TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 13336, 30 January 1909, Page 8

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

A venerable &ena*or ot Tho Dream the United States lately and the caused a small literary Poem. sensation. On his

eightieth birthday ihc wrote a poem, which came to him, so ho informed the world, while he was half asleep. This seems an agreeable experience enough, but when h© published the poem, it was recognised as having already appeared in print, thirteen years ago, under another author's name. Now tho* papers make their waspish comment that evidently "the Senators honest half had gone to sleep"; and tho jibo is almost as unanswerable as that of the wit who, when attacked by a rival, in the line,

"What wo read from your pen we remember no more," neatly capped it,

"What we read from your pen-, we remember beforo!"

Yet the American incident was moro embarrassing than criminal. De Quincey would have-seen it in no vulgar plagiarism, but an excellent modern instance to show "what a Quincey and mighty palim/pset is the human brain." Amongst tho everlasting layens of ideas, images and feelings, lie all tho magazine verses wo have ever glanced- over indifferently or read with a moderate joy. "Who can say that a trick of sleep may not have disinterred some stanzas _o hastily read and so entirely overlaid by later impressions that the waking brain of thirteeni years after, failing to associate them with any conscious memory, could honestly beliovo them a creation of its owa? To dream a poem is no uncommon feat, even for lesser poets than Coleridge. A collector some time back could _how quite a fair number of such rhymes, authenticated' by their living authors — some agreeably nonsensical, some rather moro poetic, than the writers waking verse. The process is very easily conceivable, since Science declares that when Will und Reason sink to rest, Memory and Imagination are left quite ready for business, and what moro is needed for the literary frame? These two were R. L. Stevenson's "Brownies," who, working only amongst the mental debris from his -wakeful hours, could be relied upon to constiruct a story indisputably new. The real trouble with tho Senator was that tlie memory Brownie worked alone. Practical inventora havo been . helped out by dreams, but if a person, all unblessed by mechanical genius should construct in silee.p an improved reaper and binder, ho would bo wise not to patent before reflecting that its brain photograph might ' have been caught unaware at an Agricultural Show. So an unpoetio person who lis-ps numbers during his dreams, may be warned against rprint by this sad case in which the numbers came without having tho grace to mention that they belonged to another man. If there is a finer man in Wilfred the wholo wide world than Grenfell. Dr. Wilfred Grenfell, of Newfoundland and Labrador, we would very much like to know who ho is. We know of no other work that is at once so self-sacrificing, so full of hardship and danger, and so immensely beneficial. When Dr. Grenfell came to Labrador in 1892, says a friend of his, writing in the "American Review of Reviews," he found the 3000 permanent residents/ and the 30,000 summer fisher-folk from Newfoundland almost without religions ministration or, medical aid, in the clutches of merchants and traders who contrived to keep them in debt all their lives; "with children barefooted and naked in a zero temperature, and parents so beggared as to borrow each other's clothes to come to him for treatment; with education-virtually unknown, the ruling powers indifferent, if not criminally neglectful, and tho region a veritable land of desolation for all connected with it." In sixteen years Dr. Grenfell has effected a marvellous change. "Preacher, teacher, physician, surgeon, magistrate, policeman, navigator, pilot, charity commissioner, orphans' guardian, grand almoner of the wholo seaboard, wreck investigator, cartographer, rescuer of imperilled fishermen, and salvager of stranded crafts.—ho is a perambulating Providence to every man whose livelihood is secured on the lonely, desolate seaboard." This man has built hospitals, orphanages, mills, and workshops, established co-operative stores, started trade classes and open*ed day and night schools, founded libraries, built schooners with lumber from his own mills, installed his own telegraphs and telephones, charted the entiro seaboard of Labrador, and mapped out a good deal of tho land, and imported reindeer from Norway. He must be ono of the most versatile men in the world, for not only does ho attend to sick people, and supervise the work of all tho institutions ho has founded, but navigates his shin, and when she loses a propeller or spriuo-s a leak, beaches her and repairs her pernaps performing a critical operation between tides. His most thrilling "experAn lence was going adrift on an Heroic ice floe and! nearly perishing. Soul. In going to a patient sixty miles away, tho ico broke under him as he was crossing an inlet. He too£ refuge with his dogs on a piece of ico the size of a dining table, and spent a night and a day there. To protect himself from the terrible cokl, ho„killed; his dogs and used their skins for covering, their bodies for a windshield, and their frozen legs as a pole on which to wave his shirt as a signal for help. When rescued his bands and feet were severely frost-bitten and he was snow-blind. This, however, was only one of his many escapes. "During a winter ho will travel 2000 miles over a frozen wilderness with snowshoes and dog-sleds, visiting every family, 'ouring without pay, and labouring without stint,' battling with blizzards, begirt by a dreary solitude, sleeping in the snow, feeding as conditions rpermrt, imperilling life and limb in the drifts, or falling through tho icy

coverings of the lakes or streams, and encountering dangers "unsurpassed in the annals of Arctio explorers."' His salary is only £300 a year, and every penny of that which he can spare goes into his -work. If a scheme does not pay he shares the loss, but if it brings in a profit tho money goes to the Mission funds. The valuo of his work has been widely recognised. Tho King created hrm a C.M.G., Lord Stxathcona declares him to bo the most useful man in North America to-day, President Roosevelt, Earl Grey, Mr Root, and the American Universities, all take a great interest in him, and leading American specialists have cruised with him and performed some or the most delicate operations known to medical science. Tho man himself is the soul of modesty. "Please give others a fuller share of credit," ho writes to the author of the article, "and spare mo the praise so generously given mc often, hut which I honestly do not deserve. Moreover, wo all just love the work—and tho bunkum about sacrifice and so on, is .purely invented. As the Yankees say, 'It is a bully tiling to bo up against a problem.' "