I am very far from delighting in the 'plush of speech,' as Meredith called the language of the advertisers. Apart altogether from the fact that Canadians have not as yet learnt the art of understatement, the plush of speech is far too common in Canada. I suppose it was to be expected. Hard by lie the United States whose advertisers have, in a very few years, done more to blazon all the horrors of which the English tongue is capable than their great writers have done to point out its beauties. Their example has spread. So that in Canada, too, a barber's is announced as 'A Tonsorial Saloon'; a hat shop is 'A Bon Ton Millinery Parlour.' There may be some magic attraction in the words. The desire for a hat in the heart of a woman is not a definitely economic want; perhaps to be able to get a hat from a millinery parlour may strengthen that want. Only I know that speaking for myself, I would not willingly have my hair shortened oftener than was necessary, even if a tonsorial palace should be open to me for the process.

To go back to the prairie towns, their future is ever before them, and their citizens talk of them in the same proud, fond spirit as that in which a mother will discuss the career of the creature-in-the-perambulator, which for the ordinary person is too embryo to be distinguished as either a boy or a girl. Already, of course, the prairie towns are of all sizes, though you must never judge them by the size they are. Take Regina. It is a capital city, but the usual definition of a line—only reversed—best describes it. It has breadth without length. Its streets, which are called avenues, are astonishingly wide, the more astonishingly, because as soon as you start to walk along them they come to an end in prairie. I thought a notice which caught my eye as I wandered through the town rather characteristic. The notice was pasted outside a half-built block. It ran:—

'These premises will be open by September 5.'

It was long past 5th September, and those premises were not going to be open for some weeks to come. The roof was not on yet, and in fact I think the fourth wall had to go up. Still, when they were opened, they would be fine and solid. You could see that. It is the same with many of these western towns themselves. Some day they, too, are going to be fine and solid, but they are not really open yet, though a good deal of business is being done, with the roof still, so to speak, off, and the fourth wall still to go up. On the outskirts of Regina, for example, there are some 1911 Exhibition buildings which look rather larger than Regina itself. That is enterprise.

I stayed a whole day in Regina because I wanted to see the barracks of the famous North-West Mounted Police. It was a very hot day, and I was not sure where the barracks were, so I went into a hotel, partly to find out, partly to have a drink. The hotel was cool and pleasant, and after a little while a well-dressed gentleman came over and began chatting. We talked of various things, and then he asked me if I would not like to have my suit pressed for Sunday, as he would do it for a dollar. I said I should like it very well, but I had not time for it as I had to go out to the police barracks.

'You don't think of joining them, do you?' he inquired with much disdain.

'Why?' I asked.

'You're a fool if you do,' he said; 'there's too much discipline about them. You spend your whole time saluting every one you see if you're in the police. I know what it is. I was two years in the American Navy.'

I did not inform the ex-naval clothes-presser that I'd rather belong to the police than press clothes, nor, indeed, did I waste any further time upon him, and I only mention him because he is one of the less valuable American types that find their way into Canada, and also because he was the only man I met who had a word to say against the mounted police.