People in the vicinity of Cooke’s Church, on Queen Street, in Toronto, at two-thirty in the afternoon were left wondering whether the Germans had landed in the city in such large numbers that the military authorities had found it necessary to mobilize a regiment of the fair sex to aid the soldiers in driving them back.
The cause of the sensation was a pretty young lady named Clara Philip, who, by the terms of a wager she had made with a lady friend, had to walk down Mutual Street from Shuter to Queen Street dressed in full soldier’s uniform, for a box of chocolates.
The young lady with curly hair peeping out under the service cap, looked bewitching in the uniform, although it was somewhat too large for her, and despite the fact that the heavy army boots were dispensed with for her own dainty pair of “threes.”
“It certainly did feel funny walking down the street with some of the people turning up their noses at me and others convulsed in laughter, but I was determined to win the bet, and did,” said Miss Philip, after her sensational parade.
“Oh, it was funny. On the way along I had the pleasure of saluting a ‘brother’ soldier, who with much grace returned the salute, and a little farther along a ‘guardian of the law’ discreetly turned and walked in the opposite direction. That is the way I became richer by a large box of chocolates.”
Sings as Surgeons Operate.
Zouave Besson, a French trooper, while undergoing an operation at the Grand Palais, in Paris, a hospital for the last three months, lustily sang the “Marseillaise” from the beginning to the end, weakening slightly toward the close of the last stanza.
This patriotic demonstration is a contradiction of the proverb that a good man will swear while he is under the influence of chloroform. After the operation Besson’s nurse told him of his patriotism in singing the national anthem.
He replied: “When I was just going on I realized that I was singing the ‘Marseillaise,’ and brought all my will power to bear to sing it to the end.” He recovered nicely.