And, naturally, we visited the Ford Works. A place where I found the efficiency of effort almost frighteningly uncanny. One of these days those inhumanly human machines will bridge the faint gulf that separates them from actual life, then, like Frankenstein's monster, they will turn upon their creators.

Galt (Friday, October 24th) gave the Prince another great reception; then, passing through Toronto, he travelled to Kingston, which he reached on Saturday, October 25th.

Kingston, though it had its beginnings in the old stone fort that Frontenac built on the margin of Lake Ontario to hold in check the English settlers in New York and their Iroquois allies, is unmistakably British. With its solid stone buildings, its narrow fillet of blue lake, its stone fortifications on the foreshore, and its rambling streets, it reminded me of Southampton town, especially before Southampton's Western Shore was built over. Its air of being a British seaport arises from the fact that it is a British port, for it was actually the arsenal and yard for the naval forces on the Great Lakes during the war of 1812.

And it also gets its English tone from the Royal Military College which exists here. The bravest function of the Prince's visit was in this college, where he presented colours to the cadets and saw them drill. The discipline of these boys on parade is worthy of Sandhurst, Woolwich or West Point, and their physique is equal to, if not better, than any shown at those places. It is not exactly a military school, though the training is military, for though some of the cadets join Imperial or Canadian forces, and all serve for a time in the Canadian Militia, practically all the boys join professions or go into commerce after passing through.

The Prince's reception at the college was fine, but his reception in the town itself was remarkable. The Public Park was black with people at the ceremony of welcome, and though he was down to "kick off" in the first of the Association League football matches, his kick off was actually a toss-up. That was the only way to get the ball moving in the dense throng that surged between the goal posts.

Kingston, too, gave the Prince the degree of Doctor of Laws. It is a proud honour, for Kingston boasts of being one of the oldest universities in Canada. But though its tradition is old, its spirit is modern enough; for its Chancellor is Mr. E. W. Beatty, the President of the Canadian Pacific Railways. It was from the Railway President-Chancellor the Prince received his degree.



CHAPTER XXII

MONTREAL

I

The Prince had had a brief but lively experience of Montreal earlier in his tour. It was but a hint of what was to happen when he returned on Monday, October 27th. It was not merely that Montreal as the biggest and richest city in Canada had set itself the task of winding up the trip in befitting manner; there was that about the quality of its entertainment which made it both startling and charming.

Even before the train reached Windsor Station the Prince was receiving a welcome from all the smaller towns that make up outlying Montreal. At these places the habitant Frenchmen and women crowded about the observation platform of the train to cry their friendliness in French, where English was unknown. And the friendliness was not all on the side of the habitants.

"They tole me," said one old habitant in workingman overalls, "they tole me I could not shake 'is han'. So I walk t'ro' them, Oui. An' 'e see me. A' 'e put out 'is 'an', an' 'e laf—so. I tell you 'e's a real feller, de kin' that shake han' wis men lak me."

Montreal itself met the Prince in a maze of confetti and snow. Montreal was showing its essential self by a happy accident. It was the Montreal of old France, gay and vivacious and full of colour mated to the stern stuff of Canada.

It is true there was not very much snow, merely a fleck of it in the air, that starred the wind-screens of the long line of automobiles that formed the procession; but Canada and Montreal are not all snow, either. It was as though the native spirit of the place was impressing upon us the feeling that underneath the gaiety we were encountering there was all the sternness of the pioneers that had made this fine town the splendid place it is.

There was certainly gaiety in the air on that day. The Prince drove out from the station into a city of cheering. Mighty crowds were about the station. Mighty crowds lined the great squares and the long streets through which he rode, and crowds filled the windows of sky-climbing stores. It was an animated crowd. It expressed itself with the unaided throat, as well as on whistles and with eerie noises on striped paper horns. It used rattles and it used sirens.

And mere noise being not enough, it loosed its confetti. As the Prince drove through the narrow canyon of the business streets, confetti was tossed down from high windows by the bagful. Streamers of all colours shot down from buildings and up from the sidewalks, until the snakes of vivid colour, skimming and uncoiling across the street, made a bright lattice over flagpole and telephone wire, and, with the bright flutter of the flags, gave the whole proceedings a vivid and carnival air.

Strips of coloured paper and torn letter headings fluttered down, too, and in such masses that those who were responsible must have got rid of them by the shovelful. Prince and car were very quickly entangled in fluttering strips and bright streamers, that snapped and fluttered like the multi-tinted tails of comets behind him as he sped.

There was an air of cheery abandon about this whole-hearted friendliness. The crowd was bright and vivacious. There was laughter and gaiety everywhere, and when the Prince turned a corner, it lifted its skirts and with fresh laughter raced across squares and along side streets in order to get another glimpse of this "real feller."

Bands of students, Frenchmen from Laval in velvet berets, and English from McGill, made the sidewalks lively. When they could, they rushed the cars of the procession and rode in thick masses on the footboards in order to keep up with the Royal progress. When policemen drove them off footboards, they waited for the next car to come along and got on to the footboards of that.

When the Prince went into the City Hall they tried to take the City Hall by storm, and succeeded, indeed, in clambering on to all those places where human beings should not go, and from there they sang to the vast crowd waiting for the exit of the Prince, choosing any old tune from "Oh, Canada," in French, to "Johnny's in Town," in polyglot.

It was a great reception, a reception with electricity in it. A reception where France added a colour and a charm to Britain and made it irresistible.

II

And it was only a sample, that reception.

Tuesday, October 28th, as a day, was tremendous. For the Prince it began at lunch, but a lunch of great brilliance. At the handsome Place Viger Hotel he was again the centre of crowds. Crowds waited in the streets, in spite of the greyness, the damp and the cold. Crowds filled the lobbies and galleries of the hotel to cheer him as he came.

In the great dining-room was a great crowd, a crowd that seemed to be growing out of a wilderness of flowers. There was an amazing profusion and beauty of flowers all through that room. And not merely were there flowers for decoration, but with a graceful touch the Mayor and the City Fathers, who gave that lunch, had set a perfect carnation at the plate of every guest as a favour for his buttonhole.

The gathering was as vivid as its setting. Gallic beards wagged amiably in answer to clean-shaven British lips. The soutane and amethyst cross sat next the Anglican apron and gaiters, and the khaki of two tongues had war experiences on one front translated by an interpreter.

It was an eager gathering that crowded forward from angles of the room or stood up on its seats in order to catch every word the Prince uttered, and it could not cheer warmly enough when he spoke with real feeling of the mutual respect that was the basis of the real understanding between the French-speaking and the English-speaking sections of the Canadian nation.

The reality of that mutual respect was borne out by the throngs that gathered in the streets when the Prince left the hotel. It was through a mere alley in humanity that his car drove to La Fontaine Park, and at the park there was an astonishing gathering.

In the centre of the grass were several thousand veteran soldiers who had served in the war. They were of all arms, from Highlanders to Flying Men, and, ranked in battalions behind their laurel-wreathed standards, they made a magnificent showing. Masses of wounded soldiers in automobiles filled one side of the great square, humanity of both sexes overflowed the other three sides. Ordinary methods of control were hopeless. The throng of people simply submerged all signs of authority and invaded the parade ground until on half of it it was impossible to distinguish khaki in ranks from men and women and children sightseers in chaos.

In the face of this crowd Montreal had to invent a new method of authority. The mounted men having failed to press the spectators back, tanks were loosed.... Oh, not the grim, steel Tanks of the war zone, but the frail and mobile Tanks of civilization—motor-cycles. The motor-cycle police were sent against the throng. The cycles, with their side-cars, swept down on the mass, charging cleverly until the speeding wheels seemed about to drive into civilian suitings. Under this novel method of rounding up, the thick wedges of people were broken up; they yielded and were gradually driven back to proper position.

Again the throngs in the park were only hints of what the Prince was to expect in his drive through the town. Leaving the grounds and turning into the long, straight and broad Sherbrooke Street, the bonnet of his automobile immediately lodged in the thickets of crowds. The splendid avenue was not big enough for the throngs it contained, and the people filled the pavements and spread right across the roadway.

Slowly, and only by forcing a way with the bonnet of the automobile, could the police drive a lane through the cheerful mass. The ride was checked down to a crawl, and as he neared his destination, the Art Gallery, progress became a matter of inches at a time only. It was a mighty crowd. It was not unruly or stubborn; it checked the Prince's progress simply because men and women conform to ordinary laws of space, and it was physically impossible to squeeze back thirty ranks into a space that could contain twenty only.

I suppose I should have written physically uncomfortable, for actually a narrow strip, the width of a car only, was driven through the throng. The people were jammed so tightly back that when the line of cars stopped, as it frequently had to, the people clambered on to the footboards for relief.

In front of the classic portico of the Art Gallery the scene was amazing. The broad street was a sea of heads. Before this wedge of people the Prince's car was stopped dead. Here the point of impossibility appeared to have been reached, for though he was to alight, there was no place for alighting, and even very little space for opening the door of the car. It was only by fighting that the police got him on to the pavement and up the steps of the gallery, and though the crowd was extraordinarily good-tempered, the scuffling was not altogether painless, for in that heaving mass clothes were torn and shins were barked in the struggle.

