it.
Her functions are innumerable. She is our eyepiece to keep us
cognizant of our opportunities. She both treats and carries the sick
and feeds the hospitals. She enables us to distribute our charity
efficiently. The invaluable gifts of clothing which the Labrador
Needlework Guild and other friends send us could never be used at all
as love would wish, unless the Strathcona were available to enlarge
the area reached. In spite of all this, those who would quibble over
trifles claim that she is the only craft on record that rolls at
dry-dock! Her functions are certainly varied, but perhaps the oddest
which I have ever been asked to perform was an incident which I have
often told. One day, after a long stream of patients had been treated,
a young man with a great air of secrecy said that he wanted to see me
very privately.

"I wants to get married, Doctor," he confided when we were alone.

"Well, that's something in which I can't help you. Won't any of the
girls round here have you?"

"Oh! it isn't that. There's a girl down North I fancies, but I'm
shipped to a man here for the summer, and can't get away. Wouldn't you
just propose to her for me, and bring her along as you comes South?"

The library would touch a very limited field if it were not for the
hospital ship. She carries half a hundred travelling libraries each
year. She finds out the derelict children and brings them home. She is
often a court of law, trying to dispense justice and help right
against might. She has enabled us to serve not only men, but their
ships as well; and many a helping hand she has been able to lend to
men in distress when hearts were anxious and hopes growing faint. In a
thousand little ways she is just as important a factor in preaching
the message of love. To-day she is actually loaned for her final trip,
before going into winter quarters, to a number of heads of families,
who are thus enabled to bring out fuel for their winter fires from the
long bay just south of the hospital.

Her plates are getting thin. They were never anything but
three-eighths-inch steel, and we took a thousand pounds of rust out of
her after cabin alone this spring. She leaks a little--and no iron
ship should. It will cost two thousand dollars to put her into repair
again for future use. Money is short now, but when asked about the
future of the Mission I feel that whatever else will be needed for
many years to come, the hospital ship at least cannot poss