The romantic may find some food for thought in this attitude of the modern Mohawk maid.
In the end, after a debate on the fitness of several names, the Prince, as president of the pow-wow, gave his vote for "Dawn of Morning," and became chief with that title. But apparently he did not become fully fledged until he had danced a ritual measure. A brother chief in bright yellow and a fine gravity, came forward to guide the Prince's steps, and the Prince, immediately entering into the spirit of the ceremony, joined with him in shuffling and bowing to and fro across the platform. Only after the congratulations from fellow-Mohawks and palefaces, did he leave the daïs to fight—there is no other word—his way through the dense and cheerful mass that packed the square almost to danger-point.
It was a splendid crowd, good-humoured and ardent. It had cheered every moment, though, perhaps, it had cheered more strongly at one moment. This was when an old Indian woman ran up to the Prince, crying: "I met your father and your grandfather, and I'm British too." At her words the Prince had taken the rose from his buttonhole and had presented it to her. And that delighted the crowd.
III
The fine weather of Monday gave way to pitiless rain on the morning of Tuesday, October 21st. All the same, the rain did not prevent the reception at Guelph from being warm and intensely interesting.
Guelph is one of the many comely and thriving towns of West Ontario, but its chiefest feature is its great Agricultural College that trains the scientific farmer, not of Ontario and Canada alone, but for many countries in the Western World. This college gave the Prince a captivating welcome.
It has men students, but it has many attractive and bonny girl students, also, and these helped to distinguish the day, that is, with a little help from the "movie" men.
The "movie" men who travelled with the train had captured the spectacle of the Prince's arrival at the station, and had driven off to the college to be in readiness to "shoot" when His Royal Highness arrived. They had ten minutes to wait. Not merely that, they had ten minutes to wait in the company of a bunch of the prettiest and liveliest girl students in West Ontario. "Movie" men are not of the hesitant class. Somewhere in the first seventy-five seconds they became old friends of the students who were filling the college windows with so much attraction. In one minute and forty-five seconds they had the girls in training for the Prince's arrival. They had hummed over the melody of what they declared was the Prince's favourite opera selection; a girl at a piano had picked up the tune, while the others practised harder than diva ever did.
When the Prince arrived the training proved worth while. He was saluted from a hundred laughing heads at a score of windows with the song that had followed him all over Canada. He drove into the College, not to the stirring strains of "Oh, Canada," but to the syncopated lilt of "Johnny's in Town."
The Prince was not altogether out of the youthful gaiety of the scene, for after the lunch, where the students had scrambled for souvenirs, a piece of sugar from his coffee cup, a stick of celery from his plate, even a piece of his pie, he made all these dashing young women gather about him in the group that was to make the commemorative photo, and a very jolly, laughing group it was.