“A CREW QUITE CAPABLE OF TAKING YOU INTO IT”
“A CREW QUITE CAPABLE OF TAKING YOU INTO IT”
At the morning service the doctor announced that a sinful man would confess his sin before them all that night. There was great excitement. Other men might be prevailed upon to make so humiliating a confession, the folk said, but not this one—not this rich man, whom they hated and feared, because he had so long pitilessly oppressed them. So they were not surprised when at the evening service the sinful man did not show his face.
“Will you please to keep your seats,” said the doctor, “while I go fetch that man.”
He found the man in a neighbour’s house, on his knees in prayer, with his friends. They were praying fervently, it is said; but whether or not that the heart of the doctor might be softened I do not know.
“Prayer,” said the doctor, “is a good thing in its place, but it doesn’t ‘go’ here. Come with me.”
The man meekly went with the doctor; he was led up the aisle of the church, was placed where all the people could see him; and then he was asked many questions, after the doctor had described the great sin of which he was guilty.
“Did you do this thing?”
“I did.”
“You are an evil man, of whom the people should beware?”
“I am.”
“You deserve the punishment of man and God?”
“I do.”
There was much more, and at the end of it all the doctor told the man that the good God would forgive him if he should ask in true faith and repentance, but that the people, being human, could not. For a whole year, he charged the people, they must not speak to that man; but if at the end of that time he had shown an honest disposition to mend his ways, they might take him to their hearts.
The end of the story is that the man paid the money and left the place.
This relentless judge, on a stormy day of last July, carried many bundles ashore at Cartwright, in Sandwich Bay of the Labrador. The wife of the Hudson Bay Company’s agent exclaimed with delight when she opened them. They were Christmas gifts from the children of the “States” to the lads and little maids of that coast. With almost all there came a little letter addressed to the unknown child who was to receive the toy; they were filled with loving words—with good wishes, coming in childish sincerity from the warm little hearts. The doctor never forgets the Christmas gifts. He is the St. Nicholas of that coast. If he ever weeps at all, I should think it would be when he hears that despite his care some child has been neglected. The wife of the agent stowed away the gifts against the time to come.
“It makes themveryhappy,” said the agent’s wife.
“Not long ago,” I chanced to say, “I saw a little girl with a stick of wood for a dolly. Are they not afraid to play with these pretty things?”
“Theyare,” she laughed. “They use them for ornaments. Butthatdoesn’t matter. It makes them happy just to look at them.”
We all laughed.
“And yet,” she continued, “theydoplay with them, sometimes, after all. There is a little girl up the bay whohas kissed the paint off her dolly!”
Thus and all the time, in storm and sunshine, summer and winter weather, Grenfell of the Deep-sea Mission goes about doing good; if it’s not in a boat, it’s in a dog-sled. He is what he likes to call “a Christian man.” But he is also a hero—at once the bravest and the most beneficently useful man I know. If he regrets his isolation, if the hardship of the life sometimes oppresses him, no man knows it. He does much, but there is much more to do. If the good people of the world would but give a little more of what they have so abundantly—and if they could but know the need, they would surely do that—joy might be multiplied on that coast; nor would any man be wronged by misguided charity.
“What a man does for the love of God,” the doctor once said, “he does differently.”
Decorated Cloth, $1.50
Doctor Luke of The Labrador
BY NORMAN DUNCAN
“Mr. Duncan is deserving of much praise for this, his first novel.... In his descriptive passages Mr. Duncan is sincere to the smallest detail. His characters are painted in with bold, wide strokes.... Unlike most first novels, ‘Doctor Luke’ waxes stronger as it progresses.”—N. Y. Evening Post.
James MacArthur, of Harper’s Weekly, says: “I am delighted with ‘Doctor Luke.’ So fine and noble a work deserves great success.”
“A masterpiece of sentiment and humorous characterization. Nothing more individual, and in its own way more powerful, has been done in American fiction.... The story is a work of art.”—The Congregationalist.
Joseph B. Gilder, of The Critic, says: “I look to see it take its place promptly among the best selling books of the season.”
“It fulfills its promise of being one of the best stories of the season. Mr. Duncan evidently is destined to make a name for himself among the foremost novelists of his day.... Doctor Luke is a magnetic character, and the love story in which he plays his part is a sweet and pleasant idyl.... The triumph of the book is its character delineation.”—Chicago Record-Herald.
Miss Bacon, Literary Editor of The Booklover’s Library, says: “Of all the stories I have read this Autumn there is none that I would rather own.”