The Prince was to stand at the top of the steps of the Art Gallery to take the salute of the soldiers he had reviewed in La Fontaine Park, as they swung past in a Victory March. He stood there for over an hour waiting for them. The head of the column had started immediately after he had, but it found the difficulties of progress even more apparent than the Prince. The long column, with the trophies of captured guns and machines of war, could only press forward by fits and starts. At one time it seemed impossible that the veterans would ever get through the pack of citizens, and word was given that the march had been postponed. But by slow degrees the column forced a way to the Art Gallery, and gave the Prince the salute amid enthusiasm that must remain memorable even in Montreal's long history of splendid memories.

III

Montreal had set to excel itself as a host, and every moment of the Prince's days was brilliantly filled. There were vivid receptions and splendid dances at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel and the big and comfortable Hotel Windsor. Montreal is the centre of most things in Canada; in it are the head offices of the great railways and the great newspapers and the leading financial and commercial concerns. The big men who control these industries are hospitable with a large gesture. In the hands of these men, not only the Prince, but the members of his entourage had a royal time.

Personally, though I found Montreal a delightful city, a city of vividness and vivacity, I was, in one sense, not sorry to leave it, for I felt myself rapidly disintegrating under the kindnesses showered upon us.

This kindness had its valuable experience: it brought us into contact with many of the men who are helping to mould the future of Canada. We met such capable minds as those who are responsible for the organization of such great companies as the Canadian Pacific and the Grand Trunk Railways. We met many of the great and brilliant newspaper men, such as Senator White, of the Montreal Gazette, who with his exceedingly able right-hand man, Major John Bassett, was our good friend always and our host many times. All these men are undoubtedly forces in the future of Canada. We were able to get from them a juster estimate of Canada, her prospects and her potentialities, than we could have obtained by our unaided observation. And, more, we got from contact with such men as these an appreciation of the splendid qualities that make the Canadian citizen so definite a force in the present and future of the world.

IV

During his stay in Montreal the Prince was brought in contact with every phase of civic life. On Wednesday, October 29th, he went by train through the outlying townships on Montreal Island, calling at the quaint and beautifully decorated villages of the habitants, that usually bear the names of old French saints. The inhabitants of these places, though said to be taciturn and undemonstrative, met the train in crowds, and in crowds jostled to get at the Prince and shake his hand, and they showed particular delight when he addressed them in their own tongue.

On Thursday, October 30th, the Prince drove about Montreal itself, going to the docks where ocean-going ships lie at deep-water quays under the towering elevators and the giant loading gear. Amid college yells, French and English, he toured through the great universities of Laval and McGill—famous for learning and Stephen Leacock. He also toured the districts where the working man lives, holding informal receptions there.

He opened athletic clubs and went to dances. At the balls he was at once the friend of everybody by his zest for dancing and his delightfully human habit of playing truant in order to sit out on the stairs with bright partners.

As ever his thoughtfulness and tact created legends. I was told, and I believe it to be true, that after one dinner he was to drive straight to a big dance; but, hearing that a great number of people had collected along the route to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel where he was staying, under the impression that he was to return there, he gave orders that his car was to go to the hotel before going to the dance. It was an unpleasant night, and the drive took him considerably out of his way; but, rather than disappoint the people who had gathered waiting, he took the roundabout journey—and he took it standing in his car so that the people could see him in the light of the lamps.

It was at Montreal, too, that the Prince went to his first theatrical performance in Canada. A great and bright gala performance on music-hall lines had been arranged at one of the principal theatres, and this the Prince attended. The audience with some restraint watched him as he sat in his box, wondering what their attitude should be. But a joke sent him off in a tremendous laugh, and all, realizing that he was there to enjoy himself, joined with him in that enjoyment. He declared as he left the theatre that it was "A scrumptious show."

V

On Sunday, November 3rd, Montreal, after winding up the tour with a mighty week, gave the Prince a mighty send-off. Officially the tour in Canada was ended, though there were two or three extraordinary functions to be filled at Toronto and Ottawa. The chief of these was at Toronto on Tuesday, November 4th, when the Prince made the most impressive speech of the whole tour at Massey Hall.

This hall was packed with one of the keenest audiences the Prince had faced in Canada. It was made up of members of the Canadian and Empire Clubs, and every man there was a leader in business. It was both a critical gathering and an acute one. It would take nothing on trust, yet it could appreciate every good point. This audience the Prince won completely.

It was the longest speech the Prince had made, yet he never spoke better; he had both mastered his nervousness and his need for notes. Decrying his abilities as an orator, he yet won his hearing by his very lack of oratorical affectation.

He spoke very earnestly of the wonderful reception he had had throughout the breadth of Canada, from every type of Canadian—a reception, he said, which he was not conceited enough to imagine was given to himself personally, but to him as heir to the British throne and to the ideal which that throne stood for. The throne, he pointed out, consolidated the democratic tradition of the Empire, because it was a focus for all men and races, for it was outside parties and politics; it was a bond which held all men together. The Empire of which the throne was the focal point was different from other and ancient Empires. The Empires of Greece and Rome were composed of many states owing allegiance to the mother state. That ideal was now obsolete. The British Empire was a single state composed of many nations which give allegiance not so much to the mother country, but to the great common system of life and government. That is, the Dominions were no longer Colonies but sister nations of the British Empire.

Every point of this telling speech was acutely realized and immediately applauded, though perhaps the warmest applause came after the Prince's definition of the Empire, and after his declaration that, in visiting the United States of America, he regarded himself not only as an Englishman but as a Canadian and a representative of the whole Empire.

In a neat and concise speech the Chairman of the meeting had already summed up the meaning and effect of the Prince's visit to Canada. The Prince, he said, had passed through Canada on a wave of enthusiasm that had swept throughout and had dominated the country. That enthusiasm could have but one effect, that of deepening and enriching Canadian loyalty to the Crown, and giving a new sense of solidarity among the people of Canada. "Our Indian compatriots," he concluded, "with picturesque aptness have acclaimed the Prince as Chief Morning Star. That name is well and prophetically chosen. His visit will usher in for Canada a new day full of wide-flung influence and high achievements."

This summary is the best comment on the reason and effect of the tour.

VI

The last phase of this truly remarkable tour through Canada was staged in Ottawa. As far as ceremonial went, it was entirely quiet, though the Prince made this an occasion for receiving and thanking those Canadians whose work had helped to make his visit a success. Apart from this, the Prince spent restful and recreative days at Government House, in preparation for the strenuous time he was to have across the American border.

But before he reached Ottawa there was just one small ceremony that, on the personal side, fittingly brought the long travel through Canada to an end. At a siding near Colburn on the Ottawa road the train was stopped, and the Prince personally thanked the whole staff of "this wonderful train" for the splendid service they had rendered throughout the trip. It was, he said, a record of magnificent team work, in which every individual had worked with untiring and unfailing efficiency.

He made his thanks not only general but also individual, for he shook hands with every member of the train team; chefs in white overalls, conductors in uniform, photographers, the engineers in jeans and peaked caps, waiters, clerks, negro porters and every man who had helped to make that journey so marked an achievement, passed before him to receive his thanks.

And when this was accomplished the Prince himself took over the train for a spell. He became the engine-driver.

He mounted into the cab and drove the engine for eighteen miles, donning the leather gauntlets (which every man in Canada who does dirty work wears), and manipulating the levers. Starting gingerly at first, he soon had the train bowling along merrily at a speed that would have done credit to an old professional.

At Flavelle the usual little crowd had gathered ready to surround the rear carriage. To their astonishment, they found the Prince in the cab, waving his hat out of the window at them, enjoying both their surprise and his own achievement.

On Wednesday, November 5th, the journey ended at Ottawa, and the train was broken up to our intense regret. For us it had been a train-load of good friends, and though many were to accompany us to America, many were not, and we felt the parting. Among those who came South with us was our good friend "Chief" Chamberlain, who had been in control of the C.P.R. police responsible for the Prince's safety throughout the trip. He was one of the most genial cosmopolitans of the world, with the real Canadian genius for friendship—indeed so many friends had he, that the Prince of Wales expressed the opinion that Canada was populated by seven million people, mainly friends of "the Chief."



CHAPTER XXIII

WASHINGTON

I

My own first real impression of the United States lay in my sorrow that I had been betrayed into winter underclothing.

When the Prince left Ottawa on the afternoon of November 10th in the President's train, the weather was bitterly cold. I suppose it was bitterly cold for most of the run south, but an American train does not allow a hint of such a thing to penetrate. The train was steam-heated to a point to which I had never been trained. And at Washington the station was steam-heated and the hotel was steam-heated, and Washington itself was, for that moment, on the steam-heated latitude. America, I felt, had rather "put it over on me."

It was at 8.20 on the night of Monday the 10th that the Prince entered the United States at the little station of Rouses Point. There was very little ceremony, and it took only the space of time to change our engine of Canada to an engine of America. But the short ceremony under the arc lamps, and in the centre a small crowd, had attraction and significance.

