course.
By the time it is completed, and the young man issues from the
protracted ordeal, armed for the battle of life, several of the best
years of his youth are passed; he is already between twenty-five and
thirty years of age when he first treads on the threshold of his
career. On the other hand, he enters it not only with the necessary
qualifications whereby to rise to eminence in it, of which the severe
tests he has undergone offer evident proof, but with the assurance of
finding the way more or less open to success.[i]

CHAPTER X

HAAKON VII, THE NEW KING OF NORWAY

There is something essentially, almost ludicrously, modern about
the creation of Norway's new king. Not that it is the first time a
sovereign has been, so to speak, "custom-made." An eligible foreign
prince is tendered a seat upon an ancient throne; the form is old, but
the spirit, how new! Republican though she is to the backbone, Norway
has elected to be governed by monarchical methods, fearing with her
isolated and primitive peasantry, to put the machinery of control into
the hands of the people themselves. She must have a king, but he shall
be of a new variety; in short, a republican king. She will not even
have him addressed as were the monarchs of old, by the Norwegian
equivalent of "Your Majesty." He shall be just _Herre Konge_, plain
"Mister the King."

Even as the Norwegians welcomed Haakon VII to their shores, they took
pains to show him clearly his rightful place. In his address delivered
to the newly arrived sovereign on board the battleship Heimdal, Herr
Michelsen, President of Council, and for six months virtual President
of Norway, used these significant words: "For nearly six centuries
the Norwegian people have had no king of their own. To-day a king of
Norway comes to make his home in the Norwegian capital, elected by a
free people to occupy, conjointly with free men, the first place in
the land. The Norwegian people love their liberty, their independence,
and their autonomous government which they themselves have won. It
will be the glory of the king and his highest pleasure to protect this
sentiment, finding his support in the people themselves. This is why
the Norwegian people hail you to-day with profound joy and cry, 'Long
live the King and Queen of Norway!'"

Was ever so frank a bargain driven with a king before? "Behold," says
Norway in effect, "you may sit on a throne; but beware how you attempt
to king it over