l grades.

A writer who at various periods of time was very intimate with Laurier
thinks he was a man of deep emotions. This may be doubted. A man who
talked so easily and was so exquisitely conscious of himself could
scarcely be considered spiritually profound. Other men and events
played upon him like the wind on an Aeolian harp. He was tremendously
impressionable; and by turns grandly impressive. A personal friend
relates how a man with some experience as a critic of drama--probably
himself--went to see Laurier by request for a talk on the political
situation; how Laurier invited him to a chair and immediately took one
beside him an inch or two lower so that his own face was on a level
with the visitor's; how for some minutes he sat feeling the power of
this actor who tried to persuade him to run as a Liberal candidate, and
when he rose again seemed taller and more aloof than ever.

That is acting. Some other man might have done the same thing and made
no impression. Laurier could perform obvious tricks with a consummate
grace. And he performed many. There never was a moment of his waking
life when he could not have been lifted into a play. His movements,
his words, his accent, his clothes, his facial lineaments were never
commonplace, even when his motives often may have been. He was
Debussy's Afternoon of a Faun; poetry and charm all the days of his
life.

During the ridiculous deadlock on the Naval Aid Bill, when his
supporters went so grotesquely far as to read the Bible to talk out the
Bill, he was away from the House for a week, reported as quite ill, in
reality having a very delicious time at home reading light literature.
The day he came back the news of his coming was heralded to the
Commons. The benches were packed. Not till they were all full, every
Minister in his place, every page at attention and the House like a
pent-up Sabbath congregation, did the then leader of the Opposition
make his grand, swift entry, bowing with courtly dignity to the Speaker
and taking his seat amid a claque from his supporters, in which even
the Tories felt like joining.

Sir Wilfrid Laurier had the infallible knack of adjusting his makeup,
not always himself--to any occasion from which he could extract
profitable publicity, or upon which he could do some charming thing for
somebody else. He is reputed once to have worn overalls among a gang
of timber-jammers, but he felt rather ridiculous and soon took them