“I advise you to have no ambition higher than to join the noble band of general practitioners. These are generous hearted men, with well balanced, cool heads, who are not scientific always, but are learned in the wisdom of the sick room. No man can stand higher in the love and respect of the community, and wield a more potent influence, than the family doctor....
“As to your work, I have a single bit of advice which I give with the earnest conviction of its paramount influence in any success which may have attended my efforts in life: Take no thought of the morrow. Live neither in the past nor the future, but let each day’s work absorb your entire energy and satisfy your widest ambition.”
Sir George A. Drummond.
A high and representative type of the Scotchmen who have done so much for Canada is Sir George Alexander Drummond, who for many years has been very actively identified with the best elements in Canadian commercial and social life. Sir George was born in Edinburgh in 1829, and in 1854, after graduation from Edinburgh University, came to Canada to assume the management of the extensive sugar refinery which had been established in Montreal by the late John Redpath. Though the refinery was for some years very successful under the direction of Sir George, it was closed in 1874 because of the appalling effects of a high tariff. It was reopened, however, in 1879, when Sir George founded the Canadian Sugar Refining Company, which has exerted a strong influence in the upbuilding of the prosperity of the Dominion. Sir George steadily grew in commercial power. He became a director of the Bank of Montreal in 1882 and vice-president of the institution in 1887. For two years he was president of the Montreal Board of Trade. He also assumed the presidency of the company which owns very valuable coal and iron mining properties at Londonderry, Nova Scotia, and he has been connected with many other enterprises of importance.
His activities, however, have been by no means confined to commerce. He has been president of the Art Association of Montreal, and possesses one of the finest art collections on the continent. He is an enthusiastic golfer and has been president of the Canada Golf Association. He has busied himself with philanthropic projects and was made one of the trustees of Victoria Order of Nurses in 1897. He was called to the Senate of Canada by the Marquis of Lorne and was knighted by the Queen.
AUTHORS.
James Lane Allen.
Among the many literary lights which the south has given us is James Lane Allen. He was born in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1849, and comes of one of the old Virginia families. Shortly after the Civil war broke out Mr. Allen’s father lost his fortune, and James in consequence had to work and attend school simultaneously. He graduated with honors from the Transylvania university, Lexington, in 1872. Then he began to teach for a livelihood. Subsequently he was called to a professorship in Transylvania university, and later was a professor of Latin and higher English at Bethany college, West Virginia. In 1884 he went to New York to make literature his profession. He was then unknown in that city, but soon gained recognition as one of the most poetic and dramatic of American novelists. Of his many books The Choir Invisible, A Summer in Arcady, and Aftermath, are perhaps the most in demand by the reading public.