jolly, homely crowds without social strata, who might very well have
changed places with the waiters and the waiters with them without
anybody noticing any difference. That would not have meant a loss of
dignity to anybody. Nobody has any use for social status in the
Dominion, the only standard being whether a man is a "mixer" or not.

By way of a footnote, I might say that waiters, even as waiters, are on
the way to take seats as guests, since, apparently, waiting is only an
occupation a man takes up until he finds something worth while. Not
unexpectedly Canadian waiting suffers through this.

What we had seen in the large towns, and in the large gregarious life
of cities, we saw "close up" at Nipigon. The varied crowd, Finns,
British, Canadian and Indian (one of the Indians, a young dandy, had
served with distinction during the war, had married a white Canadian,
and was one of the richest men present), danced without social
distinctions in that pleasant hall to Finn folk-songs that had never
been set down on paper played on an accordion. It was a delightful
evening.

For the rest, those with the train fished (or, rather, went through all
the ritual with little of the results), walked, bathed in the lake,
watched the American "movie" men in their endeavours to convert the
British to baseball, or endeavoured, with as little success, to convert
the baseball "fans" to cricket. The recreations of Nipigon were not
hectic, and we were glad to get on to towns and massed life again.

I confess our view of Nipigon of the hundred houses was not that of the
Indian boy who discussed it with us. He told us Nipigon was not the
place for him.

"You wait," he said. "Next year I go. Next year I am fifteen. Then I
go out into the woods. I go right away. I can't stand this city life."

III

Canada, on Monday, September 8th, demonstrated its amazing faculty for
startling contrasts. It lifted the Prince from the primitive to the
ultra-modern in a single movement. In the morning he was in the silent
forests of Nipigon, a tract so wild that man seemed no nearer than a
thousand miles. Three hours later he was moving amid the dense crowds
that filled the streets of the latest word in industrial cities.

He stepped straight from Nipigon to the twin cities of Port Arthur and
Fort William. These two cities are really one, and together form the
great trade pool into which the traffic of the vast grain-bearing West
and N