lley
commenced to attend the grammar school. Sir Howard Douglas, who was then
governor of New Brunswick, paid a visit to Gagetown and was the guest of
Colonel Harry Peters, the speaker of the House of Assembly. While the
governor and his host were walking through Gagetown, they met young
Tilley and a son of Harry Peters returning from school, and the boys
were introduced to His Excellency, who presented each of them with a
Spanish quarter-dollar. Sir Leonard could remember and often spoke of
the appearance of Sir Howard Douglas, dressed in a blue coat with brass
buttons, a fine-looking gentleman, with a pleasant face and a kindly
smile. Little thought the then governor of New Brunswick that the boy to
whom he was speaking, a lad of nine years of age, would fifty years
later sit in his own chair in the government house.

{ENTERS ON BUSINESS LIFE}

Young Tilley was not the kind of youth likely to be satisfied to reside
all his life in Gagetown. Other boys of less ambition might be content
to settle down on the farm and to fulfil their destinies within the
comparatively limited sphere of action which that little town in Queens
County afforded, but he had within him longings for a higher destiny
than he was likely to attain as a resident of a rural district.

Young Tilley came to St. John in May, 1831, at the age of thirteen. He
at once entered the drugstore of Dr. Henry Cook, as a clerk, it being
the fashion of those times for medical men to have a dispensary in
connection with their professional practice, so that they could give
advice, and dispense their own prescriptions with equal facility. He
continued as clerk with Dr. Cook until February, 1835, when he entered
the service of William O. Smith, who, in later years, was mayor of St.
John. It was while a clerk with Smith that Tilley became a member of the
St. John Young Men's Debating Society, an organization which, if it has
no other claim to the remembrance of posterity, at least has that of
giving one distinguished statesman to British America, and a governor to
New Brunswick. It was in this society that he made his first attempt at
public speaking, and it may be said that from the very beginning he
showed a remarkable aptitude for debate and public discussions.

In December, 1837, he took one of the most important steps of his life
in espousing the cause of total abstinence. Having taken up this
movement, he threw his whole energy into it, and from that time down