t the first sight of the scarlet splendor of the British
flag waving against the pale blue sky, when instinctively my eyes had
looked for the radiant beauty of Old Glory. The next thing that impressed
me was the astonishing number of people who were in mourning. Men in
shops, in offices, on the streets, were wearing crepe bands about their
left arms, and women, like moving pillars of crepe, dotted the walks
thickly, darkened the shops, and gloomed in private carriages. What does
it mean? I asked. I never before saw so many people in black. And one
made answer: "Ah, your question shows you are a stranger, or you would
know that there are few well-to-do homes and _no_ business house in
Halifax that does not mourn for at least one victim of that great mystery
of the sea, the unexplained loss of the City of Boston--that monster
steamer, crowded with youth and beauty, wealth, power, and brains!"

I recalled then how, at the most fashionable wedding of the year in
Cincinnati, the bride and groom had been dragged from the just-beginning
wedding-breakfast, and rushed off at break-neck speed that they might be
in time for the sailing of the City of Boston, and after her sailing no
word ever came of her. What had been her fate no man knew--no man knows
to-day. The ocean gave no sign, no clew, as it often has done in other
disasters. It sent back no scrap of wood, of oar, of boat, of mast, of
life-preserver--nothing, nothing! No fire had been sighted by other
ships. Had she been in collision with an iceberg, been caught in the
centre of a tornado, had she run upon a derelict, been stricken by
lightning, been blown up by explosion? No answer had ever come from the
mighty bosom of the deep, that will keep its grim secret until the awful
day when, trembling at God's own command, it will give up its dead!
Meantime thousands of tender ties were broken. The awful mystery
shrouding the fate of the floating city turned more than one brain, and
sent mourners to mad-houses to end their ruined lives. Halifax was a very
sad city that summer.

I met in the company there Mr. Leslie Allen (the father of Miss Viola
Allen), Mr. Dan Maginnis (the Boston comedian), and Mr. John W. Norton.
The future St. Louis manager was then leading man, and the friendship we
formed while working together through those summer weeks was never
broken, never clouded, but lasted fair and strong up to that very day
when, sitting in the train on his way to New York, John