ods
Have put their stamp divine:
The latest, and perchance the last
Of Corsica's dread line.

Then for the Prince Imperial
_Citoyens_ loudly cheer:
That his right arm may often bring
Some German to his _bier_;

That distant Rhineland, trembling,
May hear his battle-cry,
And neutral nations wondering ask,
"_Oh! how is this far high?_"

Our private dispatches from the seat of war in Europe are very
confusing. The "Seat" appears to be considerably excited, but the "War"
takes things easily, and seems to have "switched off" for an indefinite
time. It is observed by many that there never was a war precisely like
this war, and if it hadn't been for a Dutch female, the Duchess of
Flanders, it is fair to suppose that PUNCHINELLO wouldn't have been out
of pocket so much for cablegrams. The Duchess took it into her head (and
her head appears to have had room for it,) that her blood relative,
LEOPOLD, couldn't get his blood up to accept the Spanish Crown. Well, as
it turned out, the Duchess was right. Anyhow, she went for L., (a letter
by the way, which few Englishman can pronounce in polite society,) and
told him that there was

"* * * a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune."

LEOPOLD said he had heard of that tide; but he didn't believe in always
"follerin' on it," no matter what betided. Then the Duchess got up her
Dutch spunk, and spoke out pretty freely, saying as much as if LEOPOLD
were a tame sort of poodle, and that _she_ ought to have been born to
wear breeches, just to show him how a man should act in a great crisis
like the present.

"Just so," says LEOPOLD, "but you see the 'crisis' is what's the matter.
If it wasn't for the 'crisis,' I'd go in for ISABELLA'S old armchair
faster than a hungry pig could root up potatoes." FLANDERS saw at a
glance how the goose hung, and that her bread would all be dough if
something wasn't done, and that quickly. She knew LEOPOLD'S weakness for
Schnapps, when he was a boy at Schiedam, and, producing a bottle of the
Aromatic elixir, with which she had previously armed herself in
expectation of his obstinacy, poured out a glassful and requested him to
clear his voice with it. Fifteen minutes after his vocal organs had been
thus renewed, LEOPOLD was in a condition to see things in an entirely
new light, and hesitated no longer to write the following not