Prince with the Mill Girls

Hokitika Guardian, 21 May 1921, Page 4

Prince with the Mill Girls

MERRY SCENES IN THREAD TOWN GLASGOW, March 12 Five to ten thousand merry, lighthearted mill girls, with flags, squeakers, rattles, and singing “For lie’s a jolly good fellow,” acclaimed the Prince of Wales when lie visited the thread mills of Messrs J. and P. Coats, Ltd., at Paisley to-day. Through all the hundreds upon hundreds of yards of mill premises that he walked between this avenue of laughing, shouting girls that elmrus—now in high soprano, now in deep contralto, hero from the lips of a wee girl of 14 (hundreds of these) and now from a middle-aged woman—swept from one group to another. All this was at the Ferguslie Mill. Earlier the Prince had driven through be yard of th© Anchor Mill, where bonnie girls were massed in thousands —one group in white caps, another armed with rattles, many in rose-coloured woolUn coats, making altogether the most charming picture of welcome the Prince has yet encountered.

At the Ferguslie Mill the Prince entered the twisting room, where girls in grey dresses and bare feet were working as hard as eyes busily following the Prince would allow. The alleys wore hung with gav-eoloured festoons between the blazing electric lights, and over the door was the sign “Welcome.” The Prineo immensely delighted Agnes McMullen, a jolly girl with twinkling eyes and red, white and blue ribbon in her hair, by asking why some of her bobbins were stopped and by patiently waiting for a few minutes while she in the din explained to him. ONE GLIMPSE NOT ENOUGH. Everywhere it is the same. Having seen him once, the girls rush for another glimpse, and can lie beard saying, “I’ve bad five good looks.” “Five,” says another scornfully. “My number is seven. There he is, burry up.” No one could sit in the thronged Paisley town hall, bearing the clamorous cheers and seeing the thousands of white handkerchiefs fluttering a welcome and the organ sonorously swelling out “God Bless the Prince of Wales,” without being profoundly stirred. Pro% vost Lang told the Prince: “You do not refuse to do your work; you are one of the hardest workers in the Empire.

Your pluck and endurance in the war have produced in our hearts the deepest esteem. More than all our respect for your ancient lineage we like you.” The Prince then performed two or three of the acts that won everybody’s heart. First of all, lie asked, through the Provost, that the people should sit down while he read his reply. Secondly, after reading an official reply, be put the document aside and went on in bis plain, di.reot way to thank them for the kindness of their greeting, adding bis pleasure at the thoughtfulness shown in giving “my disabled comrades seats in the ball.”

Thirdly, be left the platform and went to shake hands with 1(5 paralysed soldiers from Ralston Hospital. As be moved among them one fainted, and the Prince had to come back to him afterwards.

At a social reunion to-night of the

Royal Scots Fusiliers, of which be is Colonel-in-Chief, the Prince shook hands with each of the (500 ex-Service men present and then with the waitresses. The Prince of Wales left Glasgow tonight, and to-morrow will accompany the King to Sandown Park, where tl)e Grand Military Steeplechase is to be run. MB—BMBWUtfJINIHHIWI BMP