Accordingly we find this Sir William Cornelius Van Horne, who had started in railroad work at the age of fourteen in another country, and had made such a world-record in constructive enterprises that he received the special recognition of knighthood from the British Crown, voluntarily resigning in June, 1899, from the Presidency of the vast transportation system he had done so much to create and develop. He remained as chairman of the Board and a member of the Executive, retaining his office in the Company headquarters at Montreal and saying to his friends, “I shall still hang around the old stand.” I recall reading a statement made by Edward Gibbon when, after years of work, he finished his world-famous book on the Roman Empire. He said that when he had written the last page he took a turn in his garden. His first sensation was a feeling of relief over the completion of the great task, and then a feeling of something like exultation over what he knew to be an important contribution to the historical literature of the world. And then, he says, he realized a sense of loneliness because he would no longer have his wonderfully congenial daily work, and a sense of loss because something had gone out of his life as a finished chapter in his career. I think that Van Horne felt all that, when he gave up the Presidency of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and to say so is much to his credit. He missed something out of his life. He began to plan trips to fill up the blank, but not very successfully, as we judge from the following account of a visit he paid to Monterey in his private car after having seen California. He says, “I went out on the verandah of the hotel and smoked a big cigar. Then I got up, walked about the verandah and looked at the scenery. It was very fine. Then I sat down and smoked another cigar. Then up again; another walk about the verandah, and more scenery. It was still very fine. I sat down again and smoked another cigar. Then I jumped up and telephoned for my car to be coupled to the next train; and, by George, I was never so happy in my life as when I struck the C. P. R. again.” There is humour in this, but there is pathos also. Van Horne was too keen-minded a man not to have foreseen this situation. And we repeat, as a lasting proof of his devotion to the Canadian Pacific, that when there came the hour when he felt it was in the interests of the Railway to transfer the growingly intensive and complex detail of its administration to the sinewy business hands of Shaughnessy, whose amazing powers as a financial administrator and master of detail had been amply tested through seventeen eventful years of the railway’s history, Van Horne resigned from the Presidency. And thus it was that Shaughnessy became President in June, 1899. From this date, although Van Horne remained on the Executive, he in large measure passed out of the story of the Canadian Pacific Railway. He retained all his financial