Part 3

He built for himself a bark-covered retreat some two miles back from the river in a bowl-shaped hollow among the thickly wooded hills. “Slabsides,” as he called this human bird’s-nest, was a two-story shack of rough-hewn timbers.

“One of the greatest pleasures of life is to build a house for one’s self,” he said; “there is a peculiar satisfaction even in planting a tree from which you hope to eat the fruit or in the shade of which you hope to repose. But how much greater the pleasure in planting the roof-tree, the tree that bears the golden apples of hospitality. What is a man’s house but his nest, and why should it not be nest-like, both outside and in, snug and well-feathered and modeled by the heart within?”

Many guests climbed the steep, rocky trail and enjoyed the hospitality of this retreat, among others President Roosevelt and his wife. The naturalist, whom Colonel Roosevelt affectionately called “Oom John,” cooked the dinner himself, bringing milk and butter from his cave refrigerator, broiling the chicken, and preparing the lettuce, celery, and other vegetables which grew in the rich black mold of the hollow. As he prepared and served the meal with all the ease of a practised camper there was never a halt in the talk of these two great lovers of the outdoor world. If the poet-sage who deplored that

Things are in the saddle, And ride mankind

could have spent a day with John Burroughs, he would have found one man, at least, who never knew the tyranny of possessions, and so was never possessed by them. He is the type of the sane, happy human being who, while journeying through life, has taken time to live by the way. He knows the enchanting by-paths of existence, the friendly trails that wind over meadows and hills.

“I am in love with this world,” he says; “I have nestled lovingly in it. It has been home. I have tilled its soil, I have gathered its harvests, I have waited upon its seasons, and always have I reaped what I have sown. While I delved, I did not lose sight of the sky overhead. While I gathered its bread and meat for my body, I did not neglect to gather its bread and meat for my soul.”

Though the whole wide out-of-doors is home to John Burroughs, there is one spot that is more than any other the abiding-place of his affections. This is the country of his childhood in the Catskills. Here he spends his summers now at Woodchuck Lodge, a cottage about half a mile from the old homestead. Here he is happy in a way that he can be nowhere else. The woods and fields are flesh of his flesh, the mountains are father and mother to him.

A day with John Burroughs at Woodchuck Lodge will always seem torn from the calendar of ordinary living, a day apart, free, wholesome, and untouched by petty care. His world is indeed “so full of a number of things” that all who come within the spell of its serene content are “as happy as kings.”

As he makes whistles of young shoots of dogwood for his small grandson he tells of his school-days, when necessity taught his hand the cunning to make his own pens, slate-pencils, and ink-wells. “And they were a very good sort, too,” he adds. “Those were home-made days. I remember my homespun shirts, made of our own flax, yellow at first and as good as ever hair-shirt could have been in the way of scratching penance. All my playthings were home-made. How well I remember my trout-lines of braided horsehair, and the sawmill in the brook that actually cut up the turnips, apples, and cucumbers that I proudly fed it.”

“These, too, are home-made days of the best sort,” we think as we look about the rustic porch and chairs made of silvery birch, and at the silver-haired seer, surrounded by his grandchildren and the friends who gather about him with the happy feeling of being most entirely at home.

“You like my chairs with the bark on?” he says. “It’s a sort of hobby of mine to see how the natural forks and crooks and elbows which I discover in the saplings and tree-boles can be coaxed into serving my turn about the house, and I make it a point to use them as nearly as possible as they grow.”

We sit on the porch at his feet, watching the chipmunks frisk along the fences and the woodchucks creep furtively out of their holes. We do not speak for several long minutes, because we want to taste the quiet life he loves in the heart of the blue hills. We fancy that we can hear in the twitter of the tree-tops a clearly understood mingling of familiar voices, and that we feel in our hearts an answering echo that proves us truly akin to the creatures in feathers and fur.

