he Republic
and the institutions our fathers fought and bled for.

_Un-American Folly_

It's the purpose of the present volume to show the guilty folly of such
un-American, un-republican, wholly unjustifiable, reprehensible and
altogether ridiculous King-worship, not by argument, or a more or less
fanciful story, but by the unbiased testimony of an "insider."

Let it be considered, above all, that a member of the proudest Imperial
family in the wide, wide world demonstrates, by inference, the absurdity
of King-worship!

Of course, whether or not you'll obey the impassioned appeal of the
corner sermonizer, who, espying a number of very decolletee ladies
passing by in a carriage, cried out: "_Quand vous voyez ces tetons
rebondies, qui se montrent avec tant d'impudence, bandez! bandez!
bandez! vous--les yeux!_" is a matter for you to decide.

* * * * *

Seek not for descriptions of ceremonials and festivities in these pages;
only imbeciles among kings are interested in such wearying spectacles,
intended to dazzle the multitude. The Czar Paul, who became insane and
had his head knocked off by his own officers, appeared upon the scene
vacated by his brilliant mother, Catharine the Great, with a valise full
of petty regulations, ready drawn up, by which, every day, every hour,
every minute, he announced some foolish change, punishment or favor, but
I often saw Kaiser Wilhelm and other kings look intensely bored and
disgusted when obliged to attend dull and superfluous court or
government functions.

_Royalty's Loose Talk_

But for genuine expressions of the royal self consult Louise. Those who
think that royalty shapes its language in accordance with the plural of
the personal pronoun, sometimes used in state papers, will be shocked at
the "neglige talk" of one royal highness and the "rag-time" expressions
of others. Louise, herself, assures us over and over again that she
"_feels like a dog_," a statement no self-respecting publisher's reader
would allow to pass, yet I was told by a friend of King Frederick of
Denmark that he loved to compare his "all-highest person" to a "_mut_,"
and I remember a letter from Victor Emanuel II to his great Minister,
Count Cavour, solemnly protesting that he (the King) was "_no ass_."

When the same Danish ruler, the seventh of his name, was asked why, in
thunder, he married a common street walker (the Rasmussen, afterwards
created Countess Danner