When I say that the Prince lived on board the _Renown_, I mean that he lived on her in his moments to spare. In New York the visitor is lucky who has a few moments to spare. New York's hospitality is electric. It rushes the guest off his feet. Even if New York is not definitely engaged to entertain you at specific minutes, it comes round to know if you have everything you want, whether it can do anything for you.
New York was calling on the Prince almost as soon as he went aboard. There was a lightning lunch to Mr. Wanamaker, the President of the Reception Committee, and other members of that body, and then the first of the callers began to chug off from the landing-stage towards the _Renown_. Deputations from all the foreign races that make New York came over the side, distinguished Americans called. And, before anybody else, the American journalist was there.
The Prince was no stranger to the American journalist. They were old friends of his. Some of them had been with him in the Maritime Provinces of Canada, and he had made friends with them at Quebec. He remembered these writers and that friendship was renewed in a pleasant chat. The journalists liked him, too, though they admit that he has a charming way of disarming them. They rather admired the adroit diplomacy with which he derailed such leading questions as those dealing with the delicate and infinite subject of American girls: whether he liked them: and how much?
He met these correspondents quite frankly, appreciating at once the fact that it was through them that he could express to the people of America his intense feeling of thanks for the singular warmth of America's greeting.
From seeing all these visitors the Prince had only time left to get into evening dress and to be whirled off in time to attend a glittering dinner given at the Waldorf-Astoria by Mrs. Henry Pomeroy Davidson on behalf of the Council of the American Red Cross. It was a vivid and beautiful function, but it was one that bridged the time before another, and before ten o'clock the Prince was on the move again, and, amid the dance of the motor-bike "cops," was being rushed off to the Metropolitan Opera House.
He was swung down Broadway where the advertisements made a fantasy of the sky, a fantasy of rococo beauty where colours on the huge pallets of skyscrapers danced and ran, fused and faded, grouped and regrouped, each a huge and coherent kaleidoscope.