. Face and features were Saxon; the eyes light
blue, and full of kindly fun. In after years, when he filled and rounded
out, he had a manly open look, illumined always as by sunlight for his
friends, and a well-proportioned, 'buirdly' form, that well entitled him
to the name of man in Queen Elizabeth's full sense of the word. And when
his face glowed with the inspiration that burning thoughts and words
impart, and his great deep chest swelled and broadened, he looked noble
indeed. His old friends describe him as having been a splendid-looking
fellow in his best days; while old foes just as honestly assure you that
he always had a 'common' look. It is easy {14} to understand that both
impressions of him could be justifiably entertained. Very decided merits
of expression were needed to compensate for the total absence of beard
and for the white face, into which only strong excitement brought any
glow of colour.

Howe was fortunate in his father. John Howe was a Loyalist, of Puritan
stock which had come to Massachusetts in the seventeenth century. When
the American Revolution broke out, alone of his family he was true to the
British flag. Many years afterwards his son told a Boston audience that
his father 'learned the printing business in this city. He had just
completed his apprenticeship, and was engaged to a very pretty girl, when
the Revolution broke out. He saw the battle of Bunker's Hill from one of
the old houses here; he nursed the wounded when it was over. Adhering to
the British side, he was driven out at the evacuation, and retired to
Newport, where his betrothed followed him. They were married there, and
afterwards settled at Halifax. He left all his household goods and gods
behind him, carrying away nothing but his principles and the pretty girl.'

In politics John Howe was a high Tory; in religion a dissenter of the
dissenters, {15} belonging to a small sect known as Sandemanians. But
neither narrow orthodoxy in politics nor narrow heterodoxy in religion
can hide from us the noble, self-less character of Joe Howe's father. No
matter how early in the morning his son might get up, if there was any
light in the eastern sky, there was the old gentleman sitting at the
window, the Bible on his knee. On Sunday mornings he would start early
to meet the little flock to whom for many years he preached in an upper
room, not as an ordained minister, but as a brother who had gifts--who
could expound the