etters of a Pork Packer to His Son" that could have
instructed him in the shrewd business of making a great commercial
concern out of a little business. His success in Canada was relatively
equal to that of any Swift in Chicago. Multiply it by the ratio of
population and see. In one year during the war the Wm. Davies Co. had
a bacon output of forty million dollars.

But Flavelle never can be judged by bacon. He could have done as well
at railways or banking or law. He did even better at munitions when
there were no profits, not even a salary. He did as well at any other
form of public service. No man can justly judge him by commercial
success. He invested--himself--in everything to which he set his hand,
with the one exception of the now defunct _Toronto News_, which he left
to the management of other people. He invested the same self capital
in the commercial concern and in public service.

Any patient who has been in the Toronto General Hospital will tell you
what a wonderful institution it is. He may not know who made it
possible, or whose genius for order and perfection of mechanism it
expresses. Without Flavelle, Toronto, instead of one of the greatest
hospitals in the world, would have had just a good hospital. Almost a
village was pulled down to make room for it, on a site that would suit
the medical needs of the University. It needed a strong will to put it
there, against the opinions of other people; a great hospital on the
end of a slum! The same will put the great "Methodist Book Room" where
it is--against the wish of a majority.

Flavelle was Chairman of the Commission that reorganized the University
of Toronto. He had no desire for the work. The late Goldwin Smith was
already chairman, much disliking Flavelle for some editorial about him
in the _Toronto News_. The old professor was feeble. The Commission
asked Flavelle to replace him. He consented. If they thought he was
the man, he was willing to do the work. And it was thoroughly done, so
far as a business brain could direct the reconstruction of a concern in
which business system is the anatomy, not the life.

No man could sit at a conference with Flavelle and not think hard; or
accept a duty from his committee and not discharge it. He demanded on
behalf of the public--service. No man ever sat on a committee with him
who had time for badinage. That man with the slow, high voice and the
steady look was judging other men by resul