Canadian writer and educator, born in August 1833, in St. Johns, NB; died in Halifax, NS, on the 28th of January 1880. He was a natural writer, and while at Brown University, and before his graduation in 1854, wrote several college songs which became popular. From 1860 to 1865 he was professor of the classics at Acadia College, and from 1865 to 1880 professor of rhetoric and history at Dalhousie College, Halifax. Among his published writings, mostly stories of adventure, are Andy O’Hara (1860); The Arkansas Ranger (1865); A Comedy of Terrors (1871); and among his stories for boys, Lost in the Fog; and the Boys of Grand Pré School. He is best known by his tales of mystery and puzzling complication, suggestive of the art of Wilkie Collins. The chief of these are The Cryptogram (1871); The Dodge Club (1866); Cord and Crease (1869); and The Lady of the Ice (1870). While, at times, lacking cohesion and narrative precision, they have the quality of holding the attention.