“Norman Duncan’s novel is a great enterprise, and will probably prove to be the greatest book yet produced by a native of Canada.”—Toronto Globe.
8vo, Cloth Price, $1.75 net
Denizens of the Deep
ByFRANK. T. BULLEN
DENIZENS OF THE DEEP FRANK T. BULLEN
There is a new world of life and intelligence opened to our knowledge in Mr. Bullen’s stories of the inhabitants of the sea. He finds the same fascinating interest in the lives of the dwellers in the deep as Thompson Seton found in the lives of the hunted ashore, and with the keenness and vigor which characterized his famous book “The Cruise of The Cachalot” he has made a book which, being based upon personal observation, buttressed by scientific facts and decorated by imagination, is a storehouse of information—an ideal romance of deep sea folk and, asThe Saturday Times-Reviewhas said, worth a dozen novels.
Not the least attractive feature of an unusually attractive volume is the series of illustrations by Livingston Bull and others.
ByMARGARET SANGSTERCloth, each, $1.50
Janet WardEleanor Lee
Without exaggeration and with perfectly consistent naturalness Mrs. Sangster has produced two pieces of realism of a most healthy sort, demonstrating conclusively that novels may be at once clean and wholesome yet most thoroughly alive and natural. As with all her work, Mrs. Sangster exhibits her splendid skill and excellent taste, and succeeds in winning and holding her readers in these two books which treat of the life of today.
“If ever there was an author whose personality shone through her work, Mrs. Margaret E. Sangster is that author. Mrs. Sangster has written a novel with a moral purpose. That was to be expected, but it was also to be expected that the story would be free from hysteria and intolerance, filled with gentle humor, sane common sense and warm human sympathy, and saturated with cheerful optimism. The book fulfills the expectation.”—The Lamp.
Essays Fiction
By JAMES M. LUDLOW
Incentives for Life. Personal and Public. 12mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.25 net.
“Dr. Ludlow shows versatility and rare culture in this book of essays. From the first page one is impressed with the beautifully clear style, the brilliant thought which flashes through every sentence, and the marvelous storehouse of illustration from which the author draws. The vital importance of will power in the formation of character, and the incentives which lie back of it as motives to action, are set forth with vigor and power.”—Christian Observer.
Deborah.A Tale of the Times of Judas Maccabaeus. By the author of “The Captain of the Janizaries.” 12mo, cloth, illustrated ... $1.50
“Deborah is a genuine Jewess, noble, brilliant, loving and lovely.”—Congregationalist.
“Nothing in the class of fiction to which ‘Deborah’ belongs, the class of which ‘Ben Hur’ and ‘Captain of the Janizaries’ are familiar examples, exceeds the early chapters of this story in vividness and rapidity of action. The book as a whole has vigor and color.”—The Outlook.
Tales of the West Virile, true, tender
ByRALPH CONNOR
The Sky Pilot; A Tale of the Foothills.
12mo, cloth, illustrated ... Price, $1.25
“Ralph Connor’s ‘Black Rock’ was good, but ‘The Sky Pilot’ is better. The matter which he gives us is real life; virile, true, tender, humorous, pathetic, spiritual, wholesome. His style, fresh, crisp and terse, accords with the Western life, which he understands. Henceforth the foothills of the Canadian Rockies will probably be associated in many a mind with the name of ‘Ralph Connor.’”—The Outlook.
The Man From Glengarry; A Tale of the Ottawa.
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“As straight as a pine, as sweet as a balsam, as sound as a white oak.”—The Interview.
Glengarry School Days; A Tale of the Indian Lands.
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In pathos it reaches the high level of “The Sky Pilot.” In atmosphere it is “The Man from Glengarry.” In action it rivals “Black Rock.”
Black Rock; A Tale of the Selkirks.
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“‘Ralph Connor’ is some man’s nom de plume. The world would insist on knowing whose. He has gone into the Northwest Canadian mountains and painted for us a picture of life in the mining camps of surpassing merit. With perfect wholesomeness, with exquisite delicacy, with entire fidelity, with truest pathos, with freshest humor, he has delineated character, has analyzed motives and emotions, and has portrayed life. Some of his characters deserve immortality, so faithfully are they created.”—St. Louis Globe-Democrat.
The world has known and today Ralph Connor has been accorded the signal honor of seeing his books, by virtue of their sterling worth, attain a sale of over one and one-half million copies.