Restaurant.
At the cafe tables women from all the counties and electoral districts
of Canada--many of them French--chatter about the great masquerade up
at the Castle, the little-king show which at its best is worth more to
Canada than the Senate. The homes of Ottawa are little shows whose
players imitate the manners and the accents of the fine people in the
Castle, the Restaurant and the Chateau.

"Nothing but a prinked-up panorama!" says the rugged Radical in a
coonskin coat, member of a deputation with a railway ticket as long as
his pocket. "Poor show! What we want down here is more plain farmers'
wives----"

He pauses. This man's first cousin broke away from the farm a
generation ago because farmers' wives were too plain, and farmers did
so little reading, and the big thinkers and doers all seemed to live in
town. As he talks, up dashes a sleigh, jangling its bells and dangling
its robes, and from behind the bearskinned driver alights a company
that makes his coonskin coat feel clumsy and uncomfortable. He glances
up at the great pile of walls on the hill. The hill is alive with fine
people. In one of the sleighs a lady bows and smiles--at him! He
touches his cap and takes his pipe from his mouth.

"That lady?" he replies to his sleeping-car mate. "Oh, that is the
wife of a Senator, used to live in our town. Clever little woman she
is, too. They tell me she's writing a novel and that Lady Byng is
taking her up. Lady Byng--oh, yes, she writes novels. Good idea.
Likely her books won't be quite so rough as some of our Canadian novels
are. I like style in a book, all that fine manners stuff; takes your
mind off the humdrum of everyday life. Byng--say, that was a wise
appointment if ever there was one. My way of thinking, Lord Byng has
'em all beaten since Dufferin. Kings' and queens' uncles and cousins
and brothers don't suit this democratic nation like a man who got
acquainted with this country before ever he set eyes on it, through the
boys he commanded out yonder. Great man! Fit to be Governor-General
of a great country, and I won't deny it. No snobbery. Seventh son of
an earl, all his life a soldier and a worker. A real man, such as any
of us could present to our constituents with pleasure and pride. Tell
you what--listen!"

His sleeping-car mate feels a heavy clutch on his arm.

"Remember the old debate we used to have about 'The pen is mightier
than the sword'? Well, say--when you g