d by law to go to the denomination to which
their parents had belonged. This was not always easy to decide
correctly. On the occasion of taking the last census in Labrador, a
well-dressed stranger suddenly visited one of our settlements on the
east coast. It so happened that a very poor man with a large and
growing family of eight children under ten years, who resided there,
was not so loyal to his church as we are taught we ought to be. When
the stranger entered his tilt a vision of material favours to be
obtained was the dominant idea in the fisherman's mind. He was
therefore on tenterhooks all the while that the questioning was going
on lest some blunder of his might alienate the sympathy on which he
was banking for "getting his share." At length it came to the
momentous point of "What denomination do you belong to?"--a very vital
matter when it comes to sympathy and sharing up. In some hesitation he
gazed at the row of his eight unwashed and but half-clad offspring,
whose treacly faces gaped open-mouthed at the visitor. Then with
sudden inspiration he decided to play for safety, and replied, "Half
of them is Church of England, and half is Methodist!"

Being an unrecognized school, and so far off, some years went by
before the innovation of bringing up scholars from our northern
district entered our heads. We realized at length, however, that we
should close one channel of criticism to the enemy if we proved that
we could justify our school by their standard of annual examinations.
Our teachers, being mostly volunteers, had to come from outside the
Colony. Having no funds to purchase books and other supplies, we made
use of books also sent us from outside. The real value of the local
examination becomes questionable as a standard of success when far
more highly educated teachers, and at least as cleverly laid-out study
books, prevented the children in our school from passing them.

Moreover, further to waken their faculties, we had included in our
facilities a large upper hall of the school building and a library of
some thousands of books collected from all quarters. The former
afforded the stimulus which entertainments given by the children
could carry, and also space for physical drill; the latter, that
greatest incentive of all, access to books which lure people to wish
to read them. In summer the parents and older children are busy with
the fisheries day and night, and the little children run more or less
wild