THE SIR GALAHAD MONUMENT AT OTTAWA
erected by the public to commemorate the
Heroism of Henry Albert Harper.
It was the writer’s privilege to have been Harper’s oldest and most intimate friend. It has seemed to him that he would be unworthy of a friendship such as existed between them, were he unwilling to share with others some of the beauty of soul which he knew so well, and of which Harper’s heroic deed was but an expression. For personal reasons, he has, up to the present, hesitated to disclose aught that has been in his keeping. The generous appreciation by the public of a single act appears to him now to warrant a larger confidence. He has ventured, therefore, to allow those who will, to look in at the windows of the soul, and see, in its sacred chambers, the secret which was an abiding presence in a life whose heroism has already received from the nation a recognition so splendid and impressive.
To those into whose hands this little volume may come, the writer begs they forget not that it is but a collection of fragments gathered, after he had gone, from along the path on which he trod. It is not Harper’s life, it is not even a worthy tribute to his character. What it may contain of thoughts and expressions of his own will be acceptable as “broken light upon the depth of the unspoken”; for the rest it will be well, if, as a labour of love, it has done no injustice to the memory of a friend.
W. L. M. K.
Ottawa, January, 1906.
[THE SECRET OF HEROISM]
The quality of a man’s love will determine the nature of his deeds; occasion may present the opportunity, but character alone will record the experience. To a life given over to the pursuit of the beautiful and true, the immortal hour only comes when conduct at last rises to the level of aim, and the ideal finds its fulfilment in the realm of the actual. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”