At Toronto attractions of a different, but not less acceptable, kind awaited him. He started for the backwoods, and fished in Lake Muskoka with his old school-mate for his guide. And on his return to Toronto, a party of the fellow-students of early years met at dinner under his present biographer’s roof. Sir Andrew Ramsay, the head of the Geographical Survey of Great Britain, chanced to be on a visit to Canada; Alexander Sprunt had come on from North Carolina to place his son at the University of Toronto; the Hon. George Brown, his own brother-in-law, was now a Senator of the Dominion; the Hon. David Christie was Speaker of the Senate; Professor George Paxton Young, and their host, were both members of the Faculty of the Provincial University; and thus, after an interval of more than forty years, the memories of school and college life were recalled, and old times lived over again, with many a humorous reminiscence, and some amusing gleanings from the record of school-mates. In a letter to his sister he says: “You may imagine with what delight I met so many of my old school-fellows, and how we did talk over the days of auld lang syne!” The Parisian capital is a place of too easy and frequent resort to admit of its being embraced within the range of notable explorations; but two of his visits to Paris were made under such exceptional circumstances as to claim special notice here. The first of those was his characteristic visit at the period of Prince Louis Napoleon’s famous _coup d’état_. An old friend, Mr. Matthew Tait, thus briefly narrates the event:--“We all know how fond he was of foreign travel, and how he liked to watch the movements of crowds and to witness any public display. My brother accompanied him to Paris in 1851. It was at the time of the _coup d’état_. Mingling one day with the crowds that filled the Place de la Concorde, they suddenly found themselves exposed to a charge of cavalry. The crowd instantly gave way amid shrieks and yells; some of them were mortally wounded. My brother remarked to me afterwards on the coolness and self-possession of William Nelson, who seemed to have far more sympathy with the unfortunate victims than concern for his own safety.”