“Home sights and sounds are best of all,” says our friend, as he gazes across at the purple shadows on Old Clump. “The sublime beauty of the Yosemite touched me with wonder and awe, but when I heard the robin’s note it touched my heart. Bright Angel Creek in the Grand Cañon found its way into the innermost recesses of my consciousness in the moment when it reminded me of the trout-stream at home.”

There is another pause, in which the silver-clear notes of the vesper-sparrow come to us with their “Peace, good will and good night.”

“I think I am something like a turtle in the way I love to poke about in narrow fields,” he adds whimsically; “but why should I rush hither and yon to see things when I can see constellations from my own door-step?”

And so it is indeed true that the Seer of Woodchuck Lodge can still find in a ramble among his own hills the land of wonder and beauty which he found as a boy when he followed the flash of the unknown bird, and in the glowing twilight of his years, with eyes that look into the heart and meaning of things, can, from his door-step, trace constellations undreamed of by day.

THE DEEP-SEA DOCTOR: WILFRED GRENFELL

As the bird wings and sings, Let us cry, “All good things Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, Now, than flesh helps soul!” BROWNING.

When people meet Dr. Grenfell, the good doctor who braves the storms of the most dangerous of all sea-coasts and endures the hardships of arctic winters to care for the lonely fisherfolk of Labrador, they often ask, with pitying wonder:

“How do you manage it, Doctor, day in and day out through all the long months? It seems too much for any man to sacrifice himself as you do.”

“Don’t think for a moment that I’m a martyr,” replies Dr. Grenfell, a bit impatiently, “Why, I have a jolly good time of it! There’s nothing like a really good scrimmage to make a fellow sure that he’s alive, and glad of it. I learned that in my football days, and Labrador gives even better chances to know the joy of winning out in a tingling good tussle.”

Dr. Grenfell’s face, with the warm color glowing through the tan, his clear, steady eyes, and erect, vigorous form, all testify to his keen zest in the adventure of life. Ever since he could remember, he had, he told us, been in love with the thrill of strenuous action. When a small boy, he looked at the tiger-skin and other trophies of the hunt which his soldier uncles had sent from India, and dreamed of the time when he should learn the ways of the jungle at first hand.

He comes of a race of strong men. One uncle was a general who bore himself with distinguished gallantry in the Indian Mutiny at Lucknow when the little garrison of seventeen hundred men held the city for twelve weeks against a besieging force ten times as great. One of his father’s ancestors was Sir Richard Grenville, the hero of the _Revenge_, who, desperately struggling to save his wounded men, fought with his one ship against the whole Spanish fleet of fifty-three. Perhaps you remember Tennyson’s thrilling lines:

And the stately Spanish men to their flag-ship bore him then, Where they laid him by the mast, old Sir Richard caught at last, And they praised him to his face with their courtly foreign grace;

But he rose upon their decks, and he cried: “I have fought for Queen and Faith like a valiant man and true; I have only done my duty as a man is bound to do; With a joyful spirit I, Sir Richard Grenville, die!”

How these lines sang in his memory! Is it any wonder that the lad who heard this story as one among many thrilling tales of his own people should have felt that life was a splendid adventure?

As a boy in his home at Parkgate, near Chester, England, he was early accustomed to strenuous days in the open. He knew the stretches of sand-banks,--the famous “Sands of Dee,”--with their deep, intersecting “gutters” where many curlews, mallards, and other water-birds sought hiding. In his rocking home-made boat he explored from end to end the estuary into which the River Dee flowed, now and again hailing a fishing-smack for a tow home, if evening fell too soon, and sharing with the crew their supper of boiled shrimps. He seemed to know as by instinct the moods of the tides and storm-vexed waves, which little boats must learn to watch and circumvent. He became a lover, also, of wild nature--birds, animals, and plants--and of simple, vigorous men who lived rough, wholesome lives in the open.

Though he went from the boys’ school at Parkgate to Marlborough College, and later to Oxford, he had at this time no hint of the splendid adventures that life offers in the realm of mental and spiritual activities. Rugby football, in which he did his share to uphold the credit of the university, certainly made the most vital part of this chapter of his life. It was not until he took up the study of medicine at the London Hospital that he began to appreciate the value of knowledge “because it enables one to do things.”

