“Your King, my King, our King, is the most perfect gentleman I have ever met. _Il est tout à fait gentilhomme_,” so remarked the Hon. Rodolphe Lemieux, K.C., when Postmaster-General of Canada, to me in my little library, immediately on his return from Windsor, when King Edward was still our Sovereign. Then one of the most prominent politicians in Canada, for he was not only P.M.G., but Minister of Labour for the Dominion, M. Lemieux is another man still in his prime. He was born about 1860. A French-Canadian by birth, he speaks English almost faultlessly, an accomplishment learnt by habit and ear during the last few years, and not from a lesson-book. When I first met M. Lemieux in Canada about 1900, he hardly knew any English. Six or seven years later he could get up and address a large audience in our tongue with ease and fluency. Yet this art has been acquired during the most strenuous years of his life. “I’m in London,” he replied to a question one day, “to try to settle the All Red Route cable between Britain and her Colony.” Lemieux is an extraordinarily strong character. Of medium height, inclined to be stout, sallow of skin, clean-shaven, with slightly grey hair, standing up straight like a Frenchman’s; great charm of manner, not fulsome, but gracious, and at times commanding. He gets excited and marches about the room, waving his hands—nice hands, broad, but small for his sex—and pursing his mouth. A man of strength, and a gentle, kindly being. Very ambitious, and yet, as he says truly, “What is success, when once attained?” One night I was to dine with him. Nothing would do but he must fetch me in a taxi. We went to the “Ritz,” where he had ordered an excellent little dinner, and where a lovely bunch of roses and lilies was beside my plate. When he went at five to order the dinner, he had ordered the flowers and a pin! The day after his arrival at his London hotel his little jewel-case was stolen. He told me almost in tears. “Recollections, souvenirs, gone, my wife’s first present to me—a scarf-pin. Her great-grandmother’s earring. My ring as Professor of Law, gone. I feel I have lost real friends—friends of years and friends I valued. Their worth was little, their sentiment untold.” A treaty between Canada and Japan allowed free emigration. At once ten thousand Japanese descended on Canada. Yellow peril was imminent. Lemieux was sent to Japan. After delicate manipulation he got the treaty altered, so that only four hundred Japanese should land in a year, a regulation that brought him much renown.