The first citizen of Halifax to recognize the Prince of Wales was a little boy: and it was worth a cool twenty cents to him.
The official entry of His Royal Highness into Halifax was fixed for Monday, August 18th. The Dragon and Dauntless, however, arrived on Sunday, and the Prince saw in the free day an opportunity for getting in a few hours' walking.
He landed quietly, and with his camera spent some time walking through and snapping the interesting spots in the city. He climbed the hill to where the massive and slightly melodramatic citadel that his own ancestor, the Duke of Kent, had built on the hill dominates the city, and continued from there his walk through the tree-fringed streets.
At the very toe of the long peninsula upon which Halifax is built he walked through Point Pleasant, a park of great, and untrammelled, natural beauty, thicketed with trees through which he could catch many vivid and beautiful glimpses of the intensely blue harbour water beneath the slope.
It was in this park that the young punter pulled off his coup.
He was one of a number of kiddies occupied in the national sport of Halifax—bathing. He and his friends spotted the Prince and his party before that party saw them. Being a person of acumen the wise kid immediately "placed" His Royal Highness, and saw the opportunity for financial operations.
"Betcher ten cents that's the Prince of Wales," he said, accommodating the whole group, whereupon the inevitable sceptic retorted:
"Naw, that ain't no Prince. Anyhow he doesn't come till tomorrow, see."
"Is the Prince, I tell you," insisted the plunger. "And see here, betcher another ten cents I goes and asks him."
The second as well as the first bet was taken. And both were won.