While living at Kingston, [Macdonald] went out into the country to a farm house near Adolphustown on business, and while waiting for the horses to be brought to the door, sat reading a book. When told the vehicle was ready, he dropped the book and came away.
Nine years afterwards he visited the same house, and going to the bookcase took down the same book and turning to a certain page, said: "There's the very word I read last when I was here nine years ago."
Mr. Bell, of the Belleville Intelligencer, met Sir John in 1872, and did not see him again till 1885, when he was one of a deputation to interview the Premier on a political question.
Having only exchanged a few words and been in his presence a few minutes on the first occasion, Mr. Bell was proceeding to introduce himself, when Sir John anticipated him and said: "Oh! I know you. You are Mr. Bell, the Intelligencer man."
When on his visit to Vancouver in 1886, a man came up to Sir John out of the crowd and began to introduce himself by saying: "Sir John, I suppose you don't remember me." "Oh, yes," replied the Premier, without hesitation. "I met you at a picnic in 1856, and you may remember it was a rainy day." "Yes," said the man, "that was the very occasion."
Once he and a friend were walking together, when a working man stopped before them. Sir John, after shaking hands, said, "Well, D----, it is sixteen years since I met you. By the way, how is your boy?" The man agreed as to the time, and said his boy was better. After they parted and went on, the friend said to Sir John, "Of course that was a chance hit." "No," said he, "I remember when I met him before he was in great distress about his little boy, who was suffering from a lame back."
At a political meeting at Napanee in 1882, when he ran for Lennox, Sir John noticed a gentleman on the platform, and after looking at him for a moment asked, "Isn't your name Ruttan?" "Yes," replied Dr. Ruttan, for it was he who was addressed, "but I never met you, Sir John. How did you know me?" "By your likeness to your brothers," replied he. "But it must be a long time since you have seen them," observed the doctor. "Yes," answered Sir John, "it is now forty years."
E.B. Biggar, Anecdotal Life of Sir John Macdonald (1891), pp. 207-209.
