Trinity College School - Record Yearbook (Port Hope, Ontario Canada)

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12 TRINITY COLLEGE SCHOOL RECORD but to do what lies clearly at hand. He knew also and practised the humility of the seeker, the painstaking care, the persistence that searches for conclusions and does not jump at them, the wonder and the devotion that have always been the glories of true science. He never believed that Science at last would darken men's eyes and harden men's hearts, but that its mission was to bring healing to mankind and joy and leisure to man's life. He also walked in that fine tradition of Medicine that has always laid the gifts of its discovery freely and without payment upon the altar of suffering humanity. When he was a young man he promised that he would never enter the temple of Science in the spirit of the money-changer. He never did. When he was an older man, he could make his own, with truth, the proud boast of the Greek philosopher: I have loved no darkness Sophisticated no truth Nursed no illusion Allowed no fear. Those are a few of the reasons why I call him Great. But greatness and goodness are not always the same thing. May I tell you, as I bid you farewell, a few of the reasons why he deserves to be called good? I think one of the mottoes of his life was Two things stand like stoneg Kindness in another's trouble, Courage in one's own. For everybody who knew Osler or wrote about him or has spoken to me about him, dwells upon the all-pervading sympathy which marked his nature and his work. So many of his deeds were those unremembered acts of kindness and of love that mark a good man's life. He knew that that man is the greatest whose heart contains within it the most objects of compassion. He knew, too, that of all the words which men have brought with them from their

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TRINITY COLLEGE SCHOOL RECORD 11 Huxley and fulfilled by Huxley and Osler. I would like to see the definition inscribed on the walls of every university in the English-speaking world. , That man, I think, has had a liberal education, who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of 3 whose intellect is a clear, cold logic engine with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working order, ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind. lYou know what is meant by gossamers. They are those little films of thin webs that float in the air or are poised upon the grass in autumn, catching the sheen of the dew- drops and the glint of the sun.J And then the description of the educated man continues, Whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of Nature and of the laws of her operations, and who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but Whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience 3 who has learned to love all beauty, whether of Nature or of Art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself. Osler was that rare sort of man. He left, too, many lessons for us, all written and spoken in words that deserve to survive the rusts and ravages of time. The philosophy of his which I like best is that which he sets out in his most famous lecture, on The Way of Life. I have already said how full of life he was, of its joy and its purpose. And so, when he talked to the students at Yale University, he begged them to live in the present, to spend their lives doing and hoping. Sufficient to the day is the goodness thereof. Undress your soul at night and feel the joy that you are alive. Study books, but also men. Keep a fair mind and a fair body, be temperate in all things. He bade them always remember, with Carlyle. that our duty is not to see what lies dimly at a distance,

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TRINITY COLLEGE SCHOOL RECORD 13 wanderings in the wilderness, the sweetest is loyalty . He never forgot his friends and they never forgot him. Every- where he went he took with him joy and hope. I wish I could read you some of the letters he wrote for little children who were ill, or tell you some of the stories of his bedside talks in the sickroom of the young, of his cheer- ful whistle as he entered, of the jokes he made to make them laugh. He had an uncanny knowledge of children. Only the other day a friend of mine phoned to me and told me that when his wife was a little girl she was badly scalded. The great Dr. Osler came to see her, told her some fairy stories, and prescribed for her healing-a box of chocolates! . He had, too, a divine sense of humour-by which I do not mean the biting cruelty of the professional wit, or the smart shallowness of the so-called wisecracker-but that wonderful gift which takes the iron from a man's soul and puts a gentle irony in its place-that sense of humour which turns the tears of life into a rainbow. Servants and humble people all loved him. All humanity saluted him because he was a man and nothing which belonged to man- kind was foreign to him. His house and his heart were open to all comers. His residence at Oxford was known by the delightful name of The Open Arms . In his last year there, he entertained 1,600 men and officers of the American Forces of the First Great War. When his own greatest sorrow came, in the death of a brave only son, he took what he said was the only medicine that could cure him, the medicine of faith and hope and compassion and time. Always, above the clamour, he heard the still, sad music of humanity. I laugh, he said, in order that I do not weep. His coming was a comfort to all for he scattered health and joy with abundance in his path. In one of his great addresses to nurses and students he paid tribute to those who work for small rewards in lonely places, and told them your passport will be the