“You are, I think, mistaken,” said Sir Wilfrid, apologizing for the interruption. “It was General ——, who gave the order.”
Sir Adolphe paused in amazement; then he said:—
“You are right. I was there, yet I had forgotten. You were not there, yet you remember. I will tell no more experiences.”
At another time, in Paris, in 1897, Sir Wilfrid and other Canadians, who had visited England for the Jubilee of Queen Victoria, were being conducted about the city. At the Arc de Triomphe, inscribed with the names of the great victories of the Napoleonic wars, an army officer undertook to give the dates of the different battles.
“Marengo,” he said, “was fought in July 14th., 1801.”
“Was it not 1800?” asked Sir Wilfrid.
“It was,” replied the officer, abashed. “Evidently we must go to Canada to learn French history.”
Sir Wilfrid Laurier in a very real sense was passionately fond of children. He relaxed to them, he loved them, and they loved him. Children seemed to get closer to “the Chief” than anyone else. There were times, in the stress of big events, when matters of policy were to be determined, when situations had to be gauged and met, when Sir Wilfrid seemed to shut himself behind an expressionless face to do his thinking. His friends and lieutenants sought counsel from him then without success. No premature intimations were forthcoming. He became to all associated with him a seeker—not a giver—of information. One left his presence, having gone for guidance, with the conviction that he had laid bare his whole mind and thought at the delicate prompting of the Chief’s skilful interrogations, but realizing that the latter had communicated nothing.
At the time of the long naval debate and Parliamentary embroglio, when the threat of closures was in the air and all the strategy of statecraft was being brought into play by both parties, a Liberal caucus waited anxiously one winter morning for the advent of the leader. Newspaper-men who proceeded to the main entrance eagerly watching for his coming witnessed the septuagenarian spending the valuable moments prodding in the snow with his walking-stick and seeking to locate a “lost mitt” of an all-alone baby girl, who was crying pathetically at her loss and the cold. It was only when the missing mitten was found and restored and the child had been comforted that Sir Wilfrid turned his attention to the waiting caucus and the problems of the moment.