imperial bridegroom came from
Potsdam at the head of a military escort selected from his regiment
and preceded the bridal cortege, in which the ancient coronation
carriage, with its smiling occupant, and drawn by eight prancing
steeds, was the principal feature. On the day following the marriage
the young couple went to Primkenau for the honeymoon.

The marriage with a princess of Schleswig-Holstein was not only an
event of general interest from the domestic and dynastic point of
view. It had also political significance, for it meant the happy close
of the troubled period of Prussian dealings with those conquered
territories.

A story throwing light on the young bride's character is current in
connexion with her wedding. One of the hymns contained a
strophe--"Should misfortune come upon us," which her friends wanted
her to have omitted as striking too melancholy a note. "No," she said,

"let it be sung. I don't expect my new position to be always
a bed of roses. Prince William is of the same mind, and we
have both determined to bear everything in common, and thus
make what is unpleasant more endurable."

Since the marriage their domestic felicity, as all the world is aware,
has never been troubled, and the example thus given to their subjects
is one of the surest foundations of their influence and authority in
Germany. The secret of this felicity, affection apart, is to be sought
for in the strong moral sense of the Emperor regarding what he owes to
himself and his people, but no less perhaps in the exemplary character
of the Empress. As a girl at Primkenau she was a sort of Lady
Bountiful to the aged and sick on the estate, and led there the simple
life of the German country maiden of the time. It was not the day of
electric light and central heating and the telephone; hardly of lawn
tennis, certainly not of golf and hockey; while motor-cars and
militant suffragettes were alike unknown. Instead of these delights
the Princess, as she then was, was content with the humdrum life of a
German country mansion, with rare excursions into the great world
beyond the park gates, with her religious observances, her books, her
needlework, her plants and flowers, and her share in the management of
the castle.

These domestic tastes she has preserved, and the saying, quoted in
Germany whenever she is the subject of conversation, that her
character and tastes are summed up in the four words _Kaiser, Kinder,