On the platform were drawn up ranks of khaki men, but khaki men with a new note to us. It was a guard of honour of "Doughboys," stocky and useful-looking fellows, in their stetsons and gaiters. Close to them was a band of American girls, holding as a big canopy the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes joined together to make one flag, joined in one piece to signify the meeting-place of the two Anglo-Saxon peoples also.

With this company were the officials who had come to welcome the Prince at the border. They were led by Mr. Lansing, the Secretary of State, Major-General Biddle, who commanded the Americans in England, and who was to be the Prince's Military aide, and Admiral Niblack, who was to be the Naval aide while the Prince was the guest of the United States.

The Prince in a Guard's greatcoat greeted his new friends, and inspected the Doughboys, laughing back at the crowd when some one called: "Good for you, Prince." To the ladies who held the twin flags he also expressed his thanks, telling them it was very nice of them to come out on so cold a night to meet him. Feminine America was, for an instant, non-plussed, and found nothing to answer. But their vivacity quickly came back to them, and they very quickly returned the friendliness and smiles of the Prince, shook his hand and wished him the happiest of visits in their country.

The interchange of nationalities in engines being effected, the train swung at a rapid pace beside the waters of Lake Champlain, pushing south along the old marching route into and out of Canada.

On the morning of November 11th it was raining heavily and the train ran through a depressing greyness. We were all eager to see America, and see her at her best, but a train journey, especially in wet weather, shows a country at its worst. The short stops, for instance, in the stations of great cities like Philadelphia and Baltimore were the sort of things to give a false impression. The stations themselves were empty, a novelty to us, who had had three months of crowded stations, and, also, about these stations we saw slums, for the first time on this Western continent. After having had the conviction grow up within me that this Continent was the land of comely and decent homes, the sight of these drab areas and bad roads was, personally, a shock. Big and old cities find it hard to eliminate slums, but it seemed to me that it would be merely good business to remove such places from out of sight of the railways, and to plan town approaches on a more impressive scale. America certainly can plan buildings on an impressive scale. It has the gift of architecture.

The train went through to Washington in what was practically a non-stop run, and arrived in the rain. The Prince was received in the rain at the back of the train, though that reception was truncated, so that the great Americans who were there to meet him could be presented in the dryness under the station roof.

Heading the group of notable men who met the Prince was the Vice-President, Mr. Marshall, and with him was the British Ambassador, Lord Grey, and General Pershing, a popular figure with the waiting crowd and a hero regarded with rapture by American young womanhood—which was willing to break the Median regulations of the American police to get "just one look at him."

Outside the station there was a vast crowd of American men and women who had braved the downpour to give the Prince a welcome of that peculiarly generous quality which we quickly learnt was the natural expression of the American feeling towards guests.

I was told, too, that crowds along the streets caught up that very cheerful greeting, so that all through his ride along the beautiful streets to the Belmont House in New Hampshire Avenue, which was to be his home in Washington, the Prince was made aware of the hospitality extended to him.

But of this fact I can only speak from hearsay. The Press Correspondents were unable to follow His Royal Highness through the city. We were told that a car was to be placed at our disposal, as one had been elsewhere, and we were asked to wait our turn. Wait we certainly did, until the last junior attache had been served. By that time, however, His Royal Highness had outdistanced us, for, without a car and without being able to join the procession at an early interval, we lost touch with happenings.

By the time we were able to get on to the route the streets were deserted; all we could do was to admire through the rain the architecture of one of the most beautiful cities of the world.

Apart from the rain on the first day, there was another factor which handicapped Washington in its welcome to the Prince—the warmth of which could not be doubted when it had opportunity for adequate expression. This was the fact that no program of his doings was published. For some reason which I do not pretend to understand, the time-table of his comings and goings about the city was not issued to the Press, so that the people of Washington had but vague ideas of where to see him. The Washington journalists protested to us that this was unfair to a city that has such a great and just reputation for its public hospitality.

However, where the Prince and the Washington people did come together there was an immediate and mutual regard. There was just such a "mixing" that evening, when he visited the National Press Club.

He had spent the day quietly, receiving and returning calls. One of these calls was upon President Wilson at the White House, the Prince driving through this city of an ideal in architecture come true, to spend ten minutes with Mrs. Wilson in a visit of courtesy.

The National Press Club at Washington is probably unique of its kind. I don't mean by that that it is comfortable and attractive; all American and Canadian clubs are supremely comfortable and attractive, for in this Continent clubs have been exalted to the plane of a gracious and fine art; I mean that the spirit of the club gave it a distinguished and notable quality.

America being a country extremely interested in politics—Americans enter into politics as Englishmen enter into cricket—and Washington being the vibrant centre of that intense political concern, the most acute brains of the American news world naturally gravitate to the Capital. The National Press Club at Washington is a club of experts. Its membership is made up of men whose keen intelligence, brilliance in craft and devotion to their calling has lifted them to the top of the tree in their own particular metier.

There was about these men that extraordinary zest in work and every detail of that work that is the secret of American driving power. With them, and with every other American I came into contact with, I felt that work was attacked with something of the joy of the old craftsman. My own impression after a short stay in America is that the American works no harder, and perhaps not so hard as the average Briton; but he works with infinitely more zest, and that is what makes him the dangerous fellow in competition that he is.

The Prince had met many journalists at Belmont House in the morning, and had very readily accepted an invitation to visit them at their club, and after dinner he came not into this den of lions, but into a den of Daniels—a condition very trying for lions. Arriving in evening dress, his youth seemed accentuated among so many shrewd fellows, who were there obviously not to take him or any one for granted.

From the outset his frankness and entire lack of affectation created the best of atmospheres, and in a minute or two his sense of humour had made all there his friends. Having met a few of the journalist corps in the morning, he now expressed a wish to meet them all. The President of the Club raised his eyebrows, and, indicating the packed room, suggested that "all" was, perhaps, a large order. The Prince merely laughed: "All I ask is that you don't grip too hard," he said, and he shook hands with and spoke to every member present.

The Prince certainly made an excellent impression upon men able to judge the quality of character without being dazzled by externals, and many definite opinions were expressed after he left concerning his modesty, his manliness and his faculty for being "a good mixer," which is the faculty Americans most admire.

II

Wednesday, November 13th, was a busy day. The Prince was out early driving through the beautiful avenues of the city in a round of functions.

Washington is one of the most attractive of cities to drive in. It is a city, one imagines, built to be the place where the architects' dreams come true. It has the air of being a place where the designer has been able to work at his best; climate and a clarified air, natural beauty and the approbation of brother men have all conspired to help and stimulate.

It has scores of beautiful and magnificently proportioned buildings, each obviously the work of a fine artist, and practically every one of those buildings has been placed on a site as effective and as appropriate as its design. That, perhaps, was a simple matter, for the whole town had been planned with a splendid art. Its broad avenues and its delightful parks fit in to the composite whole with an exquisite justness. Its residences have the same charm of excellent craftsmanship one appreciates in the classic public buildings; they are mellow in colouring, behind their screen of trees; nearly all are true and fine in line, while some—an Italianate house on, I think, 15th Avenue, which is the property of Mr. McLean of the Washington Post, is one—are supremely beautiful.

The air of the city is astonishingly clear, and the grave white buildings of the Public Offices, the splendid white aspiration of the skyscrapers, have a sparkling quality that shows them to full advantage. There may, of course, be more beautiful cities than Washington, but certainly Washington is beautiful enough.

The streets have an exhilaration. There is an intense activity of humanity. Automobiles there are, of course, by the thousand, parked everywhere, with policemen strolling round to chalk times on them, or to impound those cars that previous chalk-marks show to have been parked beyond the half-hour or hour of grace. The sidewalks are vivid with the shuttling of the smartest of women, women who choose their clothes with a crispness, a flair of their own, and which owes very little to other countries, and carry them and themselves with a vivid exquisiteness that gives them an undeniable individuality. The stores are as the Canadian stores, only there are more of them, and they are bigger. Their windows make a dado of attractiveness along the streets, but, all the same, I do not think the windows are dressed quite as well as in London, and I'm nearly sure not so well as in Canada—but this is a mere masculine opinion.

Through this attractive city the Prince drove in a round of ceremonies. His first call was at the Headquarters of the American Red Cross, then wrung with the fervours of a "tag" week of collecting. From here he went to the broad, sweet park beside the Potomac, where a noble memorial was being erected to the memory of Lincoln. This, as might be expected from this race of fine builders, is an admirable Greek structure admirably situated in the green of the park beside the river.

The Prince went over the building, and gained an idea of what it would be like on completion from the plans. He also surprised his guides by his intimate knowledge of Lincoln's life and his intense admiration for him.

At the hospital, shortly after, he visited two thousand of "My comrades in arms," as he called them. Outside the hospital on the lawns were many men who had been wounded at Chateau Thierry, some in wheeled chairs. Seeing them, the Prince swung aside from his walk to the hospital entrance and chatted with them, before entering the wards to speak with others of the wounded men.

