48 FIFTY YEARS IN WESTERN CANADA

With him one must weigh everything, foresee all even-
tualities, realize beforehand the possible effect on his mind
of this act, that advice, such and such a decision. For,
once given, that decision cannot be repealed; once out,
that order must ever stand good under pain of suggesting
either indecision, therefore weakness, or even ignorance,
which in a superior would do away with all respect on the
part of the inferior

A man who can make a mistake has no right to com-
mand, according to the Indians.’

Another cause of Father Morice’s wonderful in-
fluence over the natives was the fact that he did not
feel satisfied with preaching the Gospel; he generously
exemplified its precepts by his own private and public
conduct, even to his own greatest discomfort. See,
for instance, what he once did in order to impress on
his people the absolute necessity of keeping holy the
Lord’s Day by attending church on the same. What
follows happened before he was inured to the hard
exercise of snowshoeing. After having travelled since
the preceding Monday morning on the frozen expanses
of Babine Lake and part of the adjoining forest, he had
reached on a Friday night a point on the northern end
of Lake Stuart, when his native companions declared
they could not go one step farther. One of them had
his feet frozen, they said, and the dogs could no longer
be depended on to pull the party’s baggage.

The missionary was in a quandary, for unless he
reached that night a certain hut far enough from there,
he could not think of getting to his central mission for
the forthcoming Sunday. Moved by the fear to miss
the usual religious services on the Lord’s Day, he bor-
rowed a pair of snowshoes from his Indians, and, in
spite of their loud protests that he was sure to get

2 Morice, Histoire de l’Eglise Catholique dans l’Ouest Canadien, vol.
IV, p. 270; St. Boniface, 1923.

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