TUB COURIER.
f
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tion of nursemaids and fold women.1'
The old women bad their revenge
many a time before she died, and they
continued to object to the dishes she
preferred, her style of dress, the books
she read, her rearing and manage
ment of her children, and lastly to
point out to her the vengeance of
heaven in the cruel disease of which
she died.
When her first child .was born she
was unable to nurse the infant. Bis
marck forgot all affairs of state to
interest himself in the matter.
"What, in God's name, could be ex
pected of a woman who read John
Stuart Mill?" Of course she could
give no heirs to the German throne.
She had imported English nurse?, had
she, and yet the government must not
interfere?
Then came the great misfortune of
"the Princess's life, when one of her
English nurses, against whom the
people protested so bitterly, droppei
the present Emperor in infancy and
crippled his arm so that it remains
shrunken and shriveled to this day,
marring his otherwise good physique.
What the mother's feelings might
be about the injury done her child,
the people never stopped to inquire.
She had married a German Prince
and crippled an heir to the throne.
That a German nursemaid might
have been similarly unfortunate was
not admitted. No German woman
"had ever been known to drop a baby,
once she got her clutches oa it, while
in England women read John Stuart
Mill, perhaps even the nursemaids,
and what could they be expected to
know of babies?
For several months after the acci
dent the Princess was openly hissed
and insulted when she appeared in
hercarriage.
" Whatever Frederick's feelings may
liave been about his wife's radical
views, he at least apparently support
ed her. It was of course impossible
for him to attempt to adjust her dif
ferences with the Chancellor or to
give her any sort of political support,
but the support of a husband he gave
her at all times. Year by year, how
ever, his wife's feelings and preju
dices dominated him more and more,
and his failing health increased his
dependence upon her and his debt, to
her.
Fritz had an extremely chivalrous
nature and he felt keenly all his wife's
unhappiness, her deprivation and her
devotion to him.
This led him to commit his one and
only offense against the German peo
ple, when he deceived them to be
their king in name and to place his
wire upon the throne for ninety days.
It was a crime of consent rather
than of intention on Lis part, how
ever. Auguste had decided with all
the Guelpn in her that she would be
Empress of that hated people who had
caused her so much suffering. She
decided as her mother and great-great-grandfather
could decide, and
Fritz was putty in her hands.
The Crown Prince was in a bed of
suffering when the old Emperor was
dying, his throat half-eaten away by
the cancer that was to kill him. Ger
"man law decrees that no man afflicted
of a mortal disease can ascend the
throne. Bismarck realized that his
chance had come to pay off all scores
with the English woman by thwart
ing her determined ambition and
keeping her from the throne. Then
"began that international war about
the sick chamber of the death strick
en prince.
As she had bad English nurses for
her children, so Auguste would have
an English physician for her husband
and vthat was Morell Mackenzie's
chance to make hlsUiry. The medical
world has never forgiven him for his
perjury. Probably the world will
never know for what price it was that
he sold his professional honor -and
swore that a dying man would re
cover. Perhaps it was only sympathy for
one of his countrywomen whose lot
had fallen in hard places, an English
Princess who looked to him to recom
pense her for a lifetime of insult and
suffering and neglect. At any rate
Mackenzie, who had had his instruc
tions from the Queen mother before
leaving England, stated that Fred
erick was not a prey to a mortal dis
ease. Frederick's sufferings were
quieted with morphine to enable him
to go through the ceremonies preced
ing his installation and his wife's
flinty will supported him up the steps
of the throne to die there in three
months.
At the time of Frederick's ascen
sion there.were in the hands of the
Baron Kohn no less than 81O,S0O.O0 in
cash, the old Emperor's private for
tune, which was transferred to his
son, with the understanding that it
was to be used for the benefit of the
Hobenzollern family. When Fred
erick died scarcely any of this money
was left. Nearly the entire sum had
been transferred to Auguste and in
vested abroad, her uncle, the Duke
of Saxe-Coburg Gotha and Leopold
o.f Belgium named as trustees.
This use of the fruit of old Will
jam's thrift naturally enraged the
German people, and they declared
that Frederick had been put upon
the throne merely to enable his wife
to plunder the royal family of Ger
many and thereby benefit the royal
family of England, swelling the in
come of her profligate brothers.
It was this disposal of her hus
band's fortune that widened the
breach between Auguste and her son,
the present Emperor. This bitter
ness was never overcome. As she
made no concession to her husband's
family, she made none to her son.
The feeling between them deepened
into an intense animosity and an ab
solute lack of filial consideration on
the young man's part. He made no
effort to curb the slanderous abuse of
his mother by the German press. He
never permitted her presence at court
and never visited her. He unneces
sarily curbed her liberties of speech
and action, and she was practically a
prisoner at Friedrichshof, where she
died.
During the latter months of her
illness she shut herself away from the
semblance of sympathy, knowing that
there was no true affection for her.
Her own people were far away, her
husband dead, her brother, the King
of England, had always been bitterly
jealous of her superior mentality, her
former subjects execrated her, her
son had left her unprotected to their
persecution.
Whether John Stuart Mill and the
consciousness of having held her own
and maintained a consistent policy
comforted so desolate a death bed,
no one can surmise.
Small Town Funerals.
It may be said the funerals make
up the social life of many small towns.
Social endeavors become discouraged
in little western towns, like the crops
in the south wind.
It has been argued before now that
if tbe people In the villages all over
the western states took .more interest
in each other, and could manufacture
a smile when their neighbors had a
stroke of good luck, or could find a
sympathetic word to say when they
were in trouble, that the corn itself
would take heart o'grace and see
some use in growing.
