HE GIVES HIS REASONS FOR THE DECLINATION AND THROWS IN CHUNKS OF
HEAVY-WEIGHT ADVICE--ADVISABILITY OF FORMING A ROYAL TRADES-UNION.
Bill Nye has furnished to the _World_ the following copy of a cable
dispatch just forwarded to the Allied Powers of Europe:
SLIPPERYELMHURST, HUDSON, WIS.--_To the Allied Powers, care of Lord
Salisbury._ Gentlemen: Your favor of recent date regarding my acceptance
of the Bulgarian throne, which is now vacant and for rent, in which note
you tender me the use of said throne for one year, with the privilege of
three, is at hand. You also state that the Allied Powers are not
favorable to Prince Nicholas and that you would prefer a dark horse.
Looking over the entire list of obscure men, it would seem you have
been unable to fix upon a man who has made a better showing in this line
than I have.
While I thank you for this kind offer of a throne that has, as you
state, been newly refitted and refurnished throughout, I must decline it
for reasons which I will try to give in my own rough, unpolished way.
In the first place I read in the dispatches to-day that Russia is
mobilizing her troops, and I do not want anything to do with a country
that will treat its soldiers in that way. Troops have certain rights as
well as those who have sought the pleasanter walks of peace.
That is not all. I do not care to enter into a squabble in which I am
not interested. Neither do I care to go to Bulgaria in the capacity of a
carpet-bag monarch from the ten-cent counter, wearing a boiler-iron
overcoat by day and a stab-proof corset at night. I have always been in
favor of Bulgaria's selection of a monarch _viva voce_ or _vox populi_,
whichever you think would look the best in print.
I hate to see a monarch in hot water all the time and threatening to
abdicate. Supposing he does abdicate, what good will that do, when he
leaves a widow with nothing but a second-hand throne and a crown two
sizes too small for his successor? I have always said, and I still say,
that nothing can be more pitiful than the sight of a lovely queen whose
husband, in a wild frenzy of remorse, has abdicated himself.
Nothing, I repeat, can be sadder than this picture of a deserted queen,
left high and dry, without means, forced at last to go to the
pawnbrokers with a little plated, fluted crown with rabbit-skin ear-tabs
on it!
We are prone to believe that a monarch has nothing to do but issue a
ukase or a mandamus and that he will then have all the funds he wants;
but such is not the case. Lots of our most successful monarchs are
liable to be overtaken any year by a long, cold winter and found as late
as Christmas reigning in their summer scepters.
I am inclined also to hesitate about accepting the Bulgarian throne for
another reason--I do not care to be deposed when I want to do something
else. I have had my deposition taken several times and it did not look
like me either time.
I think that you monarchs ought to stand by each other more. If you
would form a society of free and independent monarchs there in Europe,
where you are so plenty, you could have a good time and every little
while you could raise your salaries if you worked it right.
Now you pull and haul each other all the time and keep yourselves in
hot water day and night. That's no way for a dynasty any more than any
one else. It impairs your usefulness and fills our telegraphic columns
full of names that we can not pronounce. Every little while we have to
pay the operator at this end of the cable ten dollars for writing in a
rapid, flowing hand that "meanwhile Russia will continue to disregard
the acts of the Sobranje."
Why should a great country like Russia go about trying to make trouble
with a low-priced Sobranje! I think that a closer alliance of crowned
heads, whose interests are identical, would certainly relieve the
monotony of many a long, tedious reign. If I were to accept the throne
of Bulgaria, which is not likely, so long as my good right arm can still
jerk a fluent cross-cut saw in the English tongue, I would form a
syndicate of monarchs with grips, pass-words, explanations and signals;
every scepter would have a contralto whistle in the butt end which could
be used as a sign of distress, while the other end could have a cork in
it, and then steering a tottering dynasty down through the dim vista of
crumbling centuries would not be so irksome as it now is.
As it is now, three or four allied powers ask a man to leave his
business and squat on a cold, hard throne for a mere pittance, and then
just as he begins to let his whiskers grow and learns to dodge a big
porcelain bomb those same allied powers jump on top of him all spraddled
out and ask him for his deposition. That is no way to treat an amateur
monarch who is trying to do right.
You can see that unless you stand by each other the thrones of Europe
will soon be empty, and every two-dollar a day hotel in America will
have an heir apparently to the throne for a head-waiter, with a coronet
put on his clothes with a rubber stamp and a loaded scepter up his
sleeve.
If you want to rear your children to love and respect the monarchy
industry you must afford them better protection. I say this as a man who
may not live to be over one hundred years of age, and with my feet thus
settling into the boggy shores of time let me beg of you, monarchs and
monarchesses, to make your calling an honorable one. Teach your children
and their children to respect the business by which their parents earned
their bread. Show them it is honorable to empire a country if they do it
right. Teach them that to do right is better than to fraudulently turn a
jack from the bottom of the pack. Teach them it is better to be a
popular straight out-and-out artisan king who is sincere about it than
to be a monarch who dares not leave his throne night or day for fear
that somebody will put a number of bombs under it or criticise him in
the papers.