e regret. For us it had been a train-load
of good friends, and though many were to accompany us to America, many
were not, and we felt the parting. Among those who came South with us
was our good friend "Chief" Chamberlain, who had been in control of the
C.P.R. police responsible for the Prince's safety throughout the trip.
He was one of the most genial cosmopolitans of the world, with the real
Canadian genius for friendship--indeed so many friends had he, that the
Prince of Wales expressed the opinion that Canada was populated by
seven million people, mainly friends of "the Chief."

CHAPTER XXIII

WASHINGTON

I

My own first real impression of the United States lay in my sorrow that
I had been betrayed into winter underclothing.

When the Prince left Ottawa on the afternoon of November 10th in the
President's train, the weather was bitterly cold. I suppose it was
bitterly cold for most of the run south, but an American train does not
allow a hint of such a thing to penetrate. The train was steam-heated
to a point to which I had never been trained. And at Washington the
station was steam-heated and the hotel was steam-heated, and Washington
itself was, for that moment, on the steam-heated latitude. America, I
felt, had rather "put it over on me."

It was at 8.20 on the night of Monday the 10th that the Prince entered
the United States at the little station of Rouses Point. There was
very little ceremony, and it took only the space of time to change our
engine of Canada to an engine of America. But the short ceremony under
the arc lamps, and in the centre a small crowd, had attraction and
significance.

On the platform were drawn up ranks of khaki men, but khaki men with a
new note to us. It was a guard of honour of "Doughboys," stocky and
useful-looking fellows, in their stetsons and gaiters. Close to them
was a band of American girls, holding as a big canopy the Union Jack
and the Stars and Stripes joined together to make one flag, joined in
one piece to signify the meeting-place of the two Anglo-Saxon peoples
also.

With this company were the officials who had come to welcome the Prince
at the border. They were led by Mr. Lansing, the Secretary of State,
Major-General Biddle, who commanded the Americans in England, and who
was to be the Prince's Military aide, and Admiral Niblack, who was to
be the Naval aide while the Prince was the guest of the United States.

The Prince in a Guard's gre