The supper-room always struck me as being pleasingly
unconventional. Supper was served in the long, covered curling-
rink, where the temperature was the same as that of the open air
outside, so there was a long table elaborately set out with
silver-branched candlesticks and all the Governor-General's fine
collection of plate, but the servants waited in heavy fur-coats
and caps. Of course no flowers could be used in that temperature,
so the silver vases held branches of spruce, hemlock, and other
Canadian firs. The French cook had to be very careful as to what
dishes he prepared, for anything with moisture in it would freeze
at once; meringues, for instance, would be frozen into uneatable
cricket-balls, and tea, coffee, and soup had to simmer perpetually
over lamps. One so seldom has a ball-supper with North Pole
surroundings. We had a serious toboggan accident one night owing
to the stupidity of an old Senator, who insisted on standing in
the middle of the track, and the Aides-de-Camps' room was
converted into an operating theatre, and reeked with the fumes of
chloroform.
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