th" in
schooners, as soon as ever the ice breaks sufficiently to allow them
to get along. They are the "Labrador fishermen," and they come from
South Newfoundland, from Nova Scotia, from Gloucester, and even
Boston. Some Newfoundlanders take their families down and leave them
in summer tilts on the land near the fishing grounds during the
season. When fall comes they pick them up again and start for their
winter homes "in the South," leaving only a few hundreds of scattered
"Liveyeres" in possession of the Labrador.

We were much surprised one day to notice a family moving their house
in the middle of the fishing season, especially when we learned that
the reason was that a spirit had appropriated their dwelling.

Stephen Leacock would have obtained much valuable data for his essay
on "How to Become a Doctor" if he had ever chanced to sail along "the
lonely Labrador." In a certain village one is confidently told of a
cure for asthma, as simple as it is infallible. It consists merely of
taking the tips of all one's finger-nails, carefully allowed to grow
long, and cutting them off with sharp scissors. In another section a
powder known as "Dragon's Blood" is very generally used as a plaster.
It appears quite inert and harmless. A little farther south along the
coast is a baby suffering from ophthalmia. The doctor has only been
called in because blowing sugar in its eyes has failed to cure it.

A colleague of mine was visiting on his winter rounds in a delightful
village some forty miles south of St. Anthony Hospital. The "swiles"
(seals) had struck in, and all hands were out on the ice, eager to
capture their share of these valuable animals. But snow-blindness had
incontinently attacked the men, and had rendered them utterly unable
to profit by their good fortune. The doctor's clinic was long and busy
that night. The following morning he was, however, amazed to see many
of his erstwhile patients wending their way seawards, each with one
eye treated on his prescription, but the other (for safety's sake)
doctored after the long-accepted methods of the talent of the
village--tansy poultices and sugar being the acknowledged favourites.
The consensus of opinion obviously was that the stakes were too high
for a man to offer up both eyes on the altar of modern medicine.

In the course of many years' practice the methods for the treatment
and extraction of offending molars which have come to my attention are
numerous, but non