Montague became a noted figure in Ottawa's younger social set, and, though he expressed contempt for all such things, found a certain gratification in seeing his name appear constantly in the social columns of the city's press. It was a soothing sensation to read the chronicle of his adolescent activities…. Few people can resist a glow of pleasure on seeing in the morning paper that they were where they were the previous evening.
Even in the remotest rural districts of America the weekly journal records that "Hank Wilson went over to Hiram Johnston's farm at Hen's Creek to see his new barn. Hiram Johnston is one of the most enterprising farmers that we got."
But—there is something solid about that barn.
After the legal profession had opened its portals to Montague he moved to Toronto, accepting a junior partnership in a firm of some standing. To his amazement, he found that in Toronto the entrée into the best circles—and he could not exist in any other—was more difficult than in Ottawa. Though both cities had that reverence for wealth which is universal, Toronto's large population made a sudden and successful début far from easy. There were so many sets—those who yachted, danced, and golfed; those who danced and golfed; and those who merely golfed. Montague decided that the last class was too fatiguing.
Then there were those extraordinary people who practiced the arts in an amiable way. There is probably no city in the world where there exists more comfortable talent than in Toronto. For a time music was the occupation of musicians, but society embraced it, to the benefit of them both, with the result that musical homes abound.
This worried Montague. The younger set in Ottawa knew no such phenomena.
Looking farther afield, he next caught a glimpse of the University family, an after-growth of the larger life of Toronto 'Varsity. But he avoided that. His mind was dexterous, but needed lesser minds beside it to give it the sparkle of contrast.
In desperation he turned to the purely nouveaux riches, only to find that they had made entangling alliances with all the other fraternities.
There was only one well untapped—the Canadian Militia; but his mind rejected that at once. He had always agreed with Disraeli that soldiering was fit only for fools in peace-time and for barbarians in times of war.
He joined the Royal Canadian Yacht Club.