r man--except upon occasions. The
occasions were not numerous, but they left an undying impression on
his neighbors and fellow townsmen; for the late private had a way all
his own. He was a big Welshman, so strong that he never knew how
strong he was; and when he became obsessed with the desire to get
drunk, no one could stop him. He had to have it out. At such times his
one ambition was to ride a horse up the steps of the hotel, and
then--George Washington-like--rise in his stirrups and deliver an
impassioned address on what we owe to the Old Flag. If he were blocked
or thwarted in this, he became dangerous and hard to manage, and
sometimes it took a dozen men to remove him to the Police Station.
When he found himself safely landed there, with a locked door and
small, barred window between himself and liberty, his mood changed and
the remainder of the night was spent in song, mostly of "A life on the
ocean wave and a home on the rolling deep"; for he had been a sailor
before he came land-seeking to western Canada.

After having "proved up" his land in southern Manitoba--the
_Wanderlust_ seized him and he went to South America, where no doubt
he enlivened the proceedings for the natives, as he had for us while
he lived among us.

Six weeks after the declaration of war he came back--a grizzled man of
forty; he had sold out everything, sent his wife to England, and had
come to enlist with the local regiment. Evidently his speech about
what we owe to the Old Flag had been a piece of real eloquence, and
Bill himself was the proof.

He enlisted with the boys from home as a private, and on the marches
he towered above them--the tallest man in the regiment. No man was
more obedient or trustworthy. He cheered and admonished the younger
men, when long marches in the hot sun, with heavy accouterments, made
them quarrelsome and full of complaints. "It's all for the Old Flag,
boys," he told them.

To-day I read that he is "missing, believed killed"; and I have the
feeling, which I know is in the heart of many who read his name, that
we did not realize the heroism of the big fellow in the old days of
peace. It took a war to show us how heroic our people are.

Not all the heroes are war-heroes either. The slow-grinding, searching
tests of peace have found out some truly great ones among our people
and have transmuted their common clay into pure gold.

It is much more heartening to tell of the woman who went right rather
than