On leaving the hospital he was held up. A Red Cross nurse ran up to him and "tagged" him, planting the little Red Cross button in his coat and declaring that the Prince was enrolled in the District Chapter. The Prince very promptly countered with a dollar bill, the official subscription, saying that his enrolment must be done in proper style and on legal terms.

In the afternoon, the Prince utilized his free time in making a call on the widow of Admiral Dewey, spending a few minutes in interesting conversation with her.

The evening was given over to one of the most brilliant scenes of the whole tour. At the head of the splendid staircase of white marble in the Congress Library he held a reception of all the members of the Senate and the House of Representatives, their wives and their families.

Even to drive to such a reception was to experience a thrill.

As the Prince drove down the straight and endless avenues that strike directly through Washington to the Capitol, like spokes to the hub of a vast wheel, he saw that immense, classic building shining above the city in the sky. In splendid and austere whiteness the Capitol rises terrace upon terrace above the trees, its columns, its cornices and its dome blanched in the cold radiance of scores of arc lights hidden among the trees.

Like fireflies attracted to this centre of light, cars moved their sparkling points of brightness down the vivid avenues, and at the vestibule of the Library, which lies in the grounds apart from the Capitol, set down fit denizens for this kingdom of radiance.

Senators and parliamentarians generally are sober entities, but wives and daughters made up for them in colour and in comeliness. In cloth of gold, in brocades, in glowing satin and flashing silk, multi-coloured and ever-shifting, a stream of jewelled vivacity pressed up the severe white marble stairs in the severe white marble hall. There could not have been a better background for such a shining and pulsating mass of living colour. There was no distraction from that warm beauty of moving humanity; the flowers, too, were severe, severe and white; great masses of white chrysanthemums were all that was needed, were all that was there.

And at the head of the staircase a genius in design had made one stroke of colour, one stroke of astounding and poignant scarlet. On this scarlet carpet the Prince in evening dress stood and encountered the tide of guests that came up to him, were received by him, and flowed away from him in a thousand particles and drops of colour, as women, with all the vivacity of their clothes in their manner, and men in uniforms or evening dress, striving to keep pace with them, went drifting through the high, clear purity of the austere corridors.

It was a scene of infinite charm. It was a scene of infinite significance, also. For close to the Prince as he stood and received the men and women of America, were many original documents dealing with the separation of England and the American colonies. There was much in the fact that a Prince of England should be receiving the descendants of those colonies in such surroundings, and meeting those descendants with a friendliness and frankness which equalled their own frank friendliness.

III

Thursday, November 14th, was a day of extreme interest for the Prince. It was the day when he visited the home of the first President of America, and also visited, in his home, the President in power today.

The morning was given over to an investiture of the American officers and nurses who had won British honours during the war. It was held at Belmont House, and was a ceremony full of colour. Members of all the diplomatic corps in Washington in their various uniforms attended, and these were grouped in the beautiful ballroom full of splendid pictures and wonderful china. The simplicity of the investiture itself stood out against the colourful setting as generals in khaki, admirals in blue, the rank and file of both services, and the neat and picturesque Red Cross nurses came quietly across the polished floor to receive their decorations and a comradely hand-clasp from the Prince.

It was after lunch that the Prince motored out to Mount Vernon, the home and burial-place of Washington, to pay his tribute to the great leader of the first days of America. It is a serene and beautiful old house, built in the colonial style, with a pillared verandah along its front. The visit here was of the simplest kind.

At the modest tomb of the great general and statesman, which is near the house, the Prince in silence deposited a wreath, and a little distance away he also planted a cedar to commemorate his visit. He showed his usual keen curiosity in the house, whose homely rooms of mellow colonial furniture seemed as though they might be filled at any moment with gentlemen in hessians and brave coats, whose hair was in queues and whose accents would be loud and rich in condemnation of the interference of the Court Circle overseas.

Showing interest in the historic details of the house, the picture of his grandfather abruptly filled him with anxiety. He looked at the picture and asked if "Baron Renfrew" (King Edward) had worn a top hat on his visit, and from his nervousness it seemed that he felt that his own soft felt hat was not quite the thing. He was reassured, however, on this point, for democracy has altered many things since the old days, including hats.

Both on his way out, and his return journey, the Prince was the object of enthusiasm from small groups who recognized him, most of whom had trusted to luck or their intuition for their chance of seeing him. About the entrance of the White House, to which he drove, there was a small and ardent crowd, which cheered him when he swept through the gates with his motor-cycle escort, and bought photographs of him from hawkers when he had passed. The hawker, in fact, did a brisk trade.

There had been much speculation whether His Royal Highness would be able to see President Wilson at all, for he was yet confined to his bed. The doctors decided for it, and there was a very pleasant meeting which seems to have helped the President to renew his good spirits in the youthful charm of his visitor.

After taking tea with Mrs. Wilson, His Royal Highness went up to the room of the President on the second floor, and Mr. Wilson, propped up in bed, received him. The friendship that had begun in England was quickly renewed, and soon both were laughing over the Prince's experiences on his tour and "swopping" impressions.

Mr. Wilson's instinctive vein of humour came back to him under the pleasure of the reunion, and he pointed out to the Prince that if he was ill in bed, he had taken the trouble to be ill in a bed of some celebrity. It was a bed that made sickness auspicious. King Edward had used it when he had stayed at the White House as "Baron Renfrew," and President Lincoln had also slept on it during his term of office, which perhaps accounted for its massive and rugged utility.

The visit was certainly a most attractive one for the President, and had an excellent effect; his physician reported the next morning that Mr. Wilson's spirits had risen greatly, and that as a result of the enjoyable twenty minutes he had spent with the Prince. On Friday, November 15th, the Prince went to the United States Naval College at Annapolis, a place set amid delightful surroundings. He inspected the whole of the Academy, and was immensely impressed by the smartness of the students, who, themselves, marked the occasion by treating him to authentic college yells on his departure.

The week-end was spent quietly at the beautiful holiday centre of Sulphur Springs. It was a visit devoted to privacy and golf.

IV

During our stay in Washington the air was thick with politics, for it was the week in which the Senate were dealing with Clause Ten of the Peace Treaty. The whole of Washington, and, in fact, the whole of America, was tingling with politics, and we could not help being affected by the current emotion.

I am not going to attempt to discuss American politics, but I will say that it seemed to me that politics enter more personally into the life of Americans than with the British, and that they feel them more intensely. At the same time I had a definite impression that American politics have a different construction to ours. The Americans speak of "The Political Game," and I had the feeling that it was a game played with a virtuosity of tactics and with a metallic intensity, and the principle of the game was to beat the other fellows. So much so that the aim and end of politics were obscured, and that the battle was fought not about measures but on the advantages one party would gain over another by victory.

That is, the "Political Game" is a game of the "Ins" and "Outs" played for parliamentary success with the habitual keenness and zest of the American.

This is not a judgment but an impression. I do not pretend to know anything of America. I do not think any one can know America well unless he is an American. Those who think that America quickly yields its secrets to the British mind simply because America speaks the English language need the instruction of a visit to America.

America has all the individuality and character of a separate and distinct State. To think that the United States is a sort of Transatlantic Britain is simply to approach the United States with a set of preconceived notions that are bound to suffer considerable jarring. Both races have many things in common, that is obvious from the fact of a common language, and, in a measure, from a common descent; but they have things that are not held in common. It needs a closer student of America than I am to go into this; I merely give my own impression, and perhaps a superficial one at that. It may offer a point of elucidation to those people who find themselves shocked because English-speaking America sometimes does not act in an English manner, or respond to English acts.

America is America first and all the time; it is as complete and as definite in its spirits as the oldest of nations, and in its own way. Its patriotism is intense, more intense than British patriotism (though not more real), because by nature the American is more intense. The vivid love of Americans for America is the same type of passion that the Frenchman has for France.

The character of the American, as I encountered him in Washington, Detroit, and New York—a very limited orbit—suggested differences from the character of the Englishman. The American, as I see him, is more simple, more puritan, and more direct than the Briton. His generosity is a most astonishing thing. He is, as far as I can see, a genuine lover of his brother-man, not theoretically but actively, for he is anxious to get into contact, to "mix," to make the most of even a chance acquaintance. Simply and directly he exposes the whole of himself, says what he means and withholds nothing, so that acquaintance should be made on an equitable and genuine basis. To the more conservative Briton this is alarming; brought up in a land of reticences, the Briton wonders what the American is "getting at," what does he want? What is his game? The American on his side is baffled by the British habit of keeping things back, and he, too, perhaps wonders why this fellow is going slow with me? Doesn't he want to be friends?

Personally, I think that the directness and simplicity of the Americans is the directness and simplicity of the artist, the man who has no use for unessentials. And one gets this sense of artistry in an American's business dealings. He goes directly at his object, and he goes with a concentrated power and a zest that is exhilarating. Here, too, he exposes his hand in a way bewildering to the Britisher, who sometimes finds the American so candid in his transactions that he becomes suspicious of there being something more behind it.

