LE PETIT NORD
Reading edition
OR
ANNALS OF A LABRADOR HARBOUR
BY
ANNE GRENFELL AND KATIE SPALDING
BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1920
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
FOREWORD
A friend from the Hub of the Universe, in a somewhat supercilious manner, not long ago informed one of our local friends that his own home was hundreds of miles to the southward. "'Deed, sir, how does you manage to live so far off?" with a scarcely perceptible twinkle of one eye, was the answer.
If home is the spot on earth where one spends the larger part of one's prime, and where one's family comes into being, then for over a quarter of a century "Le Petit Nord" of this book has been my home. With the authors I share for it and its people the love which alone keeps us here. Necessity has compelled me to perform, however imperfectly, functions usually distributed amongst many and varied professions, and the resultant intimacy has become unusual. As, therefore, I read the amusing experiences herein narrated, I feel that the "other half," who know us not, will love us better even if we are not exactly as they. That is not our fault. They should not live "so far off."
The incidents told are all actual, but the name of every single person and place has been changed to afford any hypersensitive among the actors the protection which pseudonymity confers. We here who have been permitted a glimpse of these pages feel that we really owe the authors another debt beyond the love for the people to which they have testified by the more substantial offering of long and voluntary personal service.
Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D.
Labrador, 1919
ILLUSTRATIONS
An Awful Night for a Sinner
Sad Seasick Souls strewn around
The Herring of High Estate
"Have you a plug of baccy, Skipper?"
Rhoda's Randy
Topsy's Ambition is to become like a Fat Pig
Topsy was creeping from Bed to Bed with the Carving-Knife
The Prophet of Doom
Ananias has Broken yet Another Window
Not Fat, but Fine and Hearty
Delilah bawling
Mrs. Uncle Life found the Leader of the Team in her Bed
"Teacher, I have a pain"
The Yoho
They ate the Entire Boot
He had taken the Stranger in
He froze his Toe in Bed
A Long Way on the Heavenward Road
The Seventh Son
Its Action was Prompt and Powerful
It was his Last Bullet
A Puffin Ghetto
The Bear bit his Leg off
P.S.