They saw the leader, who at first demurred at the suggestion, fearing trouble with the police. When Cook told him that the Mayor was to be there and that he would guarantee that everything would be all right, the Germans consented for a ten-spot to be at the station with their instruments. And so at midnight on that eventful occasion, the first Imperial Limited rolled into the Central Station at Ottawa. The special car with the press party stopped in the yards owing to the length of the train, and we had to walk up the cinder path until we reached the platform. There, at the end of the platform, were those five confounded Germans blowing away for all they were worth “The Watch on the Rhine.” A procession was formed and, headed by the band, now playing “Rule Brittania” (was it a premonition?) with the mayor on my right and the ex-mayor on my left, and thirty newspaper men following two by two, we started up Sparks Street to the Parliament Buildings in which a brass band played for the first time in history. It was one of the funniest of my many varied experiences. Guests in the old Russell House, awakened from their slumbers, stuck their heads out of the windows and gazed in wonderment; the bobbies at the street corners, seeing the mayor in the party, stood and grinned; citizens on the streets enquired, “What’s up?” Swinging up Sparks and Metcalfe Streets, and then across Wellington street and up the centre walk, still headed by the sons of the Fatherland, we marched into the Parliament Buildings. Of the joyous time we had for the next hour or two I say nothing, but next morning there appeared in the newspapers all over the world an account of the arrival of this wonderful train at Ottawa; of the civic reception, and of the triumphal procession through the streets led by the band of the “Governor-General’s Foot Guards.” The world believed that Ottawa had stood still to let the Imperial Limited pass through. A Belated Prosperity.