To the American work is something zestful, joyous. He likes to get things done; he likes to do big things with a big gesture—sometimes to the damage of detail, which he has overlooked—for him work is craftsmanship, a thing to be carried through with the delight of a craftsman. He is, in fact, the artist as business man.

Like all artists he has an air of hardness, the ruthlessness to attain an end. But like all artists he is quick and generous, vivid in enthusiasm and hard to daunt. Like the artist he is narrow in his point of view at times and decisive in opinion—simply because his own point of vision is all-absorbing.

This, for example, is apparent in his democracy, which is extraordinarily wide in certain respects, and singularly restricted in others—an example of this is the way the Americans handle offenders against their code; whether they be I.W.W., strikers or the like, their attitude is infinitely more ruthless than the British attitude. Another example is, having so splendid a freedom, they allow themselves to be "bossed" by policemen, porters and a score of others who exert an authority so drastic on occasions that no Briton would stand it.

But over all I was struck by the vividity of the Americans I met. Business men, journalists, writers, store girls, clerks, clubmen, railway men—all of them had an air of passionate aliveness, an intellectual avidity that made contact with them an affair of delightful excitement.



CHAPTER XXIV

NEW YORK

There was no qualification or reservation in New York's welcome to the Prince of Wales.

In the last year or so I have seen some great crowds, and by that I mean not merely vast aggregations of people, but vast gatherings of people whose ardour carried away the emotions with a tremendous psychic force. During that year I had seen the London crowd that welcomed back the British military leader; the London and Manchester crowds, and vivid and stirring crowds they were, that dogged the footsteps of President Wilson; I had seen the marvellous and poignant crowd at the London Victory March, and I had had a course of crowds, vigorous, affectionate and lively, in Montreal, Toronto and throughout Canada.

I had been toughened to crowds, yet the New York crowd that welcomed the Prince was a fresh experience. It was a crowd that, in spite of writing continuously about crowds for four months, gave me a direct impulse to write yet again about a crowd, that gave me the feeling that here was something fresh, sparkling, human, warm, ardent and provocative. It was a crowd with a flutter of laughter in it, a crowd that had a personality, an insouciance, an independence in its friendliness. It was a crowd that I shall always put beside other mental pictures of big crowds, in that gallery of clear vignettes of things impressive that make the memory.

There was a big crowd about the Battery long before the Prince was due to arrive across the river from the Jersey City side. It was a good-humoured crowd that helped the capable New York policemen to keep itself well in hand. It was not only thick about the open grass space of the Battery, but it was clustering on the skeleton structure of the Elevated Railway, and mounting to the sky, floor by floor, on the skyscrapers.

High up on the twenty-second floor of neighbouring buildings we could see a crowd of dolls and windows, and the dolls were waving shreds of cotton. The dolls were women and the cotton shred was "Old Glory." High up on the tremendous cornice of one building a tiny man stood with all the calm gravity of a statue. He was unconcerned by the height, he was only concerned in obtaining an eagle's eye view.

About the landing-stage itself, the landing-stage where the new Americans and the notabilities land, there was a wide space, kept clear by the police. Admirable police these, who can handle crowds with any police, who held us up with a wall of adamant until we showed our letters from the New York Reception Committee (our only, and certainly not the official, passes), and then not only let us through without fuss but helped us in every possible way to go everywhere and see everything.

In this wide space were gathered the cars for the procession, and the notabilities who were to meet the Prince, and the camera men who were to snap him. Into it presently marched United States Marines and Seamen. A hefty lot of men, who moved casually, and with a slight sense of slouch as though they wished to convey "We're whales for fighting, but no damned militarists."

Since the Prince was not entering New York by steamer—the most thrilling way—but by means of a railway journey from Sulphur Springs, New York had taken steps to correct this mode of entry. He was not to miss the first impact of the city. He would make a water entry, if only an abbreviated one, and so experience one of the Seven (if there are not more, or less) Sensations of the World, a sight of the profile of Manhattan Island.

The profile of Manhattan (blessed name that O. Henry has rolled so often on the palate) is lyric. It is a sierra of skyscrapers. It is a flight of perfect rockets, the fire of which has frozen into solidity in mid-soaring. It is a range of tall, narrow, poignant buildings that makes the mind think of giants, or fairies, or, anyhow, of creatures not quite of this world. It is one of the few things the imagination cannot visualize adequately, and so gets from it a satisfaction and not a disappointment.

This sight the Prince saw as he crossed in a launch from the New Jersey side, and "the beauty and dignity of the towering skyline," his own words, so impressed him that he was forced to speak of it time and time again during his visit to the city. And on top of that impression came the second and even greater one, for, and again I use his own words, "men and women appeal to me even more than sights." This second impression was "the most warm and friendly welcome that followed me all through the drive in the city."

When the Prince landed he seemed to me a little anxious; he was at the threshold of a great and important city, and his welcome was yet a matter of speculation. In less than fifteen minutes he was smiling as he had smiled all through Canada, and, as in Canada, he was standing in his car, formality forgotten, waving back to the crowd with a friendliness that matched the friendliness with which he was received.

He faced the city of Splendid Heights with glances of wonder at the line of cornices that crowned the narrow canyon of Broadway, and rose up crescendo in a vista closed by the campanile of the Woolworth Building, raised like a pencil against the sky, fifty-five storeys high. On the beaches beneath these great crags, on the sidewalks, and pinned between the sturdy policemen—who do not turn backs to the crowd but face it alertly—and the sheer walls was a lively and vast throng. And rising up by storeys was a lively and vast throng, hanging out of windows and clinging to ledges, perilous but happy in their skyscraper-eye view.

And from these high-up windows there began at once a characteristic "Down Town" expression of friendliness. Ticker-tape began to shoot downward in long uncoiling snakes to catch in flagpoles and window-ledges in strange festoons. Strips of paper began to descend in artificial snow, and confetti, and basket-loads of torn letter paper. All manner of bits of paper fluttered and swirled in the air, making a grey nebula in the distance; glittering like spangles of gold against the severe white cliffs of the skyscrapers when the sun caught them.

On the narrow roadway the long line of automobiles was littered and strung with paper, and the Prince had a mantle of it, and was still cheery. He could not help himself. The reception he was getting would have swept away a man of stone, and he has never even begun to be a man of stone. The pace was slow, because of the marching Marine escort, and people and Prince had full opportunity for sizing up each other. And both people and Prince were satisfied.

Escorted by the motor-cyclist police, splendid fellows who chew gum and do their duty with an astonishing certainty and nimbleness, the Prince came to the City Hall Square, where the modern Brontosaurs of commerce lift mightily above the low and graceful City Hall, which has the look of a petite mother perpetually astonished at the size of the brood she has reared.

Inside the hall the Prince became a New Yorker, and received a civic welcome. He expressed his real pride at now being a Freeman of the two greatest cities in the world, New York and London, two cities that were, moreover, so much akin, and upon which depends to an extraordinary degree the financial health and the material as well as spiritual welfare of all continents. As for his welcome, he had learnt to appreciate the quality of American friendship from contact with members of the splendid fighting forces that had come overseas, but even that, he indicated, had not prepared him for the wonder of the greeting he had received.

Outside the City Hall the vast throng had waited patiently, and they seemed to let their suppressed energy go as the Prince came out of the City Hall to face the massed batteries of photographers, who would only allow snapshots to be his "pass" to his automobile.

The throngs in financial "Down Town" gave way to the massed ranks of workers from the big wholesale and retail houses that occupy middle New York as the Prince passed up Broadway, the street that is not as broad as other streets, and the only one that wanders at its own fancy in a kingdom of parallels and right-angles. At the corner where stands Wanamaker's great store the crowd was thickest. Here was stationed a band in a quaint old-time uniform of red tunics, bell trousers and shakos, while facing them across the street was a squad of girls in pretty blue and white military uniforms and hats.

Soon the line of cars swung into speed and gained Fifth Avenue, passing the Flatiron building, which is now not a wonder. Such soaring structures as the Metropolitan Tower, close by in Madison Square, have taken the shine out of it, and in the general atmosphere of giants one does not notice its freakishness unless one is looking for it.

Fifth Avenue is superb; it is the route of pageants by right of air and quality. It is Oxford Street, London, made broad and straight and clean. It has fine buildings along its magnificent reach, and some noble ones. It has dignity and vivacity, it has space and it has an air. In the graceful open space about Madison Square there stood the massive Arch of Victory, under which America's soldiers had swung when they returned from the front. It was a temporary arch constructed with realism and ingenuity; the Prince passed under it on his way up the avenue.

He went at racing pace up to and into Central Park, that convincing affectation of untrammelled Nature (convincing because it is untrammelled), that beautiful residences of town dwellers look into. He swung to the left by the gracious pile of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and out on to Riverside Park, that hangs its gardens over the deep waters of the Hudson River. Standing isolated and with a fine serenity above green and water is General Grant's tomb, and at the wideflung white plaza of this the Prince dismounted, going on foot to the tomb, and in the tomb, going alone to deposit a wreath on the great soldier's grave.

