"Magsman," he says, and he seemed to myself to get wiser as he got
hoarser, "society, taken in the lump, is all dwarfs. At the court of Saint
James they was all a doin' my bisness--all a goin' three times round the
Cairawan, in the hold Court suits and properties. Elsewhere, they was most
of 'em ringing their little bells out of makebelieves. Everywheres, the
sarser was a goin' round--Magsman, the sarser is the universal
institution!"
I perceived, you understand, that he was soured by his misfortuns, and I
felt for Mr. Chops.
"As to Fat Ladies," says he, giving his Ed a tremendous one ag'in the
wall, "there's lots of _them_ in society, and worse than the original.
_Hers_ was a outrage upon taste--simply a outrage upon taste--carryin' its
own punishment in the form of a Indian!"
Here he giv' himself another tremendious one.
"But _theirs_, Magsman, _theirs_ is mercenary outrages. Lay in Cashmere
shawls, buy bracelets, strew 'em and a lot of 'andsome fans and things
about your rooms, let it be known that you give away like water to all as
come to admire, and the Fat Ladies that don't exhibit for so much down
upon the drum will come from all the p'ints of the compass to flock about
you, whatever you are. They'll drill holes in your 'art, Magsman, like a
cullender. And when you've no more left to give, they'll laugh at you to
your face, and leave you to have your bones picked dry by wulturs, like
the dead Wild Ass of the Prayries that you deserve to be!"
Here he giv' himself the most tremendious one of all, and dropped.
I thought he was gone. His Ed was so heavy, and he knocked it so hard, and
he fell so stony, and the sassagereal disturbance in him must have been so
immense, that I thought he was gone. But he soon come round with care, and
he sat up on the floor, and he said to me, with wisdom comin' out of his
eyes, if ever it come:
"Magsman! The most material difference between the two states of existence
through which your un'appy friend has passed"--he reached out his poor
little hand, and his tears dropped down on the mustache which it was a
credit to him to have done his best to grow, but it is not in mortals to
command success--"the difference is this: When I was out of society, I was
paid light for being seen. When I went into society, I paid heavy for
being seen. I prefer the former, even if I wasn't forced upon it. Give me
out through the trumpet, in the hold way, to-morrow."
After that, he slid into the line again as easy as if he had been iled all
over. But the organ was kep' from him, and no allusions was ever made,
when a company was in, to his property. He got wiser every day; his views
of society and the public was luminous, bewilderin', awful; and his Ed got
bigger and bigger as his wisdom expanded it.
He took well, and pulled 'em in most excellent for nine weeks. At the
expiration of that period, when his Ed was a sight, he expressed one
evening, the last company havin' been turned out, and the doors shut, a
wish to have a little music.
"Mr. Chops," I said (I never dropped the "Mr." with him; the world might
do it, but not me)--"Mr. Chops, are you sure as you are in a state of mind
and body to sit upon the organ?"
His answer was this:
"Toby, when next met with on the tramp, I forgive her and the Indian. And
I am."
It was with fear and tremblin' that I began to turn the handle; but he sat
like a lamb. It will be my belief to my dying day, that I see his Ed
expand as he sat; you may therefore judge how great his thoughts was. He
sat out all the changes, and then he come off.
"Toby," he says with a quiet smile, "the little man will now walk three
times round the Cairawan, and then retire behind the curtain."
When we called him in the mornin' we found he had gone into much better
society than mine or Pall Mall's. I give Mr. Chops as comfortable a
funeral as lay in my power, followed myself as chief, and had the George
the Fourth canvas carried first, in the form of a banner. But the house
was so dismal afterwards, that I give it up, and took to the wan again.
Royal Visitors in America.
Attempts to Strengthen a Spirit of International Good-Feeling Have Been
Responsible for the Coming of Some Princely Guests--Others Have
Found an Asylum Here During Periods of Exile.
_An original article written for_ THE SCRAP BOOK.