There was one day of this study-time in London that made a change in the young doctor’s whole life. Partly out of curiosity, he followed a crowd in the poorer part of the city, into a large tent, where a religious meeting was being held. In a moment he came to realize that his religion had been just a matter of believing as he was taught, of conducting himself as did those about him, and of going to church on Sunday. It seemed that here, however, were men to whom religion was as real and practical a thing as the rudder is to a boat. All at once he saw what it would mean to have a strong guiding power in one’s life.

His mind seemed wonderfully set free. There were no longer conflicting aims, ideals, uncertainties, and misgivings. There was one purpose, one desire--to enter “the service that is perfect freedom,” the service of the King of Kings. Life was indeed a glorious adventure, whose meaning was plain and whose end sure.

How he enjoyed his class of unruly boys from the slums! Most people would have considered them hopeless “toughs.” He saw that they were just active boys, eager for life, who had been made what they were by unwholesome surroundings. “All they need is to get hold of the rudder and to feel the breath of healthy living in their faces,” he said. He fitted up one of his rooms with gymnasium material and taught the boys to box. He took them for outings into the country. When he saw the way they responded to this little chance for happy activity, he became one of the founders of the Lads’ Brigades and Lads’ Camps, which have done the same sort of good in England that the Boy Scouts organization has done in this country.

When he completed his medical course, the young doctor looked about for a field that would give chance for adventure and for service where a physician was really needed.

“I feel there is something for me besides hanging out my sign in a city where there are already doctors and to spare,” he said.

“Why don’t you see what can be done with a hospital-ship among the North Sea fishermen?” said Sir Frederick Treves, who was a great surgeon and a master mariner as well.

When Dr. Grenfell heard about how sick and injured men suffered for lack of care when on their long fishing-expeditions, he decided to fall in with this suggestion. He joined the staff of the Mission to Deep-sea Fishermen, and fitted out the first hospital-ship to the North Sea fisheries, which cruised about from the Bay of Biscay to Iceland, giving medical aid where it was often desperately needed.

When this work was well established, and other volunteers offered to take it up, Dr. Grenfell sought a new world of adventure. Hearing of the forlorn condition of the English-speaking settlers and natives on the remote shores of wind-swept Labrador, he resolved to fit out a hospital-ship and bring them what help he could. So began in 1892 Dr. Grenfell’s great work with his schooner _Albert_, in which he cruised about for three months and ministered to nine hundred patients, who, but for him, would have had no intelligent care.

Can you picture Labrador as something more than a pink patch on the cold part of the map? That strip of coast northwest of Newfoundland is a land of sheer cliffs broken by deep fiords, like much of Norway. Rocky islands and hidden reefs make the shores dangerous to ships in the terrific gales that are of frequent occurrence. But this forbidding, wreck-strewn land of wild, jutting crags has a weird beauty of its own. Picture it in winter when the deep snow has effaced all inequalities of surface and the dark spruces alone stand out against the gleaming whiteness. The fiords and streams are bound in an icy silence which holds the sea itself in thrall. Think of the colors of the moonlight on the ice, and the flaming splendor of the northern lights. Then picture it when summer has unloosed the land from the frozen spell. Mosses, brilliant lichens, and bright berries cover the rocky ground, the evergreens stand in unrivaled freshness, and gleaming trout and salmon dart out of the water, where great ice-bergs go floating by like monster fragments of the crystal city of the frost giants, borne along now by the arctic current to tell the world about the victory of the sun over the powers of cold in the far North.

