top.

It's a good thing to be a scrapper sometimes, but if you're a scrapper
be a good one. Grenfell is a scrapper when it is necessary, and when
he has to scrap he goes at it with the best that's in him. He never
does things half way. He never was a quitter. When he starts out to do
anything he does it.

XV

A LAD OF THE NORTH

The needs of the children attracted Dr. Grenfell's attention from the
beginning. A great many of them were neglected because the parents
were too poor to provide for them properly. Those who were orphaned
were thrown upon the care of their neighbors, and though the neighbors
were willing they were usually too poor to take upon themselves this
added burden.

There were no schools save those conducted by the Brethren of the
Moravian missions among the Eskimos to the northward, and these were
Eskimo schools where the people were taught to read and write in their
own strange language, and to keep their accounts. But for the English
speaking folk south of the Eskimo coast no provision for schools had
ever been made.

The hospitals were overflowing with the sick or injured, and there was
no room for children, unless they were in need of medical or surgical
attention. There was great need of a home for the orphans where they
would be cared for and receive motherly training and attention and
could go to school.

Dr. Grenfell had thought about this a great deal. He had made the
best arrangements possible for the actually destitute little ones by
finding more or less comfortable homes for them, and seeking
contributions from generous folk in the United States, Canada and
Great Britain to pay for their expense.

But it was not, perhaps, until Pomiuk, a little Eskimo boy, came under
his care that he finally decided that the establishment of a
children's home could no longer be delayed.

Pomiuk's home was in the far north of Labrador, where no trees grow,
and where the seasons are quite as frigid as those of northern
Greenland. In summer he lived with his father and mother in a skin
tent, or tupek, and in winter in a snow igloo, or iglooweuk.

Pomiuk's mother cooked the food over the usual stone lamp, which also
served to heat their igloo in winter. This lamp, which was referred to
in an earlier chapter, and described as a hollowed stone in the form
of a half moon, was an exceedingly crude affair, measuring eighteen
inches long on its straight side and nine inches broad at its widest