Riverside Park had its flowering of bright people, and its multitude of motors to swarm after the Prince as he passed along the Drive, paused to review a company of English-Americans who had served in the war, and then continued on his way to the Yacht Club jetty, where he was to take boat to the Renown. Lying in deep water high up in the town was this one of the greatest of the modern warships, her greatness considerably diminished by the buildings lifting above her. To her the Prince went after nearly three months' absence, and on her he lived during his stay in New York.

II

When I say that the Prince lived on board the Renown, I mean that he lived on her in his moments to spare. In New York the visitor is lucky who has a few moments to spare. New York's hospitality is electric. It rushes the guest off his feet. Even if New York is not definitely engaged to entertain you at specific minutes, it comes round to know if you have everything you want, whether it can do anything for you.

New York was calling on the Prince almost as soon as he went aboard. There was a lightning lunch to Mr. Wanamaker, the President of the Reception Committee, and other members of that body, and then the first of the callers began to chug off from the landing-stage towards the Renown. Deputations from all the foreign races that make New York came over the side, distinguished Americans called. And, before anybody else, the American journalist was there.

The Prince was no stranger to the American journalist. They were old friends of his. Some of them had been with him in the Maritime Provinces of Canada, and he had made friends with them at Quebec. He remembered these writers and that friendship was renewed in a pleasant chat. The journalists liked him, too, though they admit that he has a charming way of disarming them. They rather admired the adroit diplomacy with which he derailed such leading questions as those dealing with the delicate and infinite subject of American girls: whether he liked them: and how much?

He met these correspondents quite frankly, appreciating at once the fact that it was through them that he could express to the people of America his intense feeling of thanks for the singular warmth of America's greeting.

From seeing all these visitors the Prince had only time left to get into evening dress and to be whirled off in time to attend a glittering dinner given at the Waldorf-Astoria by Mrs. Henry Pomeroy Davidson on behalf of the Council of the American Red Cross. It was a vivid and beautiful function, but it was one that bridged the time before another, and before ten o'clock the Prince was on the move again, and, amid the dance of the motor-bike "cops," was being rushed off to the Metropolitan Opera House.

He was swung down Broadway where the advertisements made a fantasy of the sky, a fantasy of rococo beauty where colours on the huge pallets of skyscrapers danced and ran, fused and faded, grouped and regrouped, each a huge and coherent kaleidoscope.

Here a gigantic kitten of lights turned a complete somersault in the heavens as it played with a ball of wool. There six sky-high manikins with matchstick limbs, went through an incandescent perpetual and silent dance. In the distance was a gigantic bull advertising tobacco—all down this heavenly vista there were these immense signs, lapping and over-lapping in dazzling chaos. And seen from one angle, high up, unsupported, floating in the very air and eerily unsubstantial, was a temple lit by bale-fires that shone wanly at its base. It was merely a building superimposed upon a skyscraper, but in the dark there was no skyscraper, and the amazing structure hung there lambent, silent, enigmatic, a Wagnerian temple in the sky.

Broadway, which sprouts theatres as a natural garden sprouts flowers, was jewelled with lights, lights that in the clear air of this continent shone with a lucidity that we in England do not know. Before the least lighted of these buildings the Prince stopped. He had arrived at the austere temple of the high arts, the Metropolitan Opera House.

Inside Caruso and a brilliant audience waited impatiently for his presence. The big and rather sombre house was quick with colour and with beauty. The celebrated "Diamond Horseshoe," the tiers of the galleries, and the floor of the house were vivid with dresses, shimmering and glinting with all the evasive shades of the spectrum, with here a flash of splendid jewels, there the slow and sumptuous flutter of a great ostrich fan.

Part of the program had been played, but Pagliacci and Caruso were held up while the vivid and ardent people craned out of their little crimson boxes in the Horseshoes and turned and looked up from the bright mosaic of the floor at the empty box which was to be the Prince's.

There was a long roll of drums, and with a single movement the orchestra marched into the melody of "God bless the Prince of Wales," and the Prince, looking extraordinarily embarrassed, came to the front of the box.

At once there was no melody of "God bless the Prince of Wales" perceptible; a wave of cheering and hand-clapping swept it away. The whole of the people on the floor of the house turned to look upward and to cheer. The people under the tiers crowded forward into the gangways until the gangways were choked, and the floor was a solid mass of humanity. Bright women and men correctly garbed imperilled their necks in the galleries above in order to look down. It was an unforgettable moment, and for the Prince a disconcerting one.

He stood blushing and looking down, wondering how on earth he was to endure this stark publicity. He was there poised bleakly for all to see, an unenviable position. And there was no escape. He must stand there, because it was his job, and recover from the nervousness that had come from finding himself so abruptly thrust on to this veritable pillar of Stylites in the midst of an interested and curious throng.

The interest and the curiosity was intensely friendly. His personality suffered not at all from the fact that he had lost his calm at a moment when only the case-hardened could have remained unmoved. His embarrassment, indeed, made the audience more friendly, and it was with a sort of intimacy that they tittered at his familiar tricks of nervousness, his fumbling at his tie, tugging of his coat lapels, the passing of the hand over his hair, even the anxious use of his handkerchief.

And this friendly and soft laughter became really appreciative when they saw him tackle the chairs. There were two imposing and pompous gilt chairs at the front of the box, filling it, elbowing all minor, human chairs out of the way. The Prince turned and looked at them, and turned them out. He would have none of them. He was not there to be a superior person at all; he was there to be human and enjoy human companionship. He had the front of the box filled with chairs, and he had friends in to sit with him and talk with him when intervals in the music permitted. And the audience was his friend for that; they admired him for the way he turned his back on formalities and ceremonials. General Pershing, who gratifies one's romantic sense by being extraordinarily like one's imaginative pictures of a great General, came to sit with him, and there was another outburst of cheering. I think that the petits morceaux from the operas were but side-shows. Although Rosina Galli ravished the house with her dancing (how she must love dancing), opera glasses were swivelled more toward the Royal box than to the stage, and the audience made a close and curious study of every movement and every inflection of the Prince.

The cheering broke out again, from people who crowded afresh into the gangways, when the Prince left, and in a mighty wave of friendliness the official program of the first day closed.

III

There was an unofficial ending to the day. The Prince, with several of his suite, walked in New York, viewed this exhilarating city of lights and vistas by night, got his own private and unformal view of the wonders of skyscraping townscape, the quick, nervous shuttle of the sidewalks, the rattle of the "Elevated," the sight, for the first time in a long journey, of motor-buses. And without doubt he tasted the wonder of a city of automobiles still clinging to the hansom cab.

About this outing there have been woven stories of a glamour which might have come from the fancy of O. Henry and the author of the "Arabian Nights" working in collaboration. The Prince is said to have plunged into the bizarre landscape of the Bowery, which is Whitechapel better lighted, and better dressed with up-to-date cafes, where there are dance halls in which with the fathomless seriousness of the modern, jazz is danced to violins and banjoes and the wailing ukelele.

They tell me that Ichabod has been written across the romantic glory of the Bowery, and that for colour and the spice of life one has to go further west (which is Manhattan's East End) to Greenwich Village, where life strikes Chelsea attitudes, and where one descends subterraneanly, or climbs over the roofs of houses to Matisse-like restaurants where one eats rococo meals in an atmosphere of cigarette smoke, rice-white faces, scarlet lips, and bobbed hair. But there are yet places in the Bowery to which one taxis with a thrill of hope, where the forbidden cocktail is served in a coffee cup, where wine bottles are put on to the table with brown paper wrapped round them to preserve the fiction that they came from one's own private (and legal) store, where in bare, studiously Bowery chambers the hunter of a new frisson sits and dines and hopes for the worst.

The Bowery is dingy and bright; it has hawkers' barrows and chaotic shop windows. It has the curiosity-stimulating, cosmopolite air of all dockside areas, but to the Englishman accustomed to the picturesque bedragglement of East End costumes, it is almost dismayingly well-dressed. Its young men have the leanness of outline that comes from an authentic American tailor. Its Jewesses have the neat crispness of American fashion that gives their vivid beauty a new and sparkling note. It was astonishing the number of beautiful young women one saw on the Bowery, but not astonishing when one recalls the number of beautiful young women one saw in New York. Fifth Avenue at shopping time, for example, ceases to be a street: it becomes a pageant of youth and grace.

The Prince, of course, may have gone into the Bowery, and walked therein with the air of a modern Caliph, but I myself have not heard of it. I was told that he went for a walk to the house of a friend, and that after paying a very pleasant and ordinary visit he returned to the Renown to get what sleep he could before the adventure of another New York day.

IV

The morning of Wednesday, November 19th, was devoted by the Prince to high finance; he went down to Wall Street and to visit the other temples of the gold god.

When one has become acclimated to the soaring upward rush of the skyscrapers (and one quite soon loses consciousness of them, for where all buildings are huge each building becomes commonplace), when one stops looking upward, "Down Town" New York is strangely like the "City" area of London. Walking Broadway one might easily imagine oneself in the neighbourhood of the Bank of England; Wall Street might easily be a turning out of Bishopsgate or Cannon Street. Broad Street, New York, is not so very far removed in appearance from Broad Street, London.

