Grenfell:

December 15, 1923.

Dear Waldo:

You who have sampled the salt breezes of the North on board my boat, have, I know, imbibed the spirit that actuates the belief that in a world like ours we can all be knights. I know that like ourselves, you look upon the world as a field of honor, and its only durable prizes the things that we can accomplish in it. You see the fun in it all—the real joie de vivre.

Well, we are doing our best, and it is giving us a great return. We haven't lost the capacity to enjoy soft things, but we have learned the joys of trying to endure hardness as good soldiers. Would to God that every American boy would realize that the only real great prize of life is to be won by being willing to take blows and willing to suffer misunderstanding and opposition, so long as he may follow in the footsteps of that most Peerless Knight that ever lived; He who saw that the meaning of life was, that in it we might, wherever we are, be always trying to do good.

Ever your friend,
Wilfred T. Grenfell.

The incidents of the first chapter are founded strictly on fact, but slight liberties have been taken with minor details here and elsewhere. For example, the Doctor is sometimes represented as talking with persons whose names stand for types rather than individuals; and it is the spirit rather than the letter of the conversations that is reported.