Sunday—marches in full Highland regalia at the head of the 50th Gordon Highlanders on garrison parade. On the curb a twinkling little Jap watches him.
"Nothin' like him in Japan, John," says a boy scout. "Wow!"
"Big—so big!" admires the Jap.
"Yah. Makes them big Macs. in the ranks look shrunk. Knows artillery, too. Rifle—kick! got a great eye. Look at 'im right wheel!"
* * * * * *
Then on the 1920 side of the Wagnerian stage picture observe this same giant, less baby pink, thinner in the face, clad in evening dress; Inverness cape, crush hat, in the rotunda of the Ritz in Montreal, beside an average athletic citizen similarly dressed; the superb civilian—and his marionette.
"Er—I think the car's waiting, General."
"Oh, no. We'll walk. Only a block or two," booms the giant.
He crosses the rotunda in seven swift, great strides, while the marionette trots to keep up. They are off to a function at McGill University. The new President—to whom professors bow with frigid politeness and ladies ogle in admiring awe, and university governors stand about like a bodyguard as though to intimate,—
"Ridiculous? Not a bit of it. There's no other university President like him. And what else could we do with him? The Government had nothing to suit him; for politics he's never meant; for business never. Geddes left us. We picked a greater man. Yes, it seems awkward, but never mind. A year from now you will say—here was the man that made McGill as famous in 1921 as Sir William Dawson, the world geologist, made it in 1890."