trenuous
career as a public man. Strange that after such a career he should
meet a violent death at the hands of a man who was thinking solely of
private grievances!

Tracing Mr. Brown's career through a long period of history, by his
public actions, his speeches, and the volumes of his newspaper, one
arrives at a somewhat different estimate from that preserved in
familiar gossip and tradition. That tradition pictures a man
impulsive, stormy, imperious, bearing down by sheer force all
opposition to his will. In the main it is probably true; but the
printed record is also true, and out of the two we must strive to
reproduce the man. We are told of a speech delivered with flashing
eye, with gestures that seemed almost to threaten physical violence.
We read the report of the speech and we find something more than the
ordinary transition from warm humanity, to cold print. There is not
only freedom from violence, but there is coherence, close reasoning, a
systematic marshalling of facts and figures and arguments. One might
say of many of his speeches, as was said of Alexander Mackenzie's
sentences, that he built them as he built a stone wall. His tremendous
energy was not spasmodic, but was backed by solid industry, method and
persistence.

As Mr. Bengough said in a little poem published soon after Mr. Brown's
death,

"His nature was a rushing mountain stream;
His faults but eddies which its swiftness bred."

In his business as a journalist, he had not much of that philosophy
which says that the daily difficulties of a newspaper are sure to
solve themselves by the effluxion of time. There are traditions of his
impatience and his outbreaks of wrath when something went wrong, but
there are traditions also of a kindness large enough to include the
lad who carried the proofs to his house. Those who were thoroughly
acquainted with the affairs of the office say that he was extremely
lenient with employees who were intemperate or otherwise incurred
blame, and that his leniency had been extended to Bennett. Intimate
friends and political associates deny that he played the dictator, and
say that he was genial and humorous in familiar intercourse. But it
is, after all, a somewhat unprofitable task to endeavour to sit in
judgment on the personal character of a public man, placing this
virtue against that fault, and solemnly assuming to decide which side
of the ledger exceeds the other. We have to deal with the character o