Canada with the official presence, as its ruler, of such an equivocal character as this Mr. What-do-they-call-him Francis Bond Head.” When Sir Francis first arrived he was informed that his chief duty was to sit very still in a large scarlet chair and keep his hat on. The first was easy, but the second was repugnant to his feelings; and thinking the dignity of the head would lose nothing by being divided from the hat, he meditated holding the latter between his white gloved hands. His English attendants agreed with him in this idea of courtesy. But he quailed beneath the reproof of a wordless stare from a Canadian who thought this a bid to democracy; “What,” said the look, “what! to purchase five minutes’ loathsome popularity will you barter one of the few remaining prerogatives of the British crown?” And so he wore his hat. Of deceptive stature, the governor’s presence did not tally with his militia register. He owed much to a wonderful personal magnetism; old and young alike loved him--when they did not hate him. Seated in that chair he is described by an eye-witness on his first appearance in it: “Although too small to fill it, his shoulders and the poise of his head did much to counterbalance the lack of nether proportions; his feet, unable to reach the floor, were not allowed to dangle, but were thrust out stiffly in front and kept in that position, apparently without effort, during the opening. One of two Americans, in the space near him reserved for visitors, plucked his friend’s sleeve. ‘That,’ said he, ‘is a man of determination, and will gain his point.’ “‘Why do you say so,’ said the other. ‘Because no other kind of man could or would hold his feet like that.’” The Governor’s opinion of the unaccredited grievance-monger was more elaborate than the one he gravely records in his “Narrative” as given of himself--“proclaimed the d--dst liar and the d--dst rascal in the province.” Condensed, his opinions amount to a never-ending diatribe against that book bound in boards of five hundred and fifty-three closely-printed pages, in which it was calculated there were three times as many falsehoods as pages, penned by one who had been “an insignificant peddler-lad.” “Afraid to look me in the face, he sat with his feet not reaching the ground and with his face averted from me at an angle of about seventy degrees; while with the eccentricity, the volubility, and indeed the appearance of a madman, the tiny creature raved in all directions ... but nothing that I could say would induce the peddler to face his own report.” Perhaps, after all, there was something in the management of legs which would not reach the floor. Yet the aphorism that “Next to victor it is best to be victim” never had better exemplification. Autocrats All. “_It is in me and shall out._”