Sir Wilfrid Laurier has not had an approach of an equal during the last generation. It is not easy to exactly define in what his personality consisted. Facial charm was certainly one of his greatest endowments. He had a remarkably fine and open countenance, with a finely chiselled and expressive mouth, and with a classic brow that was one of the gifts of the gods. No one ever forgot Sir Wilfrid who had the privilege of seeing or hearing him once. The late Sir George Ross once referred to him as “a picture gallery all in himself.” His voice was also one of his great endowments, and his gestures of hands and body were in perfect sympathy with the thoughts he had to express. Behind all this was a finely cultured intellect, and behind this again was a burning French-Canadian soul that added warmth to all his words, gave action and gesture and fire, and made him from a purely speaking standpoint one of the greatest and most finished orators of his time. But there was more even than this. No man can hold followers simply by words alone. Sir Wilfrid had a wonderfully sympathetic heart, a keen appreciation of the human qualities in man, and coupled with his own personal magnetism, there was a winsomeness that bound his followers to him as with hoops of steel. * * * * * He did not ignore the material side of nation-building. He realized the importance of the country’s natural resources and the necessity for industrial development; but it was of the very nature of the man that he should think most of the happiness of the people. He saw in Canada the opportunity for a wonderful experiment in nation-making. He realized that wealth and prosperity and national glory are not everything. His ideal of a great nation was that of a free, contented, united and intelligent people, living at peace with each other and with the world. He sought to break down the barriers of prejudice and bigotry and ignorance that those of different races and creeds and parties might live together on terms of harmony and good will. His love was for people rather than for material things, and he attracted the love of people in return. No man in Canada ever attracted a more generous or more genuine measure of love. This was shown by the spontaneous display of personal feeling which his death called forth. And he was loved by the people, not for any great thing he had done, but rather because of what he was.