He felt that, with an effort he could wipe out his own debt. To Irving he offered his salary as acting lieutenant-governor, which was about $5,000 a year. He might, had he been any but the just and honorable man he was, have paid his debt by money made unfairly out of his office; but, unlike many public men in Canada before and since, he refused to be a profiteer. Speaking of his opportunities for finding the money, he wrote to Irving Brock: “Be satisfied that even your stern honesty shall have no just cause to censure one of my actions.” Brock was a great soldier, but he was also a great public servant, and greater in nothing than his rugged and immaculate honesty. Canada to-day would be better for more Isaac Brocks! We are coming to an important time alike for Brock and Canada and some description of his appearance will be interesting. A lionlike head crowned a splendidly tall body. It was said that he did not find it easy to get a hat in Canada to fit him. He was fair-headed and of a ruddy complexion. The gray-blue eyes, added to his fairness, made him more Anglo-Saxon than Norman in type. He was bluffly handsome, and his genial smile was the index to a pervading and unceasing kindliness. He was indeed a gentle man, and so a gentleman. Somebody might aptly have said of him, in Martin Tupper’s words: “Yet is that giant very gentleness.” We have touched, before this, on the abundant largeness of his heart. He had nothing petty about him. He was glad to praise others when they deserved it, and he was too big a man to steal the credit that belonged to subordinates. He was a man of example as well as of precept, and he knew the greater worth of the example. He was essentially humane and therefore human. And he had the saving grace of a sense of humor. He was a man of real lovingkindness—with all that that grand old word means—towards his fellows. Once a certain Hogan deserted from the 49th. Describing this he said: “A fair damsel persuaded him to this act of madness, for the poor fellow cannot possibly gain his bread by labor, as he has half killed himself by excessive drinking, and we know he cannot live upon love alone.” Brock was not angry; he was compassionate. He was always sensible of difficulties and never underestimated them. But he never appraised them too highly. FitzGibbon, afterwards the hero of Beaver Dam, tells an experience which shows this. At the time FitzGibbon was a sergeant-major. Brock ordered him to do something which was admittedly difficult. FitzGibbon said he was sorry, but it was impossible. “By the Lord Harry,” cried Brock, “don’t tell me it is impossible. Nothing should be impossible to a soldier. The word 'impossible’ should not be in a soldier’s dictionary.” FitzGibbon never forgot that and often quoted it to the men under him, when they were downhearted and inclined to deem things impossible of attainment.