A scaffolding built around the statue of “Flore” at Versailles to
protect it from enemy air raids.]
He was not a mere nondescript adventurer. He was the youngest son
of Count Werner Alvo von Alvensleben, erstwhile German Ambassador to
Russia, when Nicholas was Czar. The young man had a taste for the
livelier side of life, gaily dissipated his allowance and seemed
to regard college life not so much as an educational purpose as a
convenience to the sowing of wild oats. This was not at all to the
liking of Papa von Alvensleben and in an hour of unsuppressed wrath and
resentment he cast the young man off and bade him shift for himself.
This was an unexpected climax to his pleasure quest, and rather
shocked Alvo. He remembered that the Kaiser was an intimate friend of
his father’s, of the family indeed, and it jarred his pride to be an
outcast from a circle of such distinction. He felt under obligation to
reëstablish himself in the good graces of his father and the august
personage whom he had so often familiarly _hoched_. So he set out to
subdue some fraction of the world to his service and credit. He did not
immediately find a field of action.
It was in the rôle of a hobo that he drifted into Western America and
began casting about for the horn of plenty from which he hoped to
shake substantial advantage. Two inches above six feet in stature, two
years under forty years of age, he was typically Prussian, stubborn,
unreasonable, of violent temper. But he was a good talker and not
without imagination. Behold him arrived in Seattle. The _Canadian
Courier_ says: