"Not at all, sir," returned Mr. Howe, "I was merely setting her right on—" "technicalities," said the young girl, with a merry ringing laugh.
"Ah, Mary!" cried Charles Douglas, playfully pulling back the clustering ringlets from his sister's white forehead, "poetry and politics cannot exist on very intimate terms of friendship, at least too much poetry."
"Have a care, young man," said Sir Howard, laughing at the last remark.
"Ah! there are exceptions to every rule, sir, which you did not give me an opportunity to add, and I still make the former assertion to be, to a certain extent, counterbalanced by the latter."
From the appearance of different speakers the house seems to be out of order.
From playful remarks followed an interesting and varied stock of earnest political conversation, in which Lady Douglas joined with apparent ease. From agriculture the question led to education, one in which His Excellency had spent much time and labor.
It is to Sir Howard that the present university owes its first existence, its various stages of progress and final success. It was he who procured the first charter granting the privileges of a university. Few can realize the difficulties that Sir Howard met before accomplishing this great boon, and fewer still could see the way for raising the means necessary for the support of this institution. But an endowment was raised by grants from the revenue arising from the sale of unoccupied lands, and equal grants from the House of Assembly.
The next barrier presented by the colonists, for the suppression of the Thirty-nine Articles and the admission of Dissenters, was in itself a formidable array of difficulty, notwithstanding the next uprising of Episcopalian remonstrance. A sea of troubles! But reason, the true pilot, never deserted Sir Howard. The greatness of the cause was sufficient motive.
As the story progresses we hope to give a few facts which will prove what success awaited him. In the administration of this distinguished military ruler, New Brunswick found a warm and true-hearted friend and adviser—one whose memory is yet cherished within the hearts of those who had once seen his benignant and happy smile. Such is a faint picture of the domestic and political bearing of the gifted and distinguished Sir Howard.