The privations that people suffer In
our little western towns are of their
own making, and are not brought
upon them by God or the railroads or
the weather.
Within the memory of all of us
there was plenty of life and enthu
siasm in every Nebraska town, as
there is in Cheyenne or Dearwood
today. The smallest village had its
euchre clubs and whist clubs and
dancing clubs, and nearly everybody
spent money beyond their means.
Then hard times and small crops came
along for awhile, and everybody got
remorseful and discouraged and more
or less bitter.
People who met with financial re
verses turned about and said spiteful
things about their friends who had
been more fortunate, and these
friends, being human, withdrew with
in a wall of haughtiness and answered
back with scorn.
As the phrase goes, people "got out
of the habit of going" to see their
friends, and soon enough they got out
of the habit of caring about them
at all. Now some of them are pes
simistic and lay it on the weather or
the corn. It would be no great won
der If the corn did get tired of grow
ing to feed selfish and grouchy people.
In little eastern towns factions and
indifference are to be expected.
There are old blood feuds that have
been handed down for generations
and there are caste lines that every
body regards. But in a western town
everybody has a second chance and
begins again with no past behind him
and a clean slate. He doesn't have
to be mean because of tradition; be
cause his father sanded sugar or
watered his hay before he sold it.
Everybody has an opportunity to
help in making a social side to life
that will benefit him and bis chil
dren, but be won't do it because he
doesn't like this fellow or that fellow
doesn't like him.
There is one thing tbe small town
man and woman will not do, and that
Is show courtesy to people whom they
do not like; they hold such conduct
to be bare deception. The fallacy of
their theory is that nine times out of
ten If they sat down beside these
same distasteful people for an hour
and did their part to sustain a con
versation, their hatred would vanish
and their action would cease to be a
deception.
William James, the pychologist,
has so admirably explained that so
often the act precedes the leeling in
matters of courtesy and kindness. If
it were necessary to feel a strong af
fection for people In order to consci
entiously dine at their house or invite
them to your own, there would be few
dinner parties In the world.
Most of us don't try to love our
friends after we are eighteen, un
less we are fools or geniuses. We
take them for what they are worth
and let it go at that, knowing perfect
ly well that we ourselves are in need
or reciprocal charity.
The small town lets its social ar
rears go and go until people are buried
beneath an ashamed sense of their
own remissness, and then they try to
make it all up at funerals. When
anyone dies whom they haven't
broken bread with or called on for
years, his fellow townsmen put on
their black clothes and go to see him,
andthe women ravage their gardens
to send him flowers. If a college stu
dent comes back to his native town
and wants to see all his old friends
together, he has, to go to a funeral to
do it. It's a futile and Inexpensive
sort of remorse and it's a dishonest
way of paying social obligations.
Surely it is better to ask a man to
dinner once during his lifetime than
to go to his funeral, and surely it is
pleasanter. It's a better plan to tell
him that he's a good fellow and that I
he has deserved all the luck he' ever
had, and more too, than to tell his
widow about it someday. How many
people have ever told the best lawyer
in their town that they appreciate
the fact that he is clever, or the lest
student in their schools that they
take an interest in him?
Why is it that the common courte
sies of life that make it easy sailing
and compensate somewhat for the
larger disappointments of life, come
harder than blood in the small town?
Will White or Funston?
It is an old and accepted ditliculty
In the world of story-telling that'tl.e
man who can knock about the earth
'for to' admire and for tosce,"neer
gets settled down to the chronicling
of his experiences, and the man who ,,
is industrious enough to workup some
skill in the telling of things, can't
afford to take the holidays that would
give him the best of material.
While young men were scurrying
about the world in search of material
and adventure, the best of adventure
stories came from the sick bed with
blod-stained linen where Stevenson
wrote "Treasure Island" and the ".Mas
ter of Ballantray." One is often
tempted to wonder which of thoe
two likely Kansas boys gets the mot
out of life, Will White, or Funston.
They grew up on the Deer creek and
fished. and hunted together and made
their own adventures, and they went
to the University of Kansas together
and were sorry scholar?, both of them.
Then they went out to find the god
dess of their boyhood, seeking her by
different trails.
I believe White ins had moreof her
.than Funston. There have probably
been not a few of those priceless mo
ments that only military achievement
seems to give in the little general's k
life; but it is not improbable that Y
White has gotten as mucli pleasure
out of his friend's brilliant career as
ever Funston has, minus the heat and
dust and thirst and mosquitoes.
Pickett never saw the baauty of lu
charge at Gettysburg; that was left to
the strategists who watched the
movement.
After all Funston is only Funston,
and he is limited to one game; but
White is Funston and Piggy Penning
ton together.
The story-maker's recompense for
being nobody in reality is that he can
be everybody in theory. Mr. White
has even shown himself able to be Mr.
Bryan, Mark Hanna and Richard
Croker in such rapid succession that
one trembled for him, recalling the
story of the versatile ogre who turned
himself into an elephant, a bear and
a mouse, in which last form Puss-in-Boots
devoured him. T
Secretary Hay has said to his friends
that no writing in the history of
American politics has equalled those
three character studies of White's for
astuteness and brilliancy.
A New Library Line.
The children's reading room and
children's book list have gradual'
brought about a new division of labor
in the larger public libraries, and now
the children's librarian prepares for
his or her work by a special course of
study and kindergarten work.
The b'usiness of this librarian is not
only to meet the demand that exists,
but to increase the demand, so that
she must combine the qualities of in
structor, librarian and missionary,
salesman and traveling man.
One of the most successful method
yet adopted to increase the demand
for children's books is the "Home