Westward with the Prince of WalesNewton, W. Douglas (Wilfrid Douglas)
History
Westward with the Prince of Wales
Newton, W. Douglas (Wilfrid Douglas)
Canada -- Description and travel; Windsor, Edward, Duke of, 1894-1972
The romantic may find some food for thought in this attitude of the
modern Mohawk maid.
In the end, after a debate on the fitness of several names, the Prince,
as president of the pow-wow, gave his vote for "Dawn of Morning," and
became chief with that title. But apparently he did not become fully
fledged until he had danced a ritual measure. A brother chief in
bright yellow and a fine gravity, came forward to guide the Prince's
steps, and the Prince, immediately entering into the spirit of the
ceremony, joined with him in shuffling and bowing to and fro across the
platform. Only after the congratulations from fellow-Mohawks and
palefaces, did he leave the dais to fight--there is no other word--his
way through the dense and cheerful mass that packed the square almost
to danger-point.
It was a splendid crowd, good-humoured and ardent. It had cheered
every moment, though, perhaps, it had cheered more strongly at one
moment. This was when an old Indian woman ran up to the Prince,
crying: "I met your father and your grandfather, and I'm British too."
At her words the Prince had taken the rose from his buttonhole and had
presented it to her. And that delighted the crowd.
III
The fine weather of Monday gave way to pitiless rain on the morning of
Tuesday, October 21st. All the same, the rain did not prevent the
reception at Guelph from being warm and intensely interesting.
Guelph is one of the many comely and thriving towns of West Ontario,
but its chiefest feature is its great Agricultural College that trains
the scientific farmer, not of Ontario and Canada alone, but for many
countries in the Western World. This college gave the Prince a
captivating welcome.
It has men students, but it has many attractive and bonny girl
students, also, and these helped to distinguish the day, that is, with
a little help from the "movie" men.
The "movie" men who travelled with the train had captured the spectacle
of the Prince's arrival at the station, and had driven off to the
college to be in readiness to "shoot" when His Royal Highness arrived.
They had ten minutes to wait. Not merely that, they had ten minutes to
wait in the company of a bunch of the prettiest and liveliest girl
students in West Ontario. "Movie" men are not of the hesitant class.
Somewhere in the first seventy-five seconds they became old friends of
the students who were filling the college windows with so much
attraction. In one minute and forty-five seconds they had the girls in
training for the Prince's arrival. They had hummed over the melody of
what they declared was the Prince's favourite opera selection; a girl
at a piano had picked up the tune, while the others practised harder
than diva ever did.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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