od for our
neighbourhood. This morning I saw in a case at his home a complete set
of oculist's instruments, said to be the best in the county--a very
unusual equipment for a country doctor. Indeed, he assumed that the
responsibility for the health of the community rested upon him. He was a
sort of self-constituted health officer. He was always sniffing about
for old wells and damp cellars--and somehow, with his crisp humour and
sound sense, getting them cleaned. In his old age he even grew
querulously particular about these things--asking a little more of human
nature than it could quite accomplish. There were innumerable other
ways--how they came out to-day all glorified now that he is gone!--in
which he served the community.

Horace tells how he once met the Doctor driving his old white horse in
the town road.

"Horace," called the Doctor, "why don't you paint your barn?"

"Well," said Horace, "it _is_ beginning to look a bit shabby."

"Horace," said the Doctor, "you're a prominent citizen. We look to you
to keep up the credit of the neighbourhood."

Horace painted his barn.

I think Doctor North was fonder of Charles Baxter than of anyone else,
save his sister. He hated sham and cant: if a man had a single _reality_
in him the old Doctor found it; and Charles Baxter in many ways exceeds
any man I ever knew in the downright quality of genuineness. The Doctor
was never tired of telling--and with humour--how he once went to Baxter
to have a table made for his office. When he came to get it he found
the table upside clown and Baxter on his knees finishing off the under
part of the drawer slides. Baxter looked up and smiled in the engaging
way he has, and continued his work. After watching him for some time the
Doctor said:

"Baxter, why do you spend so much time on that table? Who's going to
know whether or not the last touch has been put on the under side of
it?"

Baxter straightened up and looked at the Doctor in surprise.

"Why, I will," he said.

How the Doctor loved to tell that story! I warrant there is no boy who
ever grew up in this country who hasn't heard it.

It was a part of his pride in finding reality that made the Doctor such
a lover of true sentiment and such a hater of sentimentality. I prize
one memory of him which illustrates this point. The district school gave
a "speaking" and we all went. One boy with a fresh young voice spoke a
"soldier piece"--the soliloquy of a one-armed veteran who