During the stay of the Prince and Princess there was one unending round of festivities.  The Princess was then at the height of her great beauty, and seeing H. R. H. every day, my youthful adoration of her increased tenfold.  The culminating incident of the visit was to be the installation of the Prince of Wales as a Knight of St. Patrick in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, with immense pomp and ceremonial.  The Cathedral had undergone a complete transformation for the ceremony, and all its ordinary fittings had disappeared.  The number of pages had now increased to five, and we were constantly being drilled in the Cathedral.  We had all five of us to walk backwards down some steps, keeping in line and keeping step.  For five small boys to do this neatly, without awkwardness, requires a great deal of practice.  The procession to the Cathedral was made in full state, the streets being lined with troops, and the carriages, with their escorts of cavalry, going at a foot’s pace through the principal thoroughfares of Dublin.  I remember it chiefly on account of the bitter northeast wind blowing.  The five pages drove together in an open carriage, and received quite an ovation from the crowd, but no one had thought of providing them with overcoats.  Silk stockings, satin knee-breeches and lace ruffles are very inadequate protection against an Arctic blast, and we arrived at the Cathedral stiff and torpid with cold.  From the colour of our faces, we might have been five little “Blue Noses” from Nova Scotia.  The ceremony was very gorgeous and imposing, and I trust that the pages were not unduly clumsy.  Every one was amazed at the beauty of the music, sung from the triforium by the combined choirs of St. Patrick’s and Christ Church Cathedrals, and of the Chapel Royal, with that wonderful musician, Sir Robert Stewart, at the organ.  I remember well Sir Robert Stewart’s novel setting of “God save the Queen.”  The men sang it first in unison to the music of the massed military bands outside the Cathedral, the boys singing a “Faux Bourdon” above it.  Then the organ took it up, the full choir joining in with quite original harmonies.

In honour of the Prince’s visit, nearly all the Fenian prisoners who were still detained in jail were released.

Many years after, in 1885, King Edward and Queen Alexandra paid us a visit at Barons’ Court.  During that visit a little episode occurred which is worth recording.  On the Sunday, the Princess of Wales, as she still was, inspected the Sunday School children before Morning Service.  At luncheon the Rector of the parish told us that one of the Sunday scholars, a little girl, had been taken ill with congestion of the lungs a few days earlier.  The child’s disappointment at having missed seeing the Princess was terrible.  Desperately ill as she was, she kept on harping on her lost opportunity.  After luncheon the Princess drew my sister-in-law, the present Dowager Duchess of Abercorn, on one side, and inquired