Many royalties have visited the United States since the first princeling
landed here in 1782. Such visits were not very frequent in the early days,
but they have so increased in number that now we might almost say that we
welcome the coming even while we speed the parting royal guest.
The first royal visitor to the United States was William IV, son of George
III, who came to us in 1782 as midshipman in a British line-of-battle
ship, one of Admiral Digby's fleet sent over to conquer us as a rebellious
colony. An attempt was made by Colonel Ogden, of the First New Jersey
Regiment, to capture him while his vessel was lying off New York, but the
scheme failed, and the prince lived to become King of Great Britain and
uncle of Queen Victoria, who succeeded him in 1837.
Queen Victoria's father, the Duke of Kent, was a hasty guest of this
country a little later on, while he was on his way to join his regiment,
then stationed in Canada. He subsequently became Governor of Nova Scotia,
and commander-in-chief of the British forces in North America. It was in
his honor that St. John's Island changed its name, and has since been
known as Prince Edward Island.
The Visit of Louis Philippe.
In 1796, Louis Philippe, accompanied by his two brothers, the Duc de
Montpensier and Comte de Beaujolais, landed in Philadelphia, bearing
letters of introduction from Gouverneur Morris, then American minister to
France. He traveled very extensively over the country, and sailed for
Havana, whence he intended sailing to Spain to see his exiled mother, but
by orders from the Court of Madrid he was detained there some time.
He returned to the United States, whence he sailed for England in 1800,
became the "citizen king" of France, and died in England two years after
the revolution of 1848.
The Brothers of Napoleon.
In 1803, Jerome Bonaparte, nineteen years of age, arrived in New York.
Visiting Baltimore, he fell in love with Miss Elizabeth Patterson, and was
accepted by her, and married with great ceremony by the Catholic bishop of
the diocese.
In 1805 he started for France, leaving his wife to follow. An order of the
emperor prohibited her entering France at any place, and she saw her
husband only once after his departure.
The First Consul had their marriage annulled by his council of state, and
forced Jerome, who was his youngest brother, to marry the daughter of the
King of Wuertemberg. Six days after the ceremony the young prince was made
King of Westphalia.
Joseph Bonaparte, a brother, one year older than the emperor, was by him
invited--or, rather, compelled--to accept the kingdom of Naples in 1806,
and the kingdom of Spain two years later.
After Wellington's victory at Waterloo, Joseph, with leave of his brother,
quitted France, and coming to the United States as the Comte de
Survilliers, he purchased an estate of fifteen hundred acres of land in
Bordentown, New Jersey, and settled down to the life of an opulent
gentleman and philosophical student. He also established a summer
residence at Lake Bonaparte, in the Adirondacks. In 1832 he returned to
France to aid in sustaining the pretensions of his nephew, Louis Napoleon,
to the throne, and failing in this he went to Florence, where he died in
1844.
Three other Bonaparte princes who crossed the Atlantic were Charles
Lucien, Pierre, and Antoine, sons of Lucien Bonaparte, Prince of Canino,
and nephews of the great emperor. Pierre--best remembered, perhaps, as the
man who shot Victor Noir in a duel--and his brother Antoine were mere
transient visitors, but Charles Lucien lived in Philadelphia for half a
dozen years. He was a man of quiet tastes, and an enthusiastic student of
bird-life. He devoted most of his time to the preparation of a revised and
enlarged edition of Alexander Wilson's "American Ornithology." The work
appeared in three volumes, from 1825 to 1833, with both Wilson's name and
that of Charles Lucien Bonaparte upon its title pages. Before the third
volume was issued the prince had returned to Europe, where the rest of his
life was spent.
The Two Sons of Murat.
Two sons of Joachim Murat, who married the first Napoleon's sister,
Caroline, and was proclaimed King of the Two Sicilies in 1808, settled in
Florida a few years after their father was shot by the Neapolitans.
Napoleon Murat was of a scientific turn of mind, and took great interest
in our educational institutions. He married a grandniece of George
Washington, and died in Tallahassee in 1847.
