MARRIAGE OF DR GRENFELL.

Otago Witness, Issue 2921, 9 March 1910, Page 75

MARRIAGE OF DR GRENFELL.

marry him, for he would then fail to measure up to my ideal."

Annie MacC'lanahan has travelled extensively, and has found time between her social duties to study medicine, surgery, and domestic science, all of which will be useful to her in agisting her husband in the north.

—Dr Qrenfell's Career. — Wilfred T. Grenfell has been called the most useful man on the North American Continent. He is, among other things, an Englishman, a graduate of the University of Oxford, a surgeon, a missionary, and a world-famed northern explorer. But these things are merely incidental to the graphic episodes and adventures with which his life has been tried since he first took up his residence in Labrador. He began his life -work on a mission boat of the deep sea trawling fleet, 1891. He went to Labrador to carry the Gospel to the deep sea fishers in 1839. He reaches 20,000 fishermen on the coasts of Labrador every year. He got from Andrew Carnegie 30 portable libraries to assist him in his work.

A ROMANCE WITH A HAPPY ENDING.

Many readers of this page have from time to time shown their active interest in Dr Grenfell and his mission work in Labrador, and they will read with interest the following particulars of his marriage to a young lady, taken from the Edinburgh Weekly News, kindly forwarded by a correspondent:

Be has started a series of co-operative stores in the north.

A courtship beginning two years ago and interrupted oy many heart-breaking silences when the storms of the north often delayed love's messages has at last come to a fitting climax. Romance has seldom thrilled with a more magic setting than that which attended the event when Annie MacClanahali and Dr Grenfell clasped hands and plighted love at the altar. N —A Hero in Real Life.— The man a voluntary toiler among the ignorant and wretched natives of an almost unknown land, a hero in real iife who has shared the pain and childish joy§ of his adopted people, and whose promising career is destined for ever to be obscured by humble sacrifices ; the woman gleaming eyed, slender, surrounded from childhood by courtiers and admirers from the ranks of the country's richest sons, but single purposed, and possessing a loyalty seldom recorded outside the pages of romance, the whole country will look on with interest, epeeiilation, and curisity; but above all with respect and admiration.

He operates on patients anywhere, wherever" called, without charge. He carries his ether and instruments in one pocket and his Bible in the other. He raises £2400 in New York and much more elsewhere every # \ear for his work. Behind this array o'f facts there is a world of strange and almost unbelievable adventure wherein his life has many times been a hazard, and as the result of which to-day thousands of helpless natives are his life-long and devoted servants. When Dr Grenfell earned his diploma his thirst for adventure, which had been all along maturing, led him to consult Sir Frederick Treves, whose interest procured for him the loan of a 97-ton sailing vessel. He was to go to the Labrador coast and see whether a doctor could live among the deep-sea fishermen and accomplish practical results 'n mitigating the hardships of their lot.

In three months Dr Grenfell and his hos-pital-gospel ship had 900 patients, to whom, without fear of denominational interference, they could commend their Gospel with their pills and plasters—the picturesque phrase is the doctor's own. But they discovered besides a condition of poverty that appalled them. Dr Grenfell discerned the chief cause, but his lack of experience made him satisfied, for three years, to attempt to cope with nothing more than the hunger, the nakedness, and the disease.

Women have gone out before to cast their lives in with men battling with the desolation of remote corners of the globe, but seldom under the circumstances which surround Annie.- MacClanahan. She is giving up everything which to less romantic minds makes for life and happiness, but in her eyes the giving is as receiving. She candidly avows that the great Grenfell lias won her heart by the dangers that he has been through. From the moment that'- they first met she asserts that the weather-beaten, brown-faced hero of the far north had won her heart and her mind.

In her own words she frankly reveals the secret of her romantic love, than which there is nothing so great in all the world to her. —The Man She Wanted.— "All my life, since the time I was a little girl, I have been interested in reading of men and women who have made sacrifices for the general welfare of mankind," recently said the girl who is the first American bride to pass her honeymoon in ice-bound Labrador.

"I realised when I became a young woman that if ever my heart were won the conqueror must be more than a mere figure in society or a successful business or professional man. The men I met in society were most charming and gentlemanly, and one could not but like them, but none of them-seemed to comply with the requirements of my ideal. "Two years ago, travelling in Europe, I met Dr Grenfell. I realised almost at once that my ideal had been found. We were much together. I o'ften asked him about his work in Labrador.

" 'lt's glorious work; simply glorious,' he exclaimed.

