,
and the sum of his written observation is, "When someone is speaking no
one seems to listen at all."

His mother I never knew. Canada is a large place. With his father I
had four hours' talk from seven to eleven one June evening in London
in 1917. At the time I was on leave from France to give the Cavendish
Lecture, a task which demanded some thought; and after two years in the
army it was a curious sensation--watching one's mind at work again.
The day was Sunday. I had walked down to the river to watch the flowing
tide. To one brought up in a country of streams and a moving sea the
curse of Flanders is her stagnant waters. It is little wonder the exiles
from the Judaean hillsides wept beside the slimy River.

The Thames by evening in June, memories that reached from Tacitus to
Wordsworth, the embrasure that extends in front of the Egyptian obelisk
for a standing place, and some children "swimming a dog";--that was the
scene and circumstance of my first meeting with his father. A man
of middle age was standing by. He wore the flashings of a
Lieutenant-Colonel and for badges the Artillery grenades. He seemed
a friendly man; and under the influence of the moment, which he also
surely felt, I spoke to him.

"A fine river,"--That was a safe remark.

"But I know a finer."

"Pharpar and Abana?" I put the stranger to the test.

"No," he said. "The St. Lawrence is not of Damascus." He had answered to
the sign, and looked at my patches.

"I have a son in France, myself," he said. "His name is McCrae."

"Not John McCrae?"

"John McCrae is my son."

The resemblance was instant, but this was an older man than at first
sight he seemed to be. I asked him to dinner at Morley's, my place of
resort for a length of time beyond the memory of all but the oldest
servants. He had already dined but he came and sat with me, and told me
marvellous things.

David McCrae had raised, and trained, a field battery in Guelph, and
brought it overseas. He was at the time upwards of seventy years of age,
and was considered on account of years alone "unfit" to proceed to the
front. For many years he had commanded a field battery in the Canadian
militia, went on manoeuvres with his "cannons", and fired round shot.
When the time came for using shells he bored the fuse with a gimlet; and
if the gimlet were lost in the grass, the gun was out of action until
the useful tool could be found. This "cannon ball" would travel over the
country acco