The St. George’s Society also had great gatherings. At one, held in the early ’80’s in the now demolished Royal Arms Hotel, amongst the guests of the evening was Mr. McCroskie, the architect who repaired the hotel at the corner of Main and Broadway, and made it habitable. The old gentleman came togged up in his Sunday best and wore a top hat, which for safety he placed under his chair. As hilarity began to work its way about the table, this fact was whispered around, and a good many jokers of the practical type quietly dropped a plateful of tipsy cake or plum pudding or ice cream and goodness knows what else into the plug hat until it was nearly full to the brim. Then a devil-may-care party sitting across the table accused the victim of not being an Englishman, and trouble commenced. Enraged at the insult, Mac arose excitably from his seat, hastily grabbed his hat and after a few steps on his way to the door indignantly clapped it, contents and all, on his head. How that slushy stuff did pour down on his head and his shoulders was a caution. Some of us didn’t see the point of the joke—but were silenced by the thunderous laughter that followed. Bouquets and Brick-Bats and Democracy. There is never a rose without a thorn. This is official. Bouquets a-plenty have been showered upon me. Sir Thomas White once called me a great national asset—and I am glad he fortunately added the “et”; _Collier’s_ wrote of me as the greatest imprinted wit unbound in Canada, and other dubbed me Ambassador in Chief of the C.P.R., while I have mistakenly been honored by being called the Mark Twain of Canada—save the Mark—and the British, Australasian, American and Canadian press representatives heaped eulogies and showered gifts upon me, and I never got a swelled head over it, because I had experienced bouquets with bricks in them. Once, when I filled the high and dignified position of chairman of the license and police committee in the city of Winnipeg, Chief Murray came to me one day and told me that Schmidt—I think that was his name—had half-a-dozen teams at work and only one license. I instructed him to make Mr. Schmidt, if that was his name, take out a license for each and every team, and the order was promptly and strictly carried out. The matter escaped my mind altogether, until one bright afternoon when entering a street car amongst whose passengers were several ladies of my intimate acquaintance. After bidding them the time of day, I went to a seat forward, where a fat German in a partially intoxicated condition was lolling. As I neared him, he a little gruffly wanted to know if I was Alderman Ham. Imagining he was one of the free and independent electors of Fort Rouge, which ward I was chosen to represent, I pulled down my vest, puffed out by bosom like a pouter pigeon, and courteously acknowledged that I was—in the blessed hope of securing an additional vote at the approaching election. But it’s the unexpected that always happens.