quaintance with the latest developments on the Continent.
Osler was a good Canadian, a good American, a good Englishman, but of nationality he made little, and he was never an American citizen. His parents were English people out of Cornwall—the father a Saxon, the mother a "black Celt" who, in 1837, crossed the Atlantic to propagate the Gospel in the upper Canadian wilderness. William was born in 1849. You see the sturdy father, a Cambridge University man and a fine mathematical scholar, by the way, riding through the woods on horseback with the baptismal register in his saddlebags, hunting out his youngest parishioners, helping them spiritually into the world. You see the mother of nine children conducting a large Sunday school class and also a big sewing class twice a week, to second her husband's efforts for the civilization of the Canadian backwoods. She is an educated woman and writes charming, affectionate, humorous letters to her boys, when they are at school, which you may be sure they are, and under the best masters, men, English university graduates. This good woman lived to be three months more than a hundred years old. The family reckoned twenty members in the World War. It is English-Canadian, and it is magnificent. William Osler got his start from his parents: black hair and black eyes from his mother, and good blood, brains, character and indomitable energy from both.
As a schoolboy William was at or near the head of his class, he was the best athlete in school and he was a ringleader in mischief—with an inherited leaning toward the ministry. The decisive turn in his career was made at school in Weston, conducted on the Eton plan, including the top hats. Opposite page 33 you
