I was born at Swanmoor, Hants, England, on December 30, 1869. I am
not aware that there was any particular conjunction of the planets at
the time, but should think it extremely likely. My parents migrated
to Canada in 1876, and I decided to go with them. My father took up a
farm near Lake Simcoe, in Ontario. This was during the hard times of
Canadian farming, and my father was just able by great diligence to
pay the hired men and, in years of plenty, to raise enough grain to
have seed for the next year's crop without buying any. By this
process my brothers and I were inevitably driven off the land, and
have become professors, business men, and engineers, instead of being
able to grow up as farm labourers. Yet I saw enough of farming to
speak exuberantly in political addresses of the joy of early rising
and the deep sleep, both of body and intellect, that is induced by
honest manual toil.

I was educated at Upper Canada College, Toronto, of which I was head
boy in 1887. From there I went to the University of Toronto, where I
graduated in 1891. At the University I spent my entire time in the
acquisition of languages, living, dead, and half-dead, and knew
nothing of the outside world. In this diligent pursuit of words I
spent about sixteen hours of each day. Very soon after graduation I
had forgotten the languages, and found myself intellectually
bankrupt. In other words I was what is called a distinguished
graduate, and, as such, I took to school teaching as the only trade I
could find that need neither experience nor intellect. I spent my
time from 1891 to 1899 on the staff of Upper Canada College, an
experience which has left me with a profound sympathy for the many
gifted and brilliant men who are compelled to spend their lives in
the most dreary, the most thankless, and the worst paid profession in