ise and vexation that his majesty, ordinarily so
punctual, should be so long in coming. Suddenly he raised the blind,
opened the window, and intimated by loud and prolonged laughter his
presence in the carriage, and the success of his little trick. The
astonishment and the dismay depicted on the visages of those on the
platform can be more easily imagined than described.

Emperor William is not fond of the press, and has never taken any
trouble to conceal his dislike for that branch of the literary
profession. It is true that he has been subjected to a good deal of
abuse at its hands, and that he has been made the object of calumny
sufficient to drive a man so hypersensitive to public comment into a
lunatic asylum. Many of the most intricate troubles and most annoying
episodes of his life and his reign have been in a large measure due to
the press, inasmuch as they were either originated or envenomed by the
newspapers. William is as nervous about what the papers will say as a
young debutante on the stage. Not only does he keep an anxious watch
upon the utterances of all German editors, but he ordains a vigilant
scrutiny of the articles printed in foreign countries from the pens of
correspondents stationed in Berlin, who, if any unfriendly mention
of his name is brought home to them, are ultimately driven out of the
country.

One of the first acts of Emperor William's reign was the expulsion
from Berlin of a number of foreign journalists, whose criticisms
and comments on his attitude towards his mother, as well as on
his opposition to the political views of his dead father, had been
distasteful to the imperial eye. A year later he caused a new series
of press laws to be presented to the Reichstag, which contained such
arbitrary provisions for stamping out the remaining liberties of
the press that even the _Cologne Gazette_ denounced it as "putting
a frightful weapon into the hands of the government for suppressing
freedom of speech and silencing opposition." This measure did not
pass, in spite of all the efforts of his majesty, and its rejection
merely served to embitter the emperor still further against the press.

As far as the German press is concerned William manages to get even
with it by insisting upon the strict execution of the laws concerning
the crime of _Lese majeste_ with a severity that savors of the
middle ages rather than of modern times. Indeed, while there are few
prominent journalists in Germany who