that they were obliged to chew pieces of green sealskin which
they cut from their boots and to broil their skin gloves over a fire
which they had kindled.

One great joy which comes with the work is the sympathy one gets with
the really poor, whether in intelligence, physical make-up, or worldly
assets. One learns how simple needs and simple lives preserve simple
virtues that get lost in the crush of advancing civilization. Many and
many a time have the poor people by the wayside refused a penny for
their trouble. On one occasion I came in the middle of the night to a
poor man's house. He was in bed and the lights out, and it was bitter
cold. He got out of bed in a trice and went down to his stage carrying
an old hurricane lantern to feed my dogs, while his wife, after he had
lit a fire in the freezing cold room, busied herself making me some
cocoa. Milk and sugar were provided, and not till long afterwards did
I know that it was a special little hoard kept for visitors. Later I
was sent to bed--quite unaware that the good folk had spent the first
part of the night in it, and were now themselves on the neighbouring
floor. Nor would a sou's return be asked. "It's the way of t' coast,"
the good fellow assured me.

Another time my host for the night had gone when I rose for breakfast.
I found that he had taken the road which I was intending to travel to
the next village, some fourteen miles distant, just to break and mark
a trail for us as we did not know the way; and secondly to carry some
milk and sugar to "save the face" of my prospective host for the next
day, who had "made a bad voyage" that year. Still another time no less
than forty men from Conche marched ahead on a twenty-mile track to
make it possible for our team to travel quickly to a neighbouring
settlement.

Often I have thought how many of these things would I do for my poorer
friends. We who speak glibly of the need of love for our neighbours as
being before that for ourselves, would we share a bed, a room, or give
hospitality to strangers even in our kitchens, after they had awakened
us in the middle of the night by slinging snowballs at our bedroom
windows?

One day that winter a father of eight children sent in from a
neighbouring island for immediate help. His gun had gone off while his
hand was on the muzzle, and practically blown it to pieces. To treat
him ten miles away on that island was impossible, so we brought him in
for operation. To stop t