table heating-plant accommodations--all this has left the hospital
building more or less a thing of rags and patches, and most
uneconomical to run. We are urgently in need of having it rebuilt
entirely of either brick or stone, in order to resist the winter cold,
to give more efficiency and comfort to patients and staff and to
conserve our fuel, which is the most serious item of expense we have
to meet.

But at that time with all its capacity for service the new addition
was rising, sounding yet one more note of praise in better ability to
meet the demands upon us.

And _pari passu_ came the beautiful offer of my friend, Mr. Sayre, to
double the size of our orphanage, putting up the new wing in memory of
his father. This meant that instead of twenty we might now accommodate
forty children at a pinch. Life is so short that it is the depths of
pathos to be hampered in doing one's work for the lack of a few
dollars. Of great interest to my fiancee and myself was the selection
of a piece of ground adjoining the Mission land, and the erection for
ourselves of the home which we had planned and designed together
before I had left Lake Forest. We chose some land up on the hillside
and overlooking the sea and the harbour, where the view should be as
comprehensive as possible. But we feared that even though our new
house was very literally "founded upon a rock," the winds might some
day remove it bodily from its abiding-place, and therefore we riveted
the structure with heavy iron bolts to the solid bedrock.

One excitement of that season was Admiral Peary's return from the
North Pole. We were cruising near Indian Harbour when some visitors
came aboard to make use of our wireless telegraph, which at that time
we had installed on board. It proved to be Mr. Harry Whitney. It was
the first intimation that we had had that Peary was returning that
year. Whitney had met Cook coming back from the polar sea on the west
side of the Gulf, where he had disappeared about eighteen months
previously. I had met Dr. Cook several times myself, and indeed I had
slept at his house in Brooklyn. He had visited Battle Harbour Hospital
in 1893 when he was wrecked in the steamer in which he was conducting
a party to visit Greenland. We had again seen him as he went North
with Mr. Bradley in the yacht, and he had sent us back some Greenland
dogs to mix their blood with our dogs, and so perhaps improve their
breed and endurance. These, however, I had l