" 'But it isn't all pleasure!' I objected. 'There must be many hardships, many days when you would give almost anything to be back in civilisation, to enjoy, for instance, cue good meal such as Ave have here in the cafes of Paris.' "He was silent for a little while.

" 'Yes,' he admitted finally. 'There are time's when I long to see the crowds in Paris and New York and read a Chicago or a London newspaper 'before it has grown yellow with age, but I love any work in Labrador, and I would not give it up —no, not for .anything.' —The Great Question. — "While we were together in Europe we were good friends; but the idea of marriage didn't occur to us at the time. After that it was a year before we met again. I returned to Chicago, and Dr Grenfell to his work in Labrador. One day I received a letter stating that he was coming to Chicago. Of course, I was glad. "During his visit here he was kept very busy lecturing to the students at Chicago University and the North-western University and preaching from the pulpits of many churches. John J. Mitchell, president of the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank, and many other persons gave dinners in hie honour. There really wasn't much time for courtship, but absence had taught us the depth of our affection, and his proposal came as the most natural thing in the world.

"Dr Grenfell was reluctant to ask me to leave my relatives and friends and make my home in Labrador, but I knew that not even his love would induce him to give up his work for the Labrador fishermen, and by this time I had become as eager as he to continue that work, go that the prospect of living at Battle Harbour was an incentive rather than a bandie- -'■ to our romance.

',. expect to spend the rest of my life with my husband at Battle Hamour. If he would consent to give up his selfsacrificing work for my sake I never could

—Attack the Traders.—

In 1896 he decided the time had come to attack the chief evil of the coast at its root. That evil was worse than the Shylock extortion practised by the traders. The fishermen—the men who give the world the cod that is so important an article of food—were hemmed in by a score or more of petty monopolists who could have given the American "company store" with its pay orders a liberal education in blood draining. The poor wretches who dared the dangers of the seas wei-e paid just as little by the local trader as would keep them alive, and sold their food at prices that would make any American food trust blush. It was absolute waste of money to give charity to a people who were mortgaged for more than they could earn for years ahead, and were being charged by their oppressors 28s or 32s for a 12s barrel of flour, and 12,s for a barrel of salt that sold for 4s at St. John's.

Dr Grenfell started co-operative stores for the benefit of the poor, starved wretches, and immediately saw his wealthy tradespeople quit his little congregations. This work, with the timber-cutting enterprise recently started to provide remunerative employment for the people in the winter, is the fundamental labour into which Dr Grenfell's missionary work has at last led him. It is, in effect, the rule of a Governor-general without a title or office, obedient to the laws of Canada, but now so emphatically established in the control of trade and manufacture that Dr Grenfell, its administrator, plavs practicallv the part of beneficent autocrat, a role in government which, when intelligence is combined with, altruism, constitutes almost the ideal condition.

Only last year he was rescued from an ice-floe; where, for 40 hours adrift, he had fought off a pack of hunger-maddened sledge do;.<rs with the temperature lOdeg below zero.

on the IVeck. Sometimes the rubbing of a stiff collar causes an ugly, soiled-looking mark on the neck, which is not only very disfiguring, but often painful. Rubbing with strong soap only makes the skin seem more sensitive and even darker in colour.

As a preventive, if one must wear stiff collars, see tliat thev are loose enough to allow the neck free movement. When the harm has been done and it is necessary to get rid of'the mark on short notice, perhaps because a dress low at the neck has to be worn, then anoint the flesh thoroughly with good cold cream. Use a soft linen cloth, and dip it in the cream, applying it as one would soap, and turning the cloth as soon as the applied surface gets soiled. This is important, or the stain will only get rubbed in more deeply. Leave the neck for five minutes or so, and then, with a warm soap-suds and a very soft sponige, wash off the grease thoroughly. Rinse with hot water several times, and then bathe with cold water until the skin is chilled. When the skin

is entirely dry dust well with powdered f oatmeal. * Rub off lightly, and in nine cases out of ten the neck will be restored to its original whiteness. Lemon juice and cream in equal propertions should be gently rubbed into the neck every night before washing when high collars are worn. Never employ roi'ijh methods, nor use strong remedies like ammonia. Persistent

nightly treatment as prescribed will effect a cure in a few weeks. . Potato peelings, if thoroughly dried in the oven, make very useful firelighters. Half the usual quantity of wood, with dried peeling, will make the fire burn, up much more quickly than if wood alone is used, and there is no unpleasant odour from them.