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from page images generously made available by
Memorial University of Newfoundland
Centre for Newfoundland Studies
(http://collections.mun.ca/cdm/landingpage/collection/cns)
| Note: | Images of the original pages are available through Memorial University of Newfoundland Centre for Newfoundland Studies. See http://collections.mun.ca/cdm/compoundobject/collection/cns/id/45824 |
A Visit to
Newfoundland.
By Mary L. B. Branch.
Printed for the
Lucretia Shaw Chapter, D. A. R.
A Visit to Newfoundland.
I know where there is a poppy-bed by a brokenfence, and a house belonging to the poppy-bed, whereold Mrs. Pike lives. Mrs. Pike can neither read norwrite, but she commands respect, and her face is eloquentwith the wisdom of many years. I know a littleone-roomed cottage where Jim Savery’s wife rears herchildren. The chairs are rough-hewn by hand and thelegs are unequal. Jim is a fisherman, like all his neighbors,and his cod lie drying on the frames outside.
I know a tumble-down gray house, sixty years old,whose owner will never again repair it, but will live in ituntil it falls. He has a boy of twelve who gets up beforelight to study his lessons, when he hears his father goingout to his nets. Once his father drifted in a small boatthree days and nights, among the ice floes, in a densefog, without food or water. The man with him died ofthe cold and lay frozen stiff in the bottom of the boat.All night long, before that man died, he lay beside himin the boat, clasping him in his arms, trying to keep thevital spark.
I know where a wooden cross stands in memory ofa clergyman who went in a storm to visit a sick man onan island near the coast. He promised his wife he wouldreturn that night, and he started home, but perished inthe sea.
I know the way over the sharp rocks two miles to“Mother Legg’s Brook,” where are, perhaps, four littledwellings. Why any one should choose to build thereis inexplicable. Why they remain is not so puzzling;they are too poor to move.
These things come before me in pictures as I recallNewfoundland. Again I breathe the clear, cold, exhilaratingair and tread the flinty roads.
We had come up through be