the county at Ottawa, who lived until 1907; and Henri, the
prothonotary at Arthabaska, who passed away in 1906. Carolus Laurier
himself lived on in his little village home forty years after the birth
of his eldest son, and his wife lived nearly twenty years longer.

It was a quiet, strength-shaping country home in which the future
statesman's boyhood was cast. The little village was off the beaten
track of travel; not yet had the railway joined it to the river front.
There were few distractions to excite or dissipate youthful energies.
Roaming amid the brooding silence of the hills, fishing for trout,
hunting partridges and rabbits, and joining in the simple village
games, the boy took his boyish pleasures and built for his manhood's
calm and power. His home had an intellectual atmosphere quite out of
the ordinary, and it enjoyed a full measure of that grace or native
courtesy which is not least among Quebec's contributions to the common
Canadian stock.

He had his first schooling in the elementary parish school of St Lin,
where the boys learned their _A-B-C_, their _two-times-two_, and their
{5} catechism. Then his father determined to give him a broader
outlook by enabling him to see something of the way of life and to
learn the tongue of his English-speaking compatriots. Some eight miles
west of St Lin on the Achigan river lay the village of New Glasgow. It
had been settled about 1820 by Scottish Protestants belonging to
various British regiments. Carolus Laurier had carried on surveys
there, knew the people well, and was thoroughly at home with them. The
affinity so often noted between Scottish and French has doubtless more
than a mere historical basis. At any rate, son, like father, soon
found a place in the intimate life of the Murrays, the Guthries, the
Macleans, the Bennetts and other families of the settlement. His
experience was further varied by boarding for a time in the home of an
Irish Catholic family named Kirk. Later, he lived with the Murrays,
and often helped behind the counter in John Murray's general store.

The school which he attended for two years, 1852-53 and 1853-54, was a
mixed school, for both boys and girls, taught by a rapidly shifting
succession of schoolmasters, often of very unconventional training. In
the first session the school came to an abrupt close in April, {6}
owing to the sudden departure of Thompson, the teacher in charge. A
man of much greater ability, Sandy Ma