s, Berlin, New York or Calcutta, in
varied languages, and in many degrees of fabrication. Outside of the
United Kingdom some of these stories have been more or less believed;
even in his own national home there were always people ready and willing
to accept the worst that they heard about a great public personage.
Where he was known best, however, the influence of these things upon the
reputation of the Prince of Wales was least and, in fact, so small as to
afford little or no excuse for dealing with them. Abroad, however, it
had always been different, and in the United States, thirty years before
his accession to the Throne, it was conspicuously so. With the passing
years, of course, and with growing knowledge of the Prince's position
and character, the situation greatly changed.

As a matter of fact the Prince of Wales, from the early days of his
manhood, was in his personal and private relations a jovial, honest and
honourable English gentleman; possessed of a full sense of his
responsibility in much burdensome work and ceremonial and with a
growing appreciation, as years passed, of his place as a sort of
impartial Empire statesman; possessed, also, of a large fund of animal
spirits and capacity for enjoying the pleasures of life. Within the full
limits of his rights and his position he lived his life of work and
pleasure, of public responsibility and of private rest and recreation.
Yet it was almost always in the blaze of a noon-day publicity and few,
indeed, were the times and seasons in which the Heir Apparent could
amuse himself in any genuine _incognito_. Attempt it he might, but if
any evil-minded critic were to seriously or conscientiously consider the
situation--both of which suppositions are improbable--he might have seen
that the best-known and most photographed man in the world would indeed
have been foolish to trust to an _incognito_ for any but the simplest
and most innocent of objects. The actual impossibility of the Prince of
Wales escaping from his _entourage_, his identity, and his surroundings,
were sufficient to make Continental fictions and foreign fancies about
him absolutely farcical to those who knew something of his daily
life--aside altogether from those who knew and understood his real
character.

THE MORDAUNT CASE

There was only one matter involving moral considerations which ever
emerged from the low region of back-door insinuation to the upper air
and it was threshed out in a _cause