lecturing, attendance upon the sick in wards and homes, meetings,
conventions, papers, addresses, editing, reviewing, -- the very remembrance
of such a career is enough to appall the stoutest heart.

But John McCrae was never appalled. He went about his work gaily,
never busy, never idle. Each minute was pressed into the service,
and every hour was made to count. In the first eight months of practice
he claims to have made ninety dollars. It is many years
before we hear him complain of the drudgery of sending out accounts,
and sighing for the services of a bookkeeper. This is the only complaint
that appears in his letters.

There were at the time in Montreal two rival schools,
and are yet two rival hospitals. But John McCrae was of no party.
He was the friend of all men, and the confidant of many. He sought nothing
for himself and by seeking not he found what he most desired.
His mind was single and his intention pure; his acts unsullied
by selfish thought; his aim was true because it was steady and high.
His aid was never sought for any cause that was unworthy,
and those humorous eyes could see through the bones
to the marrow of a scheme. In spite of his singular innocence, or rather
by reason of it, he was the last man in the world to be imposed upon.

In all this devastating labour he never neglected the assembling of himself
together with those who write and those who paint. Indeed,
he had himself some small skill in line and colour. His hands were
the hands of an artist -- too fine and small for a body that weighted
180 pounds, and measured more than five feet eleven inches in height.
There was in Montreal an institution known as "The Pen and Pencil Club".
No one now living remembers a time when it did not exist.