y? My own mental picture of myself at
the age of seven sitting on a bench for forty minutes twice every week
learning to be "religious" made me sympathize with Scrooge when the
Ghost of the Past was paying him a visit.

One thing was certain. The young lives entrusted to us were having as
good medical care for their bodies as we could provide; and if we
could compass it, we were going to have that paralleled for their
minds. The parents of the village children could do as they liked with
those committed to them--and they did it. There is nothing so
thoroughly reactionary that I know of as religious prejudice well
ground in. As regards the treatment of physical ailments the
prejudices of what Dr. Holmes called "Homoeopathy and Kindred
Delusions" always are strong in proportion as they are impregnated
with some religious bias.

Our efforts to combine the local schools having failed, we had to
provide a building of our own. This we felt must be planned for the
future. For some day the halcyon days of peace on earth shall be
permitted in our community, and the true loyalty of efficient service
to our brothers will, it is to be hoped, become actually the paramount
object of our Christian religion. Perhaps this terrible war will have
convinced the world that the loftiest aspirations of mankind are no
more to save yourself hereafter than here. Is it not as true as ever
that if we are not ourselves possessors of Christ's spirit, ourselves
we cannot save?

The only schoolhouse available, anyhow, was not nearly so good a
building as that which we have since provided for the accommodation of
our pigs! Fat pork is considered an absolute essential "down North";
and it was cheaper and safer, according to Upton Sinclair, to raise
pigs than buy the salted or tinned article. So we had instituted what
we deemed a missionary enterprise in that line. (_Pace_ our vegetarian
friends.)

As soon as a sum of three thousand dollars had been raised, architect
friends at the Pratt Institute sent down to us competitive designs,
and one of our Labrador boys, who had studied there, erected the
building. Having at the beginning no funds whatever for current
expenses, we had to look for volunteer teachers. One denomination
helped with part of its harbour grant, but the Government would not
make any special donation toward the union school project. Even the
caput grant, to which we had hoped that we were entitled for our own
orphanage children, ha