There is the same preoccupied congestion of the same work-mazed people: clerks, typists (stenographers), book-keepers, messengers and masters, though, perhaps, the people of the New York business quarter do not wear the air of sadness those of London wear.

And there is the same massive solidity of business buildings, great blocks that house thirty thousand souls in the working day, and these buildings have the same air as their London brothers; that is, they seem to be monuments to financial integrity (just as mahogany furniture, with a certain type, is an indication of "standing and weight") rather than offices. And if New York buildings are, on the whole, more distinguished, are characterized by a better art, they are, on the other hand, not relieved by the humanity of the shops that gives an air of brightness to the London commercial area. In New York "Down Town" the shops are mainly inside the buildings, and it is in the corridors of the big blocks that the clerk buys his magazines, papers, "candies," sandwiches and cigars.

The interiors of the buildings are ornate, they are sleek with marble, and quite often beautiful with it. They are well arranged; the skyscraper habit makes for short corridors, and you can always find your man easily (as in the hotels) by the number of his room: thus, if his number is 1201 he is on the twelfth floor, 802 is on the eighth, and 2203 is on the twenty-second; each floor is a ten.

Up to the floors one ascends by means of one of a fleet of elevators, some being locals and some being expresses to a certain floor and local beyond. Whether the fleet is made up of two or ten lifts, there is always a man to control them, a station-master of lifts who gives the word to the liftboys. To the Englishman he is a new phenomenon. He seems a trifle unnecessary [but he may be put there by law]; he is soon seen to be one of a multitude of men in America who "stand over" other men while they do the job.

The unexpected thing in buildings so fine as this, occupied by men who are addicted to business, is that the offices have rather a makeshift air. The offices I saw in America do not compare in comfort with the offices I know in England. There is a bleakness, an aridity about them that makes English business rooms seem luxurious in comparison. I talked of this phenomenon with a friend, instancing one great office, to be met with surprise and told: "Why! But that office is held up as an example of what offices should be like. We are agitating to get ours as good as that." After this I did not talk about offices.

The "Down Town" restaurants bring one vividly back to London. They are underground, and there is the same thick volume of masculinity and masculine talk in them. They are a trifle more ornate, and the food is better cooked and of infinitely greater variety (they would not be American otherwise), but over all the air is the same.

Into the familiar business atmosphere of this quarter the Prince came early. He drove between crowds and there were big crowds at the points where he stopped—at the Woolworth building and at Trinity Church, that stands huddled and dwarfed beneath the basilicas of business. The intense interest of his visit began when he arrived at the Stock Exchange.

The business on the floor was in full swing when he came out on to the marble gallery of the vast, square marble hall of the Exchange, and the busy swarm of money-gathering men beneath his eyes immediately stopped to cheer him. To look down, as he did, was to look down upon the floor of some great bazaar. The floor is set with ranks of kiosks spaced apart, about which men congregate only to divide and go all ways; these kiosks might easily be booths. The floor itself is in constant movement; it is a disturbed ant-heap with its denizens speeding about always in unconjectural movements. Groups gather, thrust hands and fingers upward, shout and counter-shout, as though bent on working up a fracas; then when they seem to have succeeded they make notes in small books and walk quietly away. Messengers, who must work by instinct, weave in and out of the stirring of ants perpetually. In a line of cubicles along one side of the Exchange, crowds of men seemed to be fighting each other for a chance at the telephone.

Two of the tremendous walls of this hall are on the street, and superb windows allow in the light. On the two remaining walls are gigantic blackboards. Incessantly, small flaps are falling on these blackboards revealing numbers. They are the numbers of members who have been "called" over the 'phone or in some other way. The blackboards are in a constant flutter, the tiny flaps are always falling or shutting, as numbers appear and disappear, and the boards are starred with numbers waiting patiently for the eye of the member on the floor to look up and be aware of them.

The Prince stood on the high gallery under the high windows, and watched with vivid curiosity the bustling scene below. He asked a number of eager questions, and the strange silent dance of numbers on the big blackboards intrigued him greatly. Underneath him the members gathered in a great crowd, calling up to him to come down on the floor. There was a jolly eagerness in their demands, and the Prince, as he went, seemed to hesitate as though he were quite game for the adventure. But he disappeared, and though the Bears and the Bulls waited a little while for him, he did not reappear. Those who knew that a full twelve-hour program could only be accomplished by following the timetable with rigid devotion had had their way.

From the Stock Exchange the Prince went to the Sub-Treasury, and watched, fascinated, the miracle work of the money counters. The intricacies of currency were explained to him, and he was shown the men who went through mounds of coin, with lightning gestures separating the good from the bad with their instinctive finger-tips and with the accuracy of one of Mr. Ford's uncanny machines. He was told that the touch of these men was so exquisite that they could detect a "dud" coin instantly, and, to test them, such a coin was produced and marked, and well hidden in a pile of similar coins. The fingers of the teller went through the pile like a flash, and as he flicked the good coins towards him, and without ceasing his work, a coin span out from the mass towards the Prince. It was the coin he had marked.

V

Passing among these business people and driving amid the quick crowds, the Prince had been consolidating the sense of intimate friendship that had sprung up on the previous day. A wise American pressman had said to me on Tuesday:

"New York people like what they've read about the Prince. They'll come out today to see if what they have read is true. Tomorrow they'll come out because they love him. And each day the crowds will get better."

This proved true. The warmth of New York's friendliness increased as the days went on. The scene at the lunch given by the New York Chamber of Commerce proved how strong this regard had grown. The scene was remarkable because of the character and the quality of the men present. It was no admiration society. It was no gathering of sentimentalists. The men who attended that lunch were men not only of international reputation, but of international force, men of cautious fibre accustomed to big encounters, not easily moved to emotion. And they fell under the charm of the Prince.

One of them expressed his feelings concerning the scene to me.

"He had it over us all the time," he said, laughing. "There we were, several hundreds of grey-headed, hardened old stiffs, most of us over twice his age, and we stood up and yelled like college freshmen when he had finished speaking to us.

"What did he say to us? Nothing very remarkable. He told us how useful we old ones in the money market had been as a backbone to the boys in the firing line. He told us that he felt that the war had revealed clearly the closeness of the relationship between the two Anglo-Saxon nations, how their welfare was interlocked and how the prosperity of each was essential to the prosperity of the other, and he agreed with the President of the Chamber's statement that British and American good faith and good will would go far to preserve the stability of the world. There's nothing very wonderful to that. It's true enough, but not altogether unknown.... It was his manner that caught hold of us. The way he speaks, you see. His nervousness, and his grit in conquering his nervousness. His modesty; his twinkle of humour, all of him. He's one fine lad. I tell you we've had some big men in the Chamber in the last two years, but it's gilt-edged truth that none of the big ones had the showing that lad got today."

From the Chamber of Commerce the Prince went to the Academy of Music where there was a picture and variety show staged for him, and which he enjoyed enormously. The thrill of this item of the program was rather in the crowd than in the show. It was an immense crowd, and for once it vanquished the efficient police and swarmed about His Royal Highness as he entered the building. While he was inside it added to its strength rather than diminished, and in the face of this crisis one of those men whose brains rise to emergencies had the bright idea of getting the Prince out by the side door. The crowd had also had that bright idea and the throng about the side door was, if anything, more dense than at the front. Through this laughing and cheering mass squads of good-humoured police butted a thread of passage for the happy Prince.

The throng inside Madison Square Garden about the arena of the Horse Show was more decorous, as became its status, but it did not let that stifle its feelings. The Prince passed through from a cheering crowd outside to the bright, sharp clapping of those inside. He passed round the arena between ranks of Salvation Army lassies, who held, instead of barrier ropes, broad scarlet ribbons.

There was a laugh as he touched his hair upon gaining the stark publicity of his box, and the laugh changed to something of a cheer when he caught sight of the chairs of pomp, two of them in frigid isolation, elbowing out smaller human fry. All knew from his very attitude what was going to happen to those chairs. And it happened. The chairs vanished. Small chairs and more of them took their place, and the Prince sat with genial people about him.

The arena was a field of brightness. It was delightfully decorated with green upon lattice work. Over the competitors' entrance were canvas replicas of Tudor houses. In the ring the Prince saw many beautiful horses, fine hunters, natty little ponies pulling nattier carriages, trotters of mechanical perfection, and big lithe jumpers. In the middle of the jumping competition he left his box and went into the ring, and spent some time there chatting with judges and competitors, and watching the horses take the hurdles and gates from close quarters.

Leaving the building there happened one of those vivid little incidents which speak more eloquently than any effort of oratory could of the kinship of the two races in their war effort. A group of men in uniform who had been waiting by the exit sprang to attention as he came up. They were all Americans. They were all in British uniform—most of them in British Flying Corps uniform. As the Prince came up, they clicked round in a smart "Left turn," and marched before him out of the building.

