. One person responded. A
young farmer's wife wrote: "I am just married to a farmer in the
country, and miss the chance to teach children in Sunday-School, or
even to get to church, it is so far away. I think that I can feed two
children for the Lord's sake. If you will send them along, I will see
that they do not want for anything." We shipped two, and began what
developed into our Children's Home with the balance of the stock.

We had everything to learn in the rearing of children, having had only
the hygienic side of their development to attend to previously. One of
the two which we kept turned out very well, becoming a fully trained
nurse. The other failed. Both of those who went to New England did
well, the superior discipline of their foster mother being no doubt
responsible. The following fall I made a special journey to see the
latter. It was a small farm on which they lived, and a little baby had
just arrived. Only high ideals could have persuaded the woman to
accept the added responsibility. The children were as bright and jolly
as possible.

Among the other functions which have fallen to my lot to perform is
the ungrateful task of unpaid magistrate, or justice of the peace. In
this capacity a little later I was called on to try a mother, who in a
Labrador village had become a widow and later married a man with six
children who refused to accept her three-year-old little girl. When I
happened along, the baby was living alone in the mother's old shack, a
mud-walled hut, and she or the neighbours went in and tended it as
they could. None of the few neighbours wanted permanently to assume
the added expense of the child, so dared not accept it temporarily. It
was sitting happily on the floor playing with a broken saucer when I
came in. It showed no fear of a stranger; indeed, it made most
friendly overtures. I had no right to send the new husband to jail. I
could not fine him, for he had no money. There was no jail in
Labrador, anyhow. My special constable was a very stout fisherman, a
family man, who proposed to nurse the child till I could get it to
some place where it could be properly looked after. When we steamed
away, we had the baby lashed into a swing cot. It became very rough,
and the baby, of course, crawled out and was found in the scuppers. It
did everything that it ought not to do, but which we knew that it
would. But we got it to the hospital at last and the nurse received it
right to her heart.