piled up. Schooners had been
hauled in to carry off what was possible, and the patients in the
hospital were got ready to be carried away at a moment's notice. Only
the most strenuous efforts saved the entire station. Now all our
beautiful sky-line is blackened and charred. All day long the gravity
of the debt was in our hearts, for if the wooden buildings had once
had the clouds of fiery sparks settle upon them, the whole of those
dependent upon us would have been homeless. Surely in a country like
this, the incident of this fire puts an added emphasis upon our need
of brick buildings. Gratitude for our safe return, for all God's
mercies to us, and joy over the outcome of the at one time apparently
inevitable disaster, made our first day of the season a
never-to-be-forgotten event.

[Illustration: THE LABRADOR DOCTOR IN WINTER]

Mr. W.R. Stirling, our Chicago director, who had personally visited
the hospitals, insisted that a water supply must at all costs be
secured both for hospital and orphanage. This was not only to avert
the reproach of typhoid epidemics, two of which had previously
occurred, but also to better our protection for so many helpless lives
in old dry wooden buildings, and to economize the great expense of
hauling water by dogs every winter, when our little surface reservoir
was frozen to the bottom. This water supply has only just been
finished; and now we cannot understand how we ever existed without it.
But it is an unromantic object to which to give money, and the total
cost, even doing the work ourselves, amounted to just upon ten
thousand dollars. According to the Government engineer's advice we had
a stream to dam and a mile and a quarter of piping to lay six feet
underground to prevent the water freezing. It is only in very few
places that we boast six feet of soil at all on the rock that forms
the frame of Mother Earth here. Hence there was much blasting to do.
But the task was accomplished, and by our own boys, and has
successfully weathered our bitter winter. The last lap was run by an
intensely interesting experiment. The assistant at Emmanuel Church in
Boston brought down a number of volunteer Boy Scouts to give their
services on the commonplace task of digging the remainder of the
trench necessary to complete the water supply. When they first
arrived, our Northern outside man, after looking at their clothes of
the Boston cut, remarked, "Hm. You'd better give that crowd some
softer j