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THE NATIONAL SUNDAY MAGAZINE
0 i f 'l W
GRAUSTARK
The PRINCE of
Bv GEORGE BAUJl MCCI JTCHKOTSI
Author of BEVERLY of GRAUSTARK , BREWSTER'S MILLIONS. Etc.
Illustrations by R.F.ScHahelitz
SHALL be as brief as possible in
the matter of the Blitherwood ball.
In the first plnee, mere words
would prove to be not only feeble
but actually out of place. Any at
tempt to define the sensation of
awe by recourse to a dictionary
would put one in the ridiculous
position of seeking the unattain
able. The word has its meaning,
of course, but the sensation itself
is quite another thing. As every
attended the ball was filled with awe.
RETrOSPECTIVE-Prince Robin of Graustark, traveling
about the world arrives in the Catskills to visit the Truxton
Kings. W. W. Blithers, self-made multimillionaire and
doting father of an only daughter, Maud, prematurely decides
on the Prince as a son-in-law. He knows that Graustark is
financially embarrassed as a result of the Balkan wars, and with
the Blithers millions in mind he confides his domestic ambition
to his wife. Blithers calls at the King villa and meets the Prince.
He decides to lend Graustark $16,000,000, and departs for
New York to confer with Count Quinnox, the Graustark Minister
of War. Meanwhile it is decided to give a ball at Blitherwood
in honor of Prince Robin,
one who
which ho or she tried to put forward as admiration,
the attitude of the guest was no more limp than that of the chronicler. In the
second place, 1 am not qualified by experience or imagination to describe a ball
that stood its promoter not a penny short of one hundred thousand dollars. I
believe I could go as high as a fifteen or even twenty thousand dollar affair
with some sort of intelligence, but anything beyond those figures renders me void
and useless.
Mr. Blithers not only ran a special train de luxe from New York City, but an
other from Washington, and still another from Newport, for it appears that the
Newporters at the last minute couldn't bear the idea of going to the metropolis
out of season. He actually had to take them around the city in such a way
that they were not even obliged to submit to a glimpse of the remotest outskirts
of the Bronx.
From Washington came an amazing company of foreign ladies and gentlemen,
ranging from the most exalted Europeans to the lowliest of the yellow races.
They came with gold all over them; they tinkled with the clash 'of a million
cymbals. The President of the United States almost came. Having no spangles
of his own, lie delegated a Major-General and a Rear-Admiral to represent Old
Glory, and no doubt sulked in the White llotic
because a parsimonious nation refuses to buy braid
and buttons for its Chief Executive.
Any one who has seen a gentleman in braid,
buttons and spangles will understand how impos
sible it is to describe him. One might enumerate
the buttons and the spangles and even locate them
precisely upon his person, but no mortal intellect
can expand sufficiently to cope with an undertak
ing that would try even the powers of Him who
created the contents of those well-stuffed uniforms.
A car load of orchids and gardenias came up,
iairly depleting the florists' shops on Manhattan
Island, and with them came a small army of skilled
decorators. In order to deliver his guests at the doors of Blitherwood, so to
speak, the incomprehensible Mr. Blithers had a temporary spur of track laid
from the station two miles away, employing no fewer thaii a thousand men ti
do the work in forty-eight hours. (Work on a terminal extension in New York
was delayed for a week or more in order that ho might borrow the rails, ties
and worktrains!)
Two hundred and fifty precious and skillfully selected guests ate two hundred
and fifty gargantuan dinners and twice as many suppers; drank ban-els of the
rarest of wines; smoked countless two-dollar Perfectos and stuffed their pockets
with enough to last them for days to come; burnt up five thousand cigarettes
and ate at least two dozen eggs for breakfast, and then flitted away with a
thousand complaints in two hundred and fifty Pullman drawing-rooms. Nothing
could have been more accurately pulled off than the wonderful Blitherwood ball.
(The sparring match on the lawn, under the glare of a stupendous cluster of
lights, resulted in favor of Mr. Bullhead Brown, who successfully if acci
dentally landed with considerable energy on the left lower corner of Mr.
Sledge-hammer Smith's diaphragm, completely dividing the purse, with him in