nd
for whom honors and lucrative employment are exacted from the people,
who at home figure as poor relations, obliged to submit to treatment
that a self-respecting "boots" or "omnibus" would resent.

Here we have a royal prince of twenty-four or twenty-five subjected to
kicks and cuffs by his uncle, who happens to be king--no indignity
either to the slugged or the slugger in that--but when a pretty princess
gets a few "_Hochs_" more than an ugly, mouse-colored majesty, she is
all but flayed for "playing to the gallery."

"High-minded" royalty robs widows and despoils orphans; re-introduces
into the family obsolete punishments forbidden by law; maintains in the
household a despicable spy system! Its respect for womanhood is on a par
with a Bushman's; of authors, "lickspittles" only count; literature,
unless it kowtows to the "all-highest" person, is the "trade of Jew
scribblers."

_Right Royal Manners_

As to manners, what do you think of kings and princes and grand-dukes
who, at ceremonial dinners, pound the table to "show that they are
boss"?

Louise tells of an emperor at a foreign court ignoring one of his
hostesses absolutely, even refusing to acknowledge her salute by a nod.
We hear of expectant royal heirs who engage in wild fandangoes of
merriment while their father, brother or cousin lies dying.

"Personal matter," you say? "A typical case," I retort.

"Ask the _Duc du_ Maine to wait till I am dead before he indulges in the
full extent of his joy," said the dying Louis XIV, when the _De
Profundis_ in the death chamber was suddenly interrupted by the sound of
violent laughter from the adjoining gallery. And the fact that almost
every new king sets aside the testament of his predecessor,--is this not
evidence of the general callowness of feeling prevailing in royal
circles?

_The Irish Famine and Royalty_

In famine times, the kings and princes of old drove the starving out of
town to die of hunger in the fields, and as late as 1772 one hundred and
fifty thousand Saxons died of hunger under the "glorious reign" of
Louise's grandfather-by-marriage, Frederick Augustus III. And the "Life
of Queen Victoria," approved by the Court of St. James, unblushingly
informs us that in 1847 "Her Most Gracious Majesty" was chiefly
concerned about investing to good profit the revenues of the Prince of
Wales, her infant son (about four hundred thousand dollars per annum).

Yet, while Victoria pinched the boy's ten