elieve
that the West had so forsaken him.

In a few months he was dead. And when dead, once again men forgot
their political opinions and for a brief while somehow worshipped the
memory of the man whose life was almost the coming true of a dream,
whose work was never done, whose evening of life was a tragedy. And
case-hardened politicians who had borne the burden and the heat of the
day with Laurier, wept.

But the power of Laurier is not dead. In the long perspective of
history the figure of this great Canadian, with his "sunny ways" and
his bewildering Atlas load, will stand out vividly when many of his
successors will be scarcely visible in the haze.

THE GRANDSON OF A PATRIOT

HON. WILLIAM LYON MACKENZIE KING

In December, 1913, there was a Literary Society dinner in the
University of Toronto at which Sir Wilfrid Laurier was the guest of
honour and speaker on "Democracy." My own seat at a table was next to
a restless, thick-bodied, sparse-haired man who seemed younger than his
years and to whom I had not been introduced. During the hour that
Laurier spoke this man continued to lean over the table so as to catch
a view of his fascinating face. He interested me almost as much as did
the speaker. I had never sat beside such an irrepressible vitality.
Like a bird to a succession of swinging boughs, he hung upon the golden
utterances of his old chieftain and political mentor concerning a
subject so poignantly dear to the experiences of one and the
imagination of the other.

First impressions are sometimes reversed on closer acquaintance. I was
uncomfortable beside Mackenzie King, but interested. On a latter
occasion I was still more interested, and rather more uncomfortable.
The early impression remained, that he had very little faculty of
restraint--what scientists call inhibition.

That occasion will not soon fade from memory. Often I can hear in
imagination a thousand students singing "Vive le roi! vive le
compagnie!" before the fine old leader spoke, and that earnest, hectic
disciple joining in. When I discovered who he was I ran back in fancy
to the time when Mackenzie King was a student at that same university.
At that time William Mulock was Vice-Chancellor and became keenly
interested in the brilliant young student of economics with whose
father he had attended law school. King entered the University the
year that the chief author of the National Policy died. He graduated
one year bef