There is less of intensity of grief, but hardly less of tenderness and delicacy of feeling, in his words of sympathy with a friend, which, containing an expression of his own belief, also reveal the continued influence of his home and its associations on his daily actions, even after these associations had vastly changed. In a letter written only a few months before his death, during a short visit to Barrie, the last which he spent amid the scenes of his youth, he says:
“And furthermore, I know that you understand that when sorrow crosses your path, your sorrow is mine just as is your happiness. I know the wrenching of the heart-strings which comes when one who is close is taken away, and I feel deeply with you. I can only repeat to you the message which you sent to me when all that I held dearest on earth seemed to have passed out of it. There is no death. Life is eternal and makes towards perfection. When those whom we love pass, we are the more linked to that greater, larger, deeper spiritual life which is within us and about us, but which passes our human comprehension. The very air in which I write is filled with a thousand associations which bring me into the closest sympathy with those who have passed through the Valley of the Shadow. Were you here to-night, I might make myself intelligible in a way which I cannot hope to in a letter. As I have been sitting here looking out over the bay with which I am so familiar, my boyhood and my youth have passed before me, and these, as well as the hopes and aspirations of early manhood, are so closely associated with the devoted lives which guarded and nourished all that was good in me, that I could not recognize myself, were I not convinced of their continued existence and their living interest in all that I cherish that is worthy. This afternoon I stood before the grate where, with you, I spent an hour which stands out as a milestone in my life, and to-night I thank God that we have been enabled to accomplish something of what we then contemplated, and that we have before us opportunity of usefulness beyond what we could have imagined as we stood there upon the threshold of life. The very atmosphere of this dear old place is sacred to me through the associations which float through my mind as I breathe it. My visit here has been like a pause in a quiet and familiar eddy in the stream of life, and I feel that it has done me good. It has strengthened me in my resolutions, and has enabled me to see more clearly.”
It is rarely, if ever, that men, especially young men, stop to estimate the influences which are the most potent in their lives, and it is rarer still, in seeking this estimate, that they become conscious, with any true degree of proportion, of the extent to which home, as compared with other influences, has contributed to the result. It was not so with Harper. He honoured his father and his mother, and he was wont to attribute to what he inherited by birth, by training, and by example from them, all that made for what was worthiest and best in his life.
[COLLEGE AND AFTER]
Colleges and universities afford the opportunity for the attainment of a measure of self-knowledge, self-reliance and self-development, which in the home is often apt to come too slowly, and, learned at first hand with the world, is bought frequently at the price of an experience which dwarfs, if it does not altogether destroy, some of the finer fruits of those essential qualities of manhood. It is not what is gained in knowledge of books, but in knowledge of self, of limitations and powers and capacities; in what is acquired of habits of self-discipline and application, of methods of thought and research, that a college or university renders its truest service to its students; as it is by the love of truth and learning which it instils, rather than by the honours and degrees which it confers, that a university puts its stamp upon the graduates it sends out into the world.
It may be that for many men four years of undergraduate life are not sufficient to make a college impress deep, or, to appearances, lasting; but if in any measure it is real, that influence must tell, not only on the years immediately succeeding, but through the whole of life. The first fruits of a college education are more likely to be revealed in the attitude of mind towards the problems of life, as these present themselves when academic halls are vacated, than in any immediate accomplishment. A consciousness of capacity without opportunity may be, and is too often, the first inheritance of many a man, whose intellect has been stimulated and whose zeal has been intensified by association with his fellows in the numerous relationships which undergraduate life affords, but who finds in the world a less ordered and less congenial arrangement. Probably for most men, the years immediately following the attainment of their academic or professional degrees are the most critical, if not also the most painful, years of their lives.
To this phase of post-graduate experience Harper’s life was no exception, though undergraduate days were enjoyed by him to the full. In the summer of 1891, at the age of seventeen, he matriculated at the University of Toronto, from the Barrie Collegiate Institute, and he graduated from the university in June, 1895. He was, during the last three years of his undergraduate course, an honour student in the department of Political Science, and the class lists show that in the work of this department, especially in the subjects of political economy and political philosophy, he held a high place. His contemporaries at the university will always remember him as a man who entered in a whole-hearted way into what may be spoken of as the larger life of the university. He was a prominent member of the Literary and Scientific Society, and of his class society, and was always certain to be found an active participant in those events or movements of general interest with which undergraduate life at a large university abounds. While he was fond of books and might have been termed, at least during the latter half of each year, a conscientious student, it is doubtful if he did not get quite as much as, or more, out of association with his fellows, and from sharing in the spontaneous life of the college, than he did from the lecture room. A characteristic which distinguished him was a readiness to carry on with enthusiasm whatever he undertook, and this, combined with a nature intensely loyal to cause or friend, made him a strong man among men, and one whose support was sought because it could be counted upon. On the whole his disposition was social rather than individual, and his interests were diversified rather than particular. He was saved from the possible inimical effects of such a nature by an earnestness of purpose which kept him true to his responsibilities, while there can be little doubt that from it, in the broadening of his sympathies and in the understanding of men and their ways, he gained much which was of infinite service to him in after years.
Measured by the standard of growth already hinted at, Harper may be said to have left the university with a consciousness that he was fitted by talent and inclination for work in some branch of the so-called higher professions, that it was in connection with the general, rather than the more exclusive, interests of society that his energies would find their freest play, and that not by theories, but by men, he could hope to be permanently attracted. He had already learned that he was capable of serious and sustained effort, and likely to find in work a satisfaction of his best desires; and he must have known that in his nature were possibilities of the noblest expressions of disinterested action. It was natural, therefore, that having made no definite choice of a future profession at the time of graduation, and having engaged temporarily in agency work which was not to his liking, and towards which from the start he had not entertained any serious intentions, he should have found much that tried his patience severely, and at times caused him to experience periods of the most genuine depression. Fruitless attempts to obtain a start in journalism added for a while to his discouragements, so that the year and a half which followed graduation, though characterized by anything other than neglect or indifference, and, as a matter of fact, made the occasion of an opportunity for increased reading and the preparation of a thesis which secured him a Master’s degree from the university, was nevertheless, so far as he could see at the time, to be remembered as of adversity rather than as of advance. In reality it was a testing time, and it served to prove the man.