The Mayor of Boston.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 17, 24 April 1902, Page 4

The Mayor of Boston.

1 Whek I saw General Collins, the honored Mayor of Boston, riding beside the representative of the German Emperor,' B«id the Rev. E. A. Horton, a Protestant clergyman of Boston, ' I thought — in Heaven's name in what other country could that happen ! ' The same thought (says the Boston Pilot") occurred, no doubt, to most of the spectators, whatever their ancestry. Patrick A. Collins, Irish immigrant boy in 1848, coal-miner in Ohio in 1858, Massachusetts State Senator in 1870, graduate of Harvard Law School in 1871, United States Congressman in 1882, United States Consul General to London in 1892, Mayor of Boston in 1902. What a record for Irish blood and American fair play ! The Irish lad who has loved and worked for the cause of his native land all his life, sat on a fence in 1860 to see the first royal guest of the United States — the Prince of Wales — go by. Little more than forty years later he welcomes the country's next royal guest, Prince Henry of Prussia, as the representative of America's most cultured and historic city. Pays the Boston Herald : ' Mayor Patrick A. Collins and Prince Henry of Prussia were much together yesterday. The spectacle was one which supplies ample material for r flection. The immigrant Irish boy, whose youth wap a period of poverty, hard toil, and scant opportunities, was, as the official representative of this noble city of wealth and culture, acting the part of host to the brother of a reigning monarch of one of the haughtiest dynasties of Europe. He performed his duty with a dignity and grace of which Boston has no occasion to be ashamed. If his Royal Highness did not recognise in him a true-hearted and honorable gentleman, the fault must be in himself. In the acoidents of birth and fortune, for which neither deserves credit nor blamp, the son of an imperial line has had what the world reckons superior opportunities. Has he done for himself so much as this American citizen whos^ youth was spent as a mine worker and a factory-operative in a Btrange land 1 If Prince Henry had begun life under circumstances similar to those which environed Mayor Collins, would he have nsen so handsomely superior to them ? Not in his native la id, we miy safely reply. In this land he would have had a,t least an equal opportunity.' Nor was it less striking that a mayor of Irish blood, the Hon. John McNamee, welcome! Prince Henry to Cambridge, seat of the old university in our land. Verily, the brother of Emperor William of Germany and the nephew of King Edward of England sawr strangely suggestive things in Boston and Camb idge.