The Prince from thence on vanished for the day into a round of semi-social functions, but he did not escape the crowds.

Walking up Fifth Avenue with friends shortly before dinner-time, we came upon a bunched jumble of people outside the "Waldorf-Astoria." It was a crowd that a man in a hurry could not argue with. It filled the broad street, and it did not care if it impeded traffic. We were not in a hurry, so we stood and looked. I asked my friends what was happening here, and one of them chuckled and answered:

"They've got him again."

"Him? Who—you can't mean the Prince? He's on Renown now, resting, or getting ready for a dinner. There's nothing down for him."

My friend simply chuckled again.

"Who else would it be?" he said. "How they do gather round waiting for that smile of his. Flies round a honey-pot. Ah, I thought so."

The Prince made a dash of an exit from the hotel. He jumped into the car, and at once there was a forest of hands and handkerchiefs and flags waving, and his own hand and hat seemed to go up and wave as part of one and the same movement. It was a spontaneous "Hallo, People! Hallo, Prince!" A jolly affair. The motor started, pushed through the crowd. There was a sharp picture of the Prince half standing, half kneeling, looking back and laughing and waving to the crowd. Then he was gone.

The men and women of the throng turned away smiling, as though something good had happened.

"They've seen him. They can go home now," said my friend. "My, ain't they glad about themselves.... And isn't he the one fine scout?"

VI

When the Prince made his appearance on Thursday, November 20th, in the uniform of a Welsh Guardsman he came in for a startling ovation. Not only were many people gathered about the Yacht Club landing-stage and along the route of his drive, but at one point a number of ladies pelted him with flowers. Startled though the Prince was, he kept his smile and his sense of humour. He said dryly that he had never known what it was to feel like a bride before, and he returned this volley with his friendly salute.

He was then setting out to the Grand Central Station for his trip up the Hudson to West Point, the Military Academy of the United States.

In the superb white station, under a curved arch of ceiling as blue as the sky, he took the full force of an affection that had been growing steadily through the visit. The immense floor of the building was dense and tight with people, and the Prince, as he came to the balcony that made the stair-head was literally halted by the great gust of cheering that beat up to him, and was forced to stand at the salute for a full minute.

The journey to West Point skirted the Hudson, where lovely view after lovely view of the piled-up and rocky further shore tinted in the russet and gold of the dying foliage came and went. There was a rime of ice already in the lagoons, and the little falls that usually tumbled down the rocks were masses of glittering icicles.

The castellated walls of West Point overhang the river above a sharp cliff; the buildings have a dramatic grouping that adds to the extreme beauty of the surroundings. Toward this castle on the cliff the Prince went by a little steam ferry, was taken in escort by a smart body of American cavalrymen, and in their midst went by automobile up the road to the grey towers of West Point.

Immediately on his arrival at the saluting point on the great campus the horizon-blue cadets, who will one day be the leaders of the American army, began to march.

Paraded by the buildings, they fell into columns of companies with mechanical precision. With precise discipline they moved out on to the field, the companies as solid as rocks but for the metronomic beat of legs and arms.

They were tall, smart youths, archaic and modern in one. With long blue coats, wide trousers, shakos, broad white belts, as neat as painted lines, over breast and back, and, holding back the flaps of capes, they looked figures from the fifties. But the swing of the marching companies, the piston-like certainty of their action, the cold and splendid detachment of their marching gave them all the flare [Transcriber's note: flair?] of a corps d'elite.

Forming companies almost with a click on the wide green, they saluted and stood at attention while the Prince and his party inspected the lines. Then, the Prince at the saluting point again, the three companies in admirable order marched past. There was not a flaw in the rigid ranks as they swept along, their eyes right, the red-sashed "four year men" holding slender swords at the salute.

The Prince lunched with the officers, and after lunch the cadets swarmed into the room to hear him speak, having first warmed up the atmosphere with a rousing and prolonged college yell. Having spoken in praise of their discipline and bearing, the Prince was made the subject of another yell, and more, was saluted with the college whistle, a thing unique and distinctive, that put the seal upon his visit.

That night the Prince played host upon Renown, giving a brilliant dinner to his friends in New York. This was the only other ceremony of the day.

VII

Friday, November 21st, the Prince's last day in New York, was an extraordinarily full one, and that full not merely in program, but in emotion. In that amazing day it seemed to me that the people of this splendid city sought to express with superb eloquence the regard they felt for him, seemed to make a point of trying to make his last day memorable.

The morning was devoted to a semi-private journey to Oyster Bay, in order that the Prince might place a wreath on the tomb of President Roosevelt. The Prince had several times expressed his admiration for the great and forceful American who represented so much of what was individual in the national character, and his visit to the burial-place was a tribute of real feeling.

After lunch at the Piping Rock Club he returned to Renown, where he had planned to hold a reception after his own heart to a thousand of New York's children.

On Renown a score of "gadgets" had been prepared for the fun of the children. The capstans had been turned into roundabouts, a switchback and a chute had been fixed up, the deck of the great steel monster had been transformed into fairyland, while a "scrumptious" tea in a pretty tea lounge had been prepared all out of Navy magic.

The tugs that were to bring off the guests, however, brought few that could come under the heading of "kiddies." Those that were not quite grown up, were in the young man and young woman stage. Fairyland had to be abandoned. Roundabout and switchback and chute were abandoned, and only that "scrumptious" tea remained in the program. It was a pleasant afternoon, but not a "kiddies'" afternoon.

The evening was quick with crowds.

It began in a drive through crowds to the Pilgrims' Dinner at the Plaza Hotel, and that, in itself, was a crowd. The Plaza is none of your bijou caravanserais. It is vast and vivid and bright, as a New York hotel can be, and that is saying a good deal. But it was not vast enough. One great marble room could not contain all the guests, another and another was taken in, so that the banquet was actually spread over three or four large chambers opening out of the main chamber. Here the leading figures of America and the leading Britons then in New York met together in a sort of breezy informality, and they gave the Prince a most tremendous welcome.

And when he began to speak—after the nimble scintillations of Mr. Chauncey Depew—they gave him another. And they rose up in a body, and moved inward from the distant rooms to be within earshot—a sight for the Messenger in Macbeth, for he would have seen a moving grove of golden chair legs, held on high, as the diners marched with their seating accommodation held above their heads.

Crowds again under the vivid lights of the streets, as the Prince drove to the mighty crowd waiting for him in the Hippodrome. The Hippodrome is one of the largest, if it is not the largest, music-hall in the world. It has an enormous sweep of floor, and an enormous sweep of galleries. The huge space of it takes the breath away. It was packed.

As the Prince entered his box, floor and galleries rose up with a sudden and tremendous surge, and sent a mighty shout to him. The National Anthems of England and America were obliterated in the gust of affectionate noise. Minutes elapsed before that great audience remembered that it was at the play, and that the Prince had come to see the play. It sat down reluctantly, saving itself for his departure, watching him as he entered into enjoyment of the brave and grandiose spectacular show on the stage.

And when he rose to go the audience loosed itself again. It held him there with the power of its cheering. It would not let him stir from the building until it had had a word from him. It was dominant, it had its way. In answer to the splendid outburst the Prince could do nothing but come to the edge of his box and speak.

In a clear voice that was heard all over the building he thanked them for the wonderful reception he had received that night, and in New York during the week. "I thank you," he said, "and I bid you all good night."

Then he went out into the cheering streets.

It was an astonishing display in the street. The throng was so dense, the shouting so great that the sound of it drove into the silent houses of other theatres. And the audiences in those other theatres caught the thrill of it. They "cut" their plays, came pouring out into the street to join the throng and the cheering; it was through this carnival of affection that the Prince drove along the streets to a reception, and a brilliant one, given by Mr. Wanamaker, whose ability as Chairman of the Reception Committee had largely helped to make the Prince's visit to New York so startling a success.

VIII

On that note of splendid friendliness the Prince's too short stay in America ended. On Saturday, November 22nd, he held a reception on Renown, saying good-bye to endless lines of friendly people of all classes and races who thronged the great war vessel.

All these people crowded about the Prince and seemed loth to part with him, and he seemed just as unwilling to break off an intimacy only just begun. Only inexorable time and the Admiralty ended the scene, and the great ship with its escort of small, lean war-craft moved seaward along the cheering shore.

Crowds massed on the grass slope under Riverside Drive, and on the esplanade itself. The skyscrapers were cheering grandstands, as the ships steamed along the impressive length of Manhattan. They passed the Battery, where he had landed, and the Narrows, where the escorting boats left him. Then Renown headed for Halifax, where his tour ended.

Certainly America and the Prince made the best of impressions on each other. There is much in his quick and modern personality that finds immediate satisfaction in the American spirit; much in himself that the American responds to at once. When he declared, as he did time and time again, that he had had a wonderful time, he meant it with sincerity. And of his eagerness to return one day there can be no doubt.

Of all the happy moments on this long and happy tour, this visit to America, brief as it was, was one of the happiest. It was a brilliant finale to the brilliant Canadian days.



THE END