When Dr. Grenfell sailed about in the _Albert_ that first summer, the people thought he was some strange, big-hearted madman, who bore a charmed life. He seemed to know nothing and care nothing about foamy reefs, unfamiliar tides and currents, and treacherous winds. When it was impossible to put out in the schooner, he went in a whale-boat, which was worn out--honorably discharged from service--after a single season. The people who guarded the lives of their water-craft with jealous care shook their heads. Truly, the man must be mad. His boat was capsized, swamped, blown on the rocks, and once driven out to sea by a gale that terrified the crew of the solidly built mailboat. This time he was reported lost, but after a few days he appeared in the harbor of St. John’s, face aglow, and eyes fairly snapping with the zest of the conflict.

“Sure, the Lord must kape an eye on that man,” said an old skipper, devoutly.

It was often said of a gale on the Labrador coast, “That’s a wind that’ll bring Grenfell.” The doctor, impatient of delays, and feeling the same exhilaration in a good stiff breeze that a lover of horses feels in managing a spirited thoroughbred, never failed to make use of a wind that might help send him on his way.

What sort of people are these to whom Dr. Grenfell ministers? They are, as you might think, simple, hardy men, in whom ceaseless struggle against bleak conditions of life has developed strength of character and capacity to endure. Besides the scattered groups of Eskimos in the north, who live by hunting seal and walrus, and the Indians who roam the interior in search of furs, there are some seven or eight thousand English-speaking inhabitants widely scattered along the coast. In summer as many as thirty thousand fishermen are drawn from Newfoundland and Nova Scotia to share in the profit of the cod-and salmon-fisheries. All of these people were practically without medical care before Dr. Grenfell came. Can you imagine what this meant? This is the story of one fisherman in his own words:

“I had a poisoned finger. It rose up and got very bad. I did not know what to do, so I took a passage on a schooner and went to Halifax. It was nine months before I was able to get back, as there was no boat going back before the winter. It cost me seventy-five dollars, and my hand was the same as useless, as it was so long before it was treated.”

Another told of having to wait nine days after “shooting his hand” before he could reach a doctor; and he had made the necessary journey in remarkably good time at that. He did not know if he ought to thank the doctor for saving his life when it was too late to save his hand. What can a poor fisherman do without a hand?

The chief sources of danger to these people who live by the food of the sea are the uncertain

winds and the treacherous ice-floes. When the ice begins to break in spring, the swift currents move great masses along with terrific force. Then woe betide the rash schooner that ventures into the path of these ice-rafts! For a moment she pushes her way among the floating “pans” or cakes of ice. All at once the terrible jam comes. The schooner is caught like a rat in a trap. The jaws of the ice monster never relax, while the timbers of the vessel crack and splinter and the solid deck-beams arch up, bow fashion, and snap like so many straws. Then, perhaps, the pressure changes. With a sudden shift of the wind a rift comes between the huge ice-masses, and the sea swallows its prey.

It is a strange thing that but few of the fishermen know how to swim. “You see, we has enough o’ the water without goin’ to bother wi’ it when we _are_ ashore,” one old skipper told the doctor in explanation.

The only means of rescue when one finds himself in the water is a line or a pole held by friends until a boat can be brought to the scene. Many stories might be told of the bravery of these people and their instant willingness to serve each other. Once a girl, who saw her brother fall through a hole in the ice, ran swiftly to the spot, while the men who were trying to reach the place with their boat shouted to her to go back. Stretching full length, however, on the gradually sinking ice, she held on to her brother till the boat forced its way to them.

Perhaps the most terrible experience that has come to the brave doctor was caused by the ice-floes. It was on Easter Sunday in 1908 when word came to the hospital that a boy was very ill in a little village sixty miles away. The doctor at once got his “komatik,” or dog-sledge, in readiness and his splendid team of eight dogs, who had often carried him through many tight places. Brin, the leader, was the one who could be trusted to keep the trail when all signs and landmarks were covered by snow and ice. There were also Doc, Spy, Jack, Sue, Jerry, Watch, and Moody--each no less beloved for his own strong points and faithful service.

