The Doctor - A Tale of the Rockies by Ralph Connor

Author:Ralph Connor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature
Publisher: eBooksLib
Published: 2002-01-27T00:00:00+00:00

XV - THE SUPERINTENDENT'S METHODS

The Superintendent was spending the precious hours of one of his rare visits at home in painful plodding through his correspondence. For it was part of the sacrifice his work demanded, and which he cheerfully made, that he should forsake home and wife and children for his work's sake. The Assembly's Convener found him in the midst of an orderly confusion of papers of different sorts.

"How do you do, sir?" The Superintendent's voice had a fine burr about it that gripped the ear, and his hand a vigour and tenacity of hold that gripped the outstretched hand of the Assembly's Convener and nearly brought the little man to the floor. "Sit down, sir, and listen to this. Here are some of the compensations that go with the Superintendent's office. This is rich. It comes from my friend, Henry Fink, of the Columbia Forks in the Windermere Valley. British Columbia, you understand," noticing the Convener's puzzled expression. "I visited the valley a year ago and found a truly deplorable condition of things. Men had gone up there many years ago and settled down remote from civilization. Some of them married Indian wives and others of them ought to have married them, and they have brought up families in the atmosphere and beliefs of the pagans. Would you believe it, I fell in with a young man on the trail, twenty years of age, who had never heard the name of our Saviour except in oaths? He had never heard the story of the Cross. And there are many others like him. At the Columbia Forks the only institution that stands for things intellectual is a Freethinkers' Club, the president of which is a retired colonel of the British Army, a man of fine manners, of some degree of intelligence and reading, but, I have reason to believe, of bad life. His is the dominant influence in the community if we except my friend, Mr. Henry Fink, or, as he is known locally, 'Hank Fink.' Hank is a character, I assure you. A Yankee from the Eastern States, the son of a Scotch mother. Has a cattle ranch, runs a store which supplies the scattered ranchers, prospectors, and miners with the necessaries of life, and keeps a stopping place. Is postmaster, too. In fact, Hank is pretty much the whole village. He has lived in that country some fifteen years. Has a good Canadian wife, and a flock of small children. He is a rara avis in that country from the fact that he hates whiskey. He hates it almost as much as he does Colonel Hicks and his Freethinking Club. When I visited the village, for some reason or other Hank took me up, the Scotch blood in him possibly recognising kinship. He gave me his store to preach in, took me all about the country, and in a week had a mission organized on a sound financial basis. His methods were very simple, very direct, and very effective.

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