 had 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-enjoyed 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 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,
punctuated 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 didn'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 companion 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
her tail, no one can record. She always waited for you to remount, so
it didn'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 purchase material,
and under the supervision of a local carpenter, 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
indignation 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 remember 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 lower estuary while we were
stalking some curlew. I had to run home dripping. My friend's gun,
moreover, having been surreptitiously borrowed from my cousin's
father, was recovered the following day, to our unutterable 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,
probably 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 friendship 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 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 somewhat 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 appearance, 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-steering 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" 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 remember 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 making 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 began, and took
your place. I can still see and hear the unfortunate 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 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 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.

Like everything else this fastidiousness can be overdone, and I
remember once a boy's legal guardian showing 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 and even surpassed us in these. It was, however, a
very potent influence, and we were always ridiculously sensitive 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 peacock, I suppose, for I
remember feeling as if the bottom had suddenly fallen out of the
earth. The sequel, however, was an invitation to visit their home in
North Wales for the Christmas 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
forget, 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 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 on the grass. The dark lantern, the sugaring of the tree stems
with intoxicating potions, and the subsequent excitement of searching
for specimens, fascinated me utterly. Our breeding from the egg,
through the caterpillar 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 expecting 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
contemptuous--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 moving 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 conundrum. 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 Riviera, 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, 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 Arles, 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 father'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 attraction 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 an enormous practice, in
which he was eminently successful. 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 remaining 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 entirely 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 marvellous. 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 London 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 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 required subjects sufficiently to pass the examination with
credit. But I must say here that Professor Huxley's criticisms 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, physiology, or comparative anatomy. About the
universe which I inhabited I knew as little as I did about cuneiform
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 poorest 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 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
necessity. 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 Cambridge, 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 suffered 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 environment, 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 examinations 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 discovered that he had lived
exactly the life of the prodigal in the parable, and had neither
attended college nor attempted 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 Surgeons, never by the hospital
schools. These were practically 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 qualifications; 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
themselves justice in examinations, others were exactly the reverse.
Thus I can remember one resident accoucheur being "ploughed," as we
called it, in his special subject, obstetrics--and men to whom you
wouldn'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 practical
joker had spilled a solution of carbon bisulphide all over the
professor's platform, and the smell was so intolerable 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 sixpence 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 amphitheatre 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
dissecting-room, where we could easily obtain all the work we needed.
But not till Sir Frederick Treves became our lecturer in anatomy and
surgery was it worth while doing 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 druggist 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
Shadwell, the district to which I happened to have been called. It
proved to be an evangelistic 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
interested me, and I stayed the service out. When eventually I left,
it was with a determination either to make religion 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.

[Illustration: OXFORD UNIVERSITY RUGBY UNION FOOTBALL TEAM
W.T. Grenfell at left of bottom row]

We were Church of England people, and I always attended 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 "Episcopal 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 Abraham. Can't you go in and help while I fetch the police?"
My friend and I therefore rushed in as directed to a 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 discretion 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 purchased 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," outside 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 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, waiting 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 preserved 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 denizens 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 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 contemptible treachery
which some among these new acquaintances would not attempt. We became
gradually hardened to the piteous tales of ill luck, of malignant
persecution, 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 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 worshipped 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 arranged 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 believed 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 forward 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 invitations 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 resigned from his school.

My Australian friend was at that time wrestling with a real ragged
school on the Highway on Sunday afternoons. 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 one but
ourselves, and the work certainly proved a real labour of love. If the
boys were allowed in a minute before 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 happened 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
acquiesced, 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 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 everything,
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 beautiful 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
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
London parson, whom we always knew as "the Puffin," because 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 topmast 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 not so much as a
chronometer watch, and so in spite of a decrepit sextant even our
latitude was often an uncertain 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 homeward
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 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 didn't really
interest him, especially when the weather was lively. On one occasion
I reported to the galley, though I was the skipper 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
terminate 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 lighted candle. When asked what he was
doing, he explained, "Why, looking for those bishops, of course."

No holiday anywhere could be better sport than those cruises. There
was responsibility, yet rest, mutual dependence, and a charming,
unconventional way of getting acquainted with one's own country. We
visited Carnarvon, 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 protesting.

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 shouldn't these town
cagelings 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 ourselves 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 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 described.

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 couldn'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 seasons, 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 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 Snowdon, 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 hospitality 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 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 reserving
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 entertainment. 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 was 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
railway 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
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
suburbs 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 congenial associations of a
costermonger's life, where I believe he died in harness.

The last two years of my stay in London being occupied 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 Lulworth 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 picturesque 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 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, having 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 memory 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 possible--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 bachelor who shot very little,
riding from one good stand 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
undeserving 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 defending 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. Looking back it seems to me that the
germs of democratic tendencies were sown in me by just those very
incidents.

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" together, 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
celebrated 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 taken my
preliminary examinations, including the scientific 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 consultant on
the afternoon when he made his rounds, followed 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 moment tried to convey to his followers that his knowledge was
final, but that any moment he stood ready to abandon his position for
a better one. On one occasion, to illustrate this point, while he was
in one of the largest of our wards (one with four divisions and twenty
beds each) he 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 reminds 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 students 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 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 universal, 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 message 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."

