events "transpired", and yet his appreciation of style in others was perfect,
and he was an insatiable reader of the best books. His letters are strewn
with names of authors whose worth time has proved. To specify them
would merely be to write the catalogue of a good library.

The thirteen years with which this century opened were the period
in which John McCrae established himself in civil life in Montreal
and in the profession of medicine. Of this period he has left a chronicle
which is at once too long and too short.

All lives are equally interesting if only we are in possession
of all the facts. Places like Oxford and Cambridge
have been made interesting because the people who live in them
are in the habit of writing, and always write about each other.
Family letters have little interest even for the family itself,
if they consist merely of a recital of the trivial events of the day.
They are prized for the unusual and for the sentiment they contain.
Diaries also are dull unless they deal with selected incidents;
and selection is the essence of every art. Few events have any interest
in themselves, but any event can be made interesting by the pictorial
or literary art.

When he writes to his mother, that, as he was coming out of the college,
an Irish setter pressed a cold nose against his hand, that is interesting
because it is unusual. If he tells us that a professor took him by the arm,
there is no interest in that to her or to any one else.
For that reason the ample letters and diaries which cover these years
need not detain us long. There is in them little selection, little art --
too much professor and too little dog.