nder Wilson, who was a director of the Royal Hospital
at the time, I am told a deal about Dr. Davie's early medical career.
He says the young doctor was ambitious to become medical officer to
the Royal Hospital, then situated on the rock at the top of Pandora
Street, and asked Mr. Wilson to try and get the position for him,
even without salary, and Mr. Wilson, having great faith in the young
man, promised to do his best, and at a meeting of the board, consisting
of Alexander McLean, J. D. Robinson, Henry Short and Alexander
Wilson, Dr. Davie was duly elected, and at a salary of 100 pounds
per annum, and held the position for over twenty years. He entered on
his duties with great zeal, his first surgical case being that of an
Indian girl who was accidentally shot on Salt Spring Island. The poor
girl's arm was badly shattered, and she was brought down from the
island in a canoe. It was a bad case, but the doctor pulled her
through and, saving her arm, sent her home again as good as ever.

Dr. Davie was fond of music, and in early days was proficient on the
flute, contributing to the programme of many a concert for charity in
those days when amateurs did so much to entertain the public.

That the subject of this sketch was a clever man goes without saying.
Many there are, and have been, who have been snatched from grim death
by this skilful surgeon. By some he was thought to be bearish and
unsympathetic, but they who thought so did not know him as I did, or
they would not have thought so. Where there was real suffering and
danger there could not have been a more gentle, kinder-hearted or
careful man. Because he did not always respond to a friend's
salutation in passing it was taken as bearishness or indifference. It
was really pre-occupation. He was thinking out a difficult case for
the next morning at the hospital. As he once said to a lady friend,
"They little know the hours I pass walking up and down at night
thinking out a case I have to operate on--how I shall do it to make
it a success." I went into his office one day and found him with a
surgical instrument on his knee which he seemed very intent on, and I
asked him what it was for. He hesitated for a moment, then said, "You
would not understand." But still he explained it all to me. It
was for an operation in the morning on the stomach of a patient at
one of the hospitals, and I have no doubt it was successful. About
seven years ago he attended me for typhoid feve