15th, the work was finished, registered, and entrusted to the mail with
a special delivery stamp. The next day he wrote the preface, "which
really finished the job." In very truth his scientific work was done.

It was now midsummer. The weather was hot. He returned to Montreal.
Practice was dull. He was considering a voyage to Havre and "a little
trip with Dr. Adami" when he arrived. On July 29th, he left Canada "for
better or worse. With the world so disturbed," he records, "I would
gladly have stayed more in touch with events, but I dare say one is just
as happy away from the hundred conflicting reports." The ship was the
'Scotian' of the Allan Line, and he "shared a comfortable cabin with a
professor of Greek," who was at the University in his own time.

For one inland born, he had a keen curiosity about ships and the sea.
There is a letter written when he was thirteen years of age in which
he gives an account of a visit to a naval exhibition in London. He
describes the models which he saw, and gives an elaborate table of
names, dimensions, and tonnage. He could identify the house flags and
funnels of all the principal liners; he could follow a ship through all
her vicissitudes and change of ownership. When he found himself in a
seaport town his first business was to visit the water front and take
knowledge of the vessels that lay in the stream or by the docks. One
voyage he made to England was in a cargo ship. With his passion for
work he took on the duties of surgeon, and amazed the skipper with a
revelation of the new technique in operations which he himself had been
accustomed to perform by the light of experience alone.

On the present and more luxurious voyage, he remarks that the decks were
roomy, the ship seven years old, and capable of fifteen knots an hour,
the passengers pleasant, and including a large number of French. All now
know only too well the nature of the business which sent those ardent
spirits flocking home to their native land.

Forty-eight hours were lost in fog. The weather was too thick for making
the Straits, and the 'Scotian' proceeded by Cape Race on her way to
Havre. Under date of August 5-6 the first reference to the war appears:
"All is excitement; the ship runs without lights. Surely the German
kaiser has his head in the noose at last: it will be a terrible war, and
the finish of one or the other. I am afraid my holiday trip is knocked
galley west; but we shall see." The voyage con