that he cast himself as a strong swimmer into the boiling
currents of life, little caring whither they bore {153} him, because
proudly confident that he could hold his own, or, at any rate, regain
the shore whenever he liked.

A thorough intellectual training would have done much for him. The
discipline of a university career enables even a young man to know
somewhat of his own strength and weakness, especially somewhat of his
own awful ignorance; and self-knowledge leads to self-control.
Circumstances put this beyond his reach; but something more excellent
than even a college was within his reach, had he only been wise enough
to understand and possess it as his own. In his father he had a
pattern of things in the heavens; a life in which law and freedom meant
the same thing; in which the harmony between his own will and the will
of God gave unity, harmony, and nobleness to life and life's work. The
teaching of the old Loyalist's life was the eternal teaching of the
stars:

Like as a star
That maketh not haste,
That taketh not rest,
Let each be fulfilling
His God-given hest.

But the veins of the son were full of blood and his bones moistened
with marrow. Passion {154} spoke in his soul, and he heard and loved
the sweet voices of nature, and of men and women. Not that the
whispers of heaven were unheard. No; nor were they disregarded; but
they were not absolutely and implicitly obeyed. And so, like the vast
crowd, all through life he was partly the creature of impulse and
partly the servant of principle. Often it would have been difficult
for himself to say which was uppermost in him. Had he attained to
unity and harmony of nature, he could have been a poet, or a statesman
of the old heroic type. But he did not attain, for he did not seek
with the whole heart. And he puzzled others, because he had never read
the riddle of himself.

All Nova Scotians are glad that he spent his last days in Government
House. It was an honour he himself felt to be his due--a light, though
it were but the light of a wintry sun, that fell on his declining days.
Many old friends flocked to see him; and the meetings were sometimes
very touching. An old follower, one who had never failed him, came to
pay his tribute of glad homage. His chief had reached a haven of rest
and the height of his ambition. When the door was opened, the governor
was at the other end of the room. {155} He turned, and the two
recognized