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 Cholecystenterostomy 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 appearance 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
psychical 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 faice! You do think yerself ---- ---- clever, don't
yer?" The strange situation was only relieved by his bursting into a
genuine fit of laughter.

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 patient
proved to be one of the men who was handling the meat in London's
greatest market at Smithfield. A tremendous hue and cry spread over
London when somehow 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 hospitals, he was naturally scientific and strictly
professional. He was very far, however, from being the conventionalist
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
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."

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
fisherman 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
circumstance arises."

The fallibility of diagnosis was at this very impressionable 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 captain 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 supposed 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. 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 company 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
wonderful 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 supervened, and
the famous neurologist at once diagnosed a tumour in the spinal canal.
Such a case had never previously 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 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 disease 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 morning 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 "stolkjaerre," 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 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 ringing with the
tale of a barefaced murder at Murray Hill in North London, where an
exceedingly clever piece of detective 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 preceded 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 "Poplar," at both of which I did interne
work, to see a policeman 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 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
interested 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 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 skylight 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 turning 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 little space between the bar and the wall that
with my stiff back I couldn'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
interested. A magistrate was brought to the bedside and the husband
sent for. The nature of the evidence, the meaning 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, facing 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, 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 forward 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. "'Twas
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 subscriber to this hospital, and I have never
had my dues yet," he kept protesting. A new drug to produce immediate
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 between 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
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 service 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 thousands 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 perpetrated, jails and hospitals filled,
misery, want, starvation, 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, making 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 pretend 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 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 conclusion 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
improvement has occurred has been largely due to the taste of the
patrons. Medical students need all the open air 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 requires 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 hammer. 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 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 remember 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 purlieus 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 presided over Toynbee
House, the first big university settlement 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 didn't believe in the Creed, and
stumbled over all our fundamentals. 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 landlord 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 tune 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 liked both of these men because they were
unconventional 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 Infinite 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 supposed 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 opponents 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 his Hibernian origin very markedly. Having been completely
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
tuberculosis long ago got its grip upon him, and removed a valuable
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. 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 medical 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 understand 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 personally 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 vaudeville, 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-development 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 afterward sent him an autographed photograph of herself.
He kept it in his room, which was known as the "elephant 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 disposition 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 permitted, 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 hazardous
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 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 faculties were often thus lost. It so happened that Sir Frederick
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 Boxing 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 fishermen, 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 alternative 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 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, anyhow."

I climbed up the bank and peered down in the darkness 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 shouldn'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.
Democratic as East London had made me, they impressed me very
favourably, and I began to look forward to the venture with real
pleasure.

Drink was the worst enemy of these men. The quaysides 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 eventually 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--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 tobacco 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, customs, 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 resourcefulness 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 sixteenth-century period.

Each fleet had its admiral and vice-admiral, appointed partly by the
owner, and partly by the skippers of the 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
indicating 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 admiral, 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 consider 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 chronometer 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 westward, 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. 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. 1/2 and W. point of the island [Heligoland] to Barkum S. 1/2 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 imaginable 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. Sometimes
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 entangled 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 together 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 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 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
victims to drink and made the acquaintance of the remedial measures of
our penal system of that day were only further brutalized by it.
Religion 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 during 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 occasion cooked the "duff" for dinner badly, was made to
take his cinders on deck when it was his time to turn 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 Association. 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 recourse 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 forgotten,
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, 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 singularly 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 affectionate than she
would have wished for under the circumstances 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 sojourner upon it. This belief, that he is destined
to go on living elsewhere, makes a vast difference to one's estimate
of values. Life becomes a school instead of a mere stage, the object
of which is that our capacities for usefulness 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, because we share His
nature.

These convictions, anyhow, were the mental assets with which I had to
begin work, and no others. A scientific 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 appears to be
great, but is merely diffuse, will be temporary and ineffective.
Experience has taught me that one 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 fellowship and thus an intelligent understanding of the
difficulties 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 proportion to the sacrifice
which we make.

In plain words the field of work offered me was attractive. 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 sacrifice was balanced by
the fact that I never cared very much for the frills of life so long
as the necessities were forthcoming.

The attention that Harold Begbie'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 any definite help as to
their attitude toward the spiritual relationships 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, however, that
athletic attainments carried great weight, and that all outdoor
accomplishments had a strong attraction 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
movement has grown with immense strides on both sides of the
Atlantic.

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 gymkhana, 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 unconventionality and absolute naturalness
with no "shibboleths." The boys were allowed 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 any 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 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 nightclothes 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 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
increase 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 undertaking than a winter
voyage on the Dogger Bank. However, 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 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 something of a lady."

At this time we had begun two new ventures, an institute at Yarmouth
for fishermen ashore and a dispensary 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 interesting. 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
rendezvous. 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 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 organization 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 many Cornishmen who were temporarily resident there, having
come over from Cornwall 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
numbers and take one of their boats to sea.

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 dangling 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 conversational 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 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 tumbling 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, an

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