rn Newfoundland I found a young mother near
St. Anthony. She was twenty-six years old, suffering from acute
rheumatic fever, lying in a fireless loft, on a rickety bedstead with
no bedclothes. She had only one shoddy black dress to her name, and no
underwear to keep her warm in bed in a house like that. The floor was
littered with debris, including a number of hard buns which she could
not now eat, but which some charitable neighbour had sent her. She had
a wizened baby of seven months, which every now and then she was
trying to feed by raising herself on one elbow and forcing bread and
water pap, moistened with the merest suspicion of condensed milk, down
its throat. None of her four previous children had lived so long. She
had been under my care three years before for sailor's scurvy. Her
present illness lasted only a week, and in spite of all that we could
do, she died.

The desire of the people to be mutually helpful is undoubted, whether
it is to each other or to some "outsider" like ourselves. I question
if in the so-called centres of civilization the following incident can
be surpassed as evidencing this aspect of their character.

In a little Labrador village called Deep Water Creek I was called in
one day to see a patient: an old Englishman, who was reported to have
had "a bad place this twelvemonth." As I was taken into the tiny
cottage, a bright-faced, black-bearded man greeted me. Three children
were playing on the hearth with a younger man, evidently their father.
"No, Doctor, they aren't ours," replied my host, in answer to my
question. "But us took Sam as our own when he was born, and his mother
lay dead. These be his little ones. You remember Kate, his wife, what
died in hospital."

After the cup of hot tea so thoughtfully provided, I said, "Skipper
John, let's get out and see the old Englishman."

"No need, Doctor. He's upstairs in bed."

Upstairs was the triangular space between the roof and the ceiling of
the ground floor. At each end was a tiny window, and the whole area,
windows included, had been divided longitudinally by a single
thickness of hand-sawn lumber. Both windows were open, a cool breeze
was blowing through, and a bright paper pasted on the wall gave a
cheerful impression. One corner was shut off by a screen of cheap
cheesecloth. Sitting bolt upright on a low bench, and leaning against
the partition, was a very aged woman, staring fixedly ahead out of
blind eyes, and ceaselessly mo