His brother, Napoleon Lucien Charles, came to America in 1825, and married
a Miss Frazer, of Bordentown, New Jersey. He went to France in 1848, and
received the title of a prince of the imperial family.
In 1836, Charles Louis Napoleon, the late Emperor of the French, was
banished to the United States for attempting to gain the throne of his
uncle, the first emperor, by revolutionary means. He landed at Norfolk in
March, 1837, and then came to New York, where he remained until May, when
he sailed for Switzerland to see his dying mother.
Two visits to this country were made by the Prince de Joinville, third
son of Louis Philippe, and brother-in-law of the late Dom Pedro, Emperor
of Brazil. On the first he arrived in New York in 1842, where he met with
a reception due the son of a king of France, who had also been the
custodian of the remains of the great emperor when they were brought from
St. Helena to Paris.
On the second visit, made in 1861, the Prince de Joinville was accompanied
by his son, the Duc de Penthievre, and his nephews, the Comte de Paris and
the Duc de Chartres. He placed his son in the naval service, and accepted
for himself and nephews commissions on General McClellan's staff, as the
Army of the Potomac was about to resume the march upon Richmond. After the
removal of "Little Mac" the prince returned to France.
The Prince of Wales's Tour.
In September, 1860, the Prince of Wales, traveling as Baron Renfrew, with
his tutor, the Duke of Newcastle, arrived at Detroit, after a tour through
Canada. He received a most generous series of ovations in the United
States, going as far west as Illinois, and while in Washington he was the
special guest of President Buchanan.
Shortly after the departure of the Prince of Wales we had a visit from
Prince Napoleon and his bride, the Princess Clothilde, daughter of Victor
Emmanuel II, and aunt of the present King of Italy. This prince was a son
of Jerome Bonaparte and his second wife, Catharine of Wuertemberg. The
couple made many friends during their brief sojourn.
Queen Emma, widow of a former king of the Sandwich Islands, landed at San
Francisco in 1866, and, after making a thorough inspection of our
religious and educational systems, she went to England via New York.
On January 21, 1870, Prince Arthur, third son of Queen Victoria, who is
now the Duke of Connaught, arrived in New York from Montreal, whither he
had been ordered on military service. Three days later he was introduced
to President Grant by the British minister, and was honored with a grand
ball in the Masonic Temple in Washington.
Early on the morning of November 19, 1871, the Grand Duke Alexis, son of
the Czar Alexander II of Russia, appeared in his flagship in the lower bay
of New York Harbor. His reception was of a dual character: first as an
officer of the Russian navy, and then as the son of an imperial father.
Kings and Princes From Many Lands.
Kalakaua, King of the Hawaiian Islands, stepped ashore at San Francisco,
in November, 1874, visited our chief ports, examined our industrial
resources and capabilities, and endeavored to hasten the negotiation of a
commercial treaty between his government and that of the United States.
The Emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro, visited the United States in 1876,
during the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.
Queen Liliuokalani came to plead her cause after she was deposed from the
Hawaiian throne, during President Cleveland's second administration.
The Comte de Paris, accompanied by his son, the present Duc d'Orleans,
again came to the United States in 1890 to visit the grave of General
McClellan, on whose staff he had served during our Civil War.
In 1893 the Princess Eulalia, daughter of the late Queen Isabella of
Spain, and aunt of the present king, came to the United States as the
official representative of the queen regent at the time of the World's
Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago.
The Crown Prince of Siam, Somdetch Chowfa Maha Vajiravudh, with his
brother, who is next in succession to the throne, visited this country on
his way home from his ten years' college life in England, in 1902. In that
same year the Grand Duke Boris, of Russia, cousin of the Czar, and Prince
Henry of Prussia, brother of the German Kaiser, also visited us.
His Highness the Maharajah Gaekwar of Baroda, Hindu prince of the first
rank, came to the United States in May of this year. He was chosen ruler
when a boy of twelve, and he began at once the careful study of the needs
of his state and people. Under his rule the slovenly Hindu town of Baroda
became a fine modern city with colleges for men and women, and a technical
school.