t
one tiny place, Outremont, one woman came to him, and said that she
felt she already knew him, because her husband had met him in France.
That fact immediately moved the Prince to sympathy. Not only did he
spend some minutes talking with her, but he made a point of referring
to the incident in his speech at Toronto the next day, to emphasize the
feeling he was experiencing of having come to a land that was almost
his own, thanks to his comradeship with Canadians overseas.

Not only during the day was the whole route of the train marked by
crowds at stations, and individual groups in the countryside, but even
during the night these crowds and groups were there.

As we swept along there came through the windows of our sleeping-car
the ghosts of cheers, as a crowd on a station or a gathering at a
crossing saluted the train. The cheer was gone in the distance as soon
as it came, but to hear these cheers through the night was to be
impressed by the generosity and loyalty of these people. They had
stayed up late, they had even travelled far to give one cheer only.
But they had thought it worth while. Montreal, which we passed through
in the dark, woke us with a hearty salute that ran throughout the
length of our passing through that great city, and so it went on
through the night and into the morning, when we woke to find ourselves
slipping along the shores of Lake Ontario and into the outskirts of
Toronto.

CHAPTER VIII

THE CITY OF CROWDS. TORONTO: ONTARIO

I

Toronto is a city of many names. You can call it "The Boston of
Canada," because of its aspiration to literature, the theatre and the
arts. You can call it "The Second City of Canada," because the fact is
incontestable. You can call it "The Queen City," because others do,
though, like the writer, you are unable to find the reason why you
should. You can say of it, as the Westerners do, "Oh--_Toronto_!" with
very much the same accent that the British dramatist reserves for the
censor of plays. But though it already had its host of names, Toronto,
to us, was the City of Crowds.

Toronto has interests and beauties. It has its big, natural High Park.
It has its charming residential quarters in Rosedale and on The Hill.
It has its beautiful lagoon on the lakeside. It has its Yonge Street,
forty miles straight. It has the tallest building in the Empire, and
some of the largest stores in the Empire. It is busy and bright and
brisk. But we fou