Sir William Osler, one of the best-loved and most influential teachers of his time, was born in Canada in 1849. He began his education in Toronto and at McGill University, Montreal, where he served as professor of medicine, 1874-84. Wherever he worked his gifted and unique personality was a center of inspiration--at the University of Pennsylvania, 1884-89; at Johns Hopkins, 1889-1904. In 1904 he went to Oxford as Regius Professor of Medicine; he died in England in 1919. Only our medical friends have a right to speak of the great doctor's place in their own world; but one would like to see his honorable place as a man of letters more generally understood. His generous wisdom and infectious enthusiasm are delightfully expressed in his collected writings. No lover of the essay can afford to overlook _Æquanimitas and Other Addresses, An Alabama Student and Other Biographical Essays, Science and Immortality and Counsels and Ideals_, this last an anthology collected from his professional papers by one of his pupils. He stands in the honorable line of those great masters who have found their highest usefulness as kindly counselors of the young. His lucid and exquisite prose, with its extraordinary wealth of quotation from the literature of all ages, and his unfailing humor and tenderness, put him in the first rank of didactic essayists. One could get a liberal education in literature merely by following up all his quotations and references. He was more deeply versed in the classics than many professors of Greek and Latin; the whole music of English poetry seemed to be current in his blood. His essay on Keats, taken with Kipling's wonderful story _Via Wireless_, tells the student more about that poet than many a volume of biography. When was biography more delightfully written than in his volume _An Alabama Student?_ Walt Whitman said, when Dr. Osler attended him years ago, "Osler believes in the gospel of encouragement--of putting the best construction on things--the best foot forward. He's a fine fellow and a wise one, I guess." The great doctor's gospel of encouragement is indeed a happy companion for the midnight reader. Rich in every gentle quality that makes life endeared, his books are the most sagacious and helpful of modern writings for the young student. As one who has found them an unfailing delight, I venture to hope that our medical confrères may not be the only readers to enjoy their vivacity and charm.