Few lives have been more earnest or constant in the pursuit of an ultimate perfection than was Henry Albert Harper’s; few have sought more conscientiously than he to live out existence under the guidance of lofty aspirations, and in the light of pure ideals. There was nothing exceptional, save the opportunity, in the chivalrous act which cost him his life. It was a sublime expression of the hidden beauty of his real character and soul. Day by day he had been seeking for years to gain that freedom which is the reward of obedience to the highest laws of life, and little by little he had been fashioning a character unfettered and untrammelled by human weaknesses and prejudices, and strong in the noblest qualities of heart and mind. Galahad cried, “If I lose myself, I save myself!” In the same spirit, and with the same insight into truth, Harper sought to keep unbroken the vision of immortality which was his, to be faithful to an ideal of duty, which, by a seeming loss, he has made incarnate for all time.
By what path the heroic was attained in Harper’s life may be traced from the pages of a diary, in which at intervals he recorded his thoughts, and from the words he has left in letters to his friends. Fragmentary as these are, an attempt has been made in the following pages to weave from them the story of his inner life, in the belief that its beauty will bring courage and inspiration to many, and in the knowledge that there is something of inestimable worth in a recorded experience which reveals the endeavour of a human soul to know and attain the highest, and to realize its divine capacities amid the complexities of every-day life.
[THE INFLUENCE OF HOME]
Harper was born in the village of Cookstown, Ontario, on December 9, 1873, but most of his childhood was spent at Barrie, one of the most picturesque and beautifully situated of Canadian inland towns. The vine-clad lattice alone obstructed the beautiful view from the front veranda of his father’s house across the waters of Kempenfeldt Bay, and it was to this home and its associations that he was wont to attribute all that was best in his nature and dearest in his affections. It was there that the great joys and the great sorrows of his short life had centred. It was over this Barrie home that the skies were the brightest to him; and it was there, too, that for a time the clouds had appeared to return after the rain.
There are few pages anywhere which, in simpler or more tender words, disclose a heart’s love and sorrow, a life’s greatest inspiration and its greatest grief, than those which commence Harper’s diary after it had remained closed for nearly three years. They constitute an expression of feeling so personal, a record so sacredly tender, that their publication can be justified only on the ground that they are among the few passages he has left which reveal the influence of his home upon his life, an influence which, as the words themselves show, was the strongest and the sweetest he had known. Just a year before his death, Harper writes:
“For nearly three years this book has travelled around with me unopened—three years in which I seem to have lived a lifetime. They have been filled with satisfaction enough in some ways, and with pain enough, too. Seven months ago, when the world seemed empty, I was inclined to throw myself upon these pages, but my feelings were too much my own, even for that, for, since I last wrote here, I have gazed into the darkest depths.
“Though ‘out in the world’ in a measure, since I left home for college, the little home group in Barrie remained the centre of my world. The chief reward of success was the ‘well done’ from the kindest father and most loving mother who ever lived. They have gone. After a week’s illness father died on April 6, 1900. Mother joined him on April 12th. During thirty-six years of married life they had been loyal and true to each other, and to their duty before God and man. For their children they sacrificed personal comfort and social pleasures. Loving sympathy always went out to meet us in joy or in pain. They passed away together into the hereafter with unflinching eye, and with a nobleness and truth of heart which won them the respect of all good men and women who knew them in life.
“I did not reach home until the morning of father’s death, and when I saw that dear beloved face it wore the calmness and pallor of death. That room in which he lay is hallowed. To the last, they say, his carelessness of self was evident. A frank, straightforward man; his life open as a book; his heart kind, with the true love of a Christian. He was not particularly demonstrative, but we all knew the breadth and depth of his affection and his sympathy. At the end, conscious of it, he gazed before him towards the face of God, as one ready to appear before the judgment seat. A healthy, honest, wholesome man, he was to me father, brother and friend.