If inscrutable destiny or the influence of circumstance had not planned for Andrew J. Taylor the career of a widely known railway man, it may be stated without relying on too elastic imagination that he could have qualified to an advance degree as a beloved Presbyteriann “dominie” or Catholic priest. His admirable character attracted unusual and unsolicited confidences, to human anxieties his sound sympathetic counsel applied the encouragement and comfort of a confessor and he was never without a loose shilling for the needy. Coupled with these attributes he possessed a moral and superior mental fabric and when you learn that his forebears came from a canny nook in Scotland it will explain and account for his quiet appreciation of honor and duty. Lesmahagow or Abbey Green, on the River Nethan, Lanarkshire, was the birthplace of his father, James Mitchell Taylor, who brought his ruddy cheeked bride from the English-speaking settlement of L’Original to Ottawa. Her father succumbed to wounds received in the battle of the Wind Mill and both her military grandfathers were killed in the battle of Waterloo. In Bytown the subject of this sketch was born June 24th, 1858, and spent his childhood with four brothers and four sisters, securing his education in the private schools which predominated in those days and in the world of experience and travel. As a boy he caused his mother more trouble than any of her other sons owing to the fact that he was always “Fighting the other fellows’ battles”, could not condone bullying and was the staunch friend and champion of a deaf and dumb playmate whom children chased and tantalized. He was fond of animals and during his life in Ottawa, mill slabs and water were delivered in the neighborhood of the river and often the horses drawing these necessities were neglected and ill treated. Invariable his gorge would rise at such treatment and he waded in causing no end of trouble. As a boy Andy Taylor playing a hymn on the organ, selling ribbon over the counter in Elliott & Hamilton’s Ottawa store, or juggling with rolls of carpet in McIlwraith & Egan’s at Hamilton, would seem to those who knew him later, as an uncongenial occupation for the putter of the heavy shot and athletic participator in Caledonian games, but such was the case with him, and many another youth did likewise in their experimental quest for the right thing amid a variety of business pursuits.