80 IN MEMORIAM. 



the willing help and sound advice of so thoroughly capable a 

 man. Just how much those subscribers to the Library to-day, 

 who appreciate and value at their proper worth the privileges 

 and advantages the Institution offers, owe to my old friend 

 will never be known. In a very important sense John 

 Linwood Pitts deserves to rank as one of the founders of 

 the Guille- Alles Library. His contribution was not a finan- 

 cial gift, necessary as money was to the success of the 

 undertaking ; it was the hardly less important gift of sound 

 organizing powers coupled with deep intellectual learning. 



And so, after many years of disinterested service in the 

 cause Messrs. Guille and Alles had at heart, it was very fitting 

 that upon the lamented death by drowning of Mr. John I. Le 

 Lacheur (Mr. Guille's nephew) in the wreck of the s.s. 

 Mohegan on the Manacles rocks in the autumn of 1898 Mr. 

 Pitts should be appointed to succeed him as Managing- 

 Director of the Institution. He was pre-eminently the one 

 man fitted for the post, the one man best qualified to carry 

 out the wishes of the Founders (Mr. Alles had died in 1895 

 and Mr. Guille in 1896) — and for over seventeen years he held 

 wise and beneficent sway over the workings of the Library 

 and Artisans' Institute. During the last year or two of his 

 life Mr. Pitts had, because of failing health, been almost lost 

 sight of by the public, but previous to the infirmities of age 

 setting in, his literary knowledge was ever at the disposal of 

 all who sought it and his geniality and obliging disposition 

 endeared him to the members. 



Mr. Pitts' was a striking personality — the intellectual, 

 if delicate-looking face, the high forehead, the thick bushy 

 hair and eyebrows, the soft felt hat and velvet coat, his quiet 

 manner and nobility of character will not be forgotten soon by 

 those who knew him. Ever eager to see the good in people, 

 always kind and generous, unselfish as few of us are, a true 

 lover of justice, such was John Linwood Pitts, such were 

 the fine qualities that governed his life and made of him a 

 beloved friend and fellow worker. 



He was the life-spring of the Guille-Alles Popular Lec- 

 tures, discontinued in 1914 because of the Great War after 

 an unbroken sequence of 25 winters of activity, in several of 

 which he himself lectured on some locally-treated subject 

 such as Journalism, Privateering, Smuggling, &c. His work 

 in connection with this Society, of which he was one of the 

 foundation members as also for many years a member of the 

 Council, was chiefly devoted to Folk-lore, a subject of research 

 in which he took considerable interest. Some of the results 



