While possessed of great goodness of heart, he was by most thought to be an ambitious man. I knew him well, and it always seemed to me that it was not ambition as it is usually understood, but rather a consciousness of his own intellectual power and ripe scholarship, and a feeling that these were not finding their complete development in the quiet, old world village, where his lot was cast. I have often thought, too, that the General Assembly of his church did not know what they cast away, when they chose a “Higher Critic”, in preference to him, for one of the Divinity Professorships. It was under his fostering care that I was first led to interest myself in religion as “the way of life,” and I shall always retain the deepest gratitude for his wholesome influence on my young life. He had, however, a certain dignity and aloofness, that kept me from daring to intrude into the inner circle of his friendship. There were several things that came into my life about this period, and compelled me to relinquish, for a time at least, the strong desire which I had for a college education. I resolved to learn a trade, by means of which I hoped to earn my living, and put by a little towards college expenses. I was indentured as an apprentice carpenter, and three very happy years I spent at the “bench”. I never was a good tradesman, but I learnt enough to enable me in after years to erect, partly with my own hands, a mission church on the Red River. Mr. Manson took notice of the fact that I seldom participated in the ploys of the other village lads; and, when he found out that I was making a brave effort to prepare myself for college, he constituted himself my private tutor. For nearly two years I studied under his direction, and made such progress that I was able to qualify for the post of Junior English Master in a small English Grammar School. I used to think that my inability to enter college was something of a calamity, but, when I look back upon those days in the perspective, I am firmly convinced that I was being guided and controlled in all this by one wiser than I. There were many things besides classics and mathematics which I ought to know before I made the plunge into academical life. Undoubtedly the experience through which I passed gave me an outlook on life, which has been of inestimable value.