ions but the very questions themselves
to which an answer was demanded.

This learning, however, was only a minor part of life, since upon a
farm life is very wide and very deep. In due time the school was
accomplished, and there was a master in the school--let his name be
recorded--William Tytler, who had a feeling for English writing and a
desire to extend that feeling to others.

In due time also the question of a University arose. There was a man
in Canada named Dawson--Sir William Dawson. I have written of him in
another place. He had the idea that a university had something to do
with the formation of character, and that in the formation of character
religion had a part. He was principal of McGill. I am not saying that
all boys who entered that University were religious boys when they went
in, or even religious men when they came out; but religious fathers had
a general desire to place their boys under Sir William Dawson's care.

Those were the days of a queer, and now forgotten, controversy over
what was called "Science and Religion". Of that also I have written in
another place. It was left to Sir William Dawson to deliver the last
word in defence of a cause that was already lost. His book came under
the eye of David McCrae, as most books of the time did, and he was
troubled in his heart. His boys were at the University of Toronto. It
was too late; but he eased his mind by writing a letter. To this letter
John replies under date 20th December, 1890: "You say that after reading
Dawson's book you almost regretted that we had not gone to McGill. That,
I consider, would have been rather a calamity, about as much so as going
to Queen's." We are not always wiser than our fathers were, and in the
end he came to McGill after all.

For good or ill, John McCrae entered the University of Toronto in 1888,
with a scholarship for "general proficiency". He joined the Faculty of
Arts, took the honours course in natural sciences, and graduated from
the department of biology in 1894, his course having been interrupted
by two severe illnesses. From natural science, it was an easy step to
medicine, in which he was encouraged by Ramsay Wright, A. B. Macallum,
A. McPhedran, and I. H. Cameron. In 1898 he graduated again, with a
gold medal, and a scholarship in physiology and pathology. The previous
summer he had spent at the Garrett Children's Hospital in Mt. Airy,
Maryland.

Upon graduating he entered the Toronto General Hospita