"What else can I do?" said young Harper, and plunged into the icy current. Their dead bodies were found the next morning.
Hearing that Mr. MacKenzie King had written a memoir of Harper—who had been his greatest friend—I begged him to give me a copy of it. He sent it to me with his autograph in it, and asked me to sign his volume of my own autobiography. I was truly sorry to say good-bye to the Canadian Premier.
We returned to Montreal the next morning where I found my room a garden of flowers given to me by Mrs. Reed, Mrs. Lawford and Lady Drummond. I addressed a ballroom that night full of empty chairs and chandeliers, but was consoled by my flowers, and the ladies with whom I afterwards went to supper; and I hope and think I have made lasting friendships with Mrs. Hayter Reed and Mrs. Lawford.
Mrs. Reed told me that the little son of friends of hers who had always refused to meet a Jew, had disconcerted them, one day, by saying in a reproachful voice,
"Mother, you never told me Jesus Christ was a Jew."
Seeing a distressed expression upon his mother's face, he added consolingly: "But it doesn't matter, since God was a Presbyterian."
Lying awake that night, I wondered what I would have felt had I married a man who had consented to be either Governor General of Canada or Viceroy of India. I can imagine no career, excepting perhaps that of a minor royalty, that I would have minded as much. Not all the great functions, personal prestige, wonderful scenery, pig-sticking in the East, or skating in the Dominion, would make up to me for friendships without intimacy, and grandeur without gaiety. I came to the conclusion that only men of a certain kind of vanity and ambition, or animated by the highest sense of public duty could ever be found to fill these honourable positions.
X: REFLECTIONS AT LARGE
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REFLECTIONS AT LARGE