It was while crossing an arm of the sea, a ten-mile run on salt-water ice, that the accident occurred. An unusually heavy sea had left great openings between enormous blocks or “pans” of ice a little to seaward. It seemed, however, that the doctor could be sure of a safe passage on an ice-bridge, that though rough, was firmly packed, while the stiff sea-breeze was making it stronger moment by moment through driving the floating pans toward the shore. But all at once there came a sudden change in the wind. It began to blow from the land, and in a moment the doctor realized that his ice-bridge had broken asunder and the portion on which he found himself was separated by a widening chasm from the rest. He was adrift on an ice-pan.

It all happened so quickly that he was unable to do anything but cut the harness of the dogs to keep them from being tangled in the traces and dragged down after the sled. He found himself soaking wet, his sledge, with his extra clothing, gone, and only the remotest chance of being seen from the lonely shore and rescued. If only water had separated him from the bank, he might have tried swimming, but, for the most part, between the floating pans was “slob ice,” that is, ice broken into tiny bits by the grinding together of the huge masses.

Night came, and with it such intense cold that he was obliged to sacrifice three of his dogs and clothe himself in their skins to keep from freezing, for coat, hat, and gloves had been lost in the first struggle to gain a place on the largest available “pan” of ice. Then, curled up among the remaining dogs, and so, somewhat protected from the bitter wind, he fell asleep.

When daylight came, he took off his gaily-colored shirt, which was a relic of his football days, and, with the leg bones of the slain dogs as a pole, constructed a flag of distress. The warmth of the sun brought cheer; and so, even though his reason told him that there was but the smallest chance of being seen, he stood up and waved his flag steadily until too weary to make another move. Every time he sat down for a moment of rest, “Doc” came and licked his face and then went to the edge of the ice, as if to suggest it was high time to start.

At last Dr. Grenfell thought he saw the gleam of an oar. He could hardly believe his eyes, which were, indeed, almost snow-blinded, as his dark glasses had been lost with all his other things. Then--yes--surely there was the keel of a boat, and a man waving to him! In a moment came the blessed sound of a friendly voice.

Now that the struggle was over, he felt himself lifted into the boat as in a dream. In the same way he swallowed the hot tea which they had brought in a bottle. This is what one of the rescuers said, in telling about it afterward:

“When we got near un, it didn’t seem like ’t was the doctor. ’E looked so old an’ ’is face such a queer color. ’E was very solemn-like when us took un an’ the dogs in th’ boat. Th’ first thing ’e said was how wonderfu’ sorry ’e was o’ gettin’ into such a mess an’ givin’ we th’ trouble o’ comin’ out for un. Then ’e fretted about the b’y ’e was goin’ to see, it bein’ too late to reach un, and us to’ un ’is life was worth more ’n the b’y, fur ’e could save others. But ’e still fretted.”

They had an exciting time of it, reaching the shore. Sometimes they had to jump out and force the ice-pans apart; again, when the wind packed the blocks together too close, they had to drag the boat over.

When the bank was gained at last and the doctor dressed in the warm clothes that the fishermen wear, they got a sledge ready to take him to the hospital, where his frozen hands and feet could be treated. There, too, the next day the sick boy was brought, and his life saved.

Afterward, in telling of his experience, the thing which moved the doctor most was the sacrifice of his dogs. In his hallway a bronze tablet was placed with this inscription:

TO THE MEMORY OF THREE NOBLE DOGS MOODY WATCH SPY WHOSE LIVES WERE GIVEN FOR MINE ON THE ICE APRIL 21ST, 1908 WILFRED GRENFELL

In his old home in England his brother put up a similar tablet, adding these words, “Not one of them is forgotten before your Father which is in heaven.”

Besides caring for the people himself, Dr. Grenfell won the interest of other workers--doctors, nurses, and teachers. Through his efforts, hospitals, schools, and orphan-asylums have been built. Of all the problems, however, with which this large-hearted, practical friend of the deep-sea fishermen has had to deal in his Labrador work, perhaps the chief was that of the dire poverty of the people. It seemed idle to try to cure men of ills which were the direct result of conditions under which they lived.