hats, and dazzlingly scatter upon Main Street. They gave
the day its touch of imagination, those green cocked
hats; they were lyrical upon the highways; along the
prosaic sidewalks by twos and threes they sang together.
It is no great thing, a hat of any quality; but a small
thing may ring dramatic on the right metal, and in the
vivid idea of Lorne Murchison and his sister Advena a
Robin Hood walked in every Independent Forester, especially
in the procession. Which shows the risks you run if you,
a person of honest livelihood and solicited vote, adopt
any portion of a habit not familiar to you. and go marching
about with a banner and a band. Two children may be
standing at the first street corner, to whom your
respectability and your property may at once become
illusion and your outlawry the delightful fact.

A cheap trip brought the Order of Green Hats to Elgin;
and there were cheap trips on this great day to persuade
other persons to leave it. The Grand Trunk had even then
an idea of encouraging social combination for change of
scene, and it was quite a common thing for the operatives
of the Milburn Boiler Company to arrange to get themselves
carried to the lakeside or "the Falls" at half a dollar
a head. The "hands" got it up themselves and it was a
question in Elgin whether one might sink one's dignity
and go as a hand for the sake of the fifty-cent opportunity,
a question usually decided in the negative. The social
distinctions of Elgin may not be easily appreciated by
people accustomed to the rough and ready standards of a
world at the other end of the Grand Trunk; but it will