I

T was at a diplomatic dinner given in Berlin a few winters ago that the feasibility of an American becoming a guest at Friedrichsruh was brought under discussion. The American Ambassador, to whom I presented an autograph letter from the President of the United States directing him to secure an invitation for me from the Castle, nearly fainted from shock at my audacity; he called in the First Secretary of Legation to support his dictum: "The thing is impossible, unheard of; no one reaches the Prince, who is regarded as greater than the Emperor; he refuses even royalty; every day prominent countrymen and women of mine come here with such requests; they pull every imaginable wire, but the door remains closed. The idea is preposterous. Let me advise you to relinquish it before the disappointment makes you sick, like the frantic society lady we had here from Chicago last year on a similar errand. I am very sorry, but it is absolutely impossible, absolutely hopeless."

But, your Excellency," I exclaimed, "nothing is hopeless, nothing is impossible." The situation, however, bristled with difficulties until I held a consultation with a German friend whose mother had been the confidante as well as lady-in-waiting to the old Empress Augusta, to which I summoned the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, than whom there is no more gallant or clever officer in his Majesty's realm. These friends declared that the Prince dearly loved a present, but an almost insurmountable difficulty lay in the selection of what might strike his fancy, for they said the attic of the Schloss was full of gifts in cases which had never been opened, besides any quantity of the more acceptable sort which were distributed throughout the Caste. We paused; we considered; a difficult problem confronted us. Then, like an inspiration, those charming lines of Longfellow came into my thought which begin:

Thou too, sail on, O ship of state, Why should I not send the old Prince a noble ship to bear my message? It was soon built. The framework of the ship was three yards long, covered with quilted and embossed

laurel and oak leaves, as befitted an old hero. Parma violets made the sails; lilies-ofthe-valley formed the ropes; at the two mastheads flew the Prussian and the American colors. The cargo consisted of great purple grapes, outvying the largest plums in size, and hot-house strawberries sent from Italy in response to a telegram, as at this season of the year this favcrite fruit of the Prince was unattainable in Berlin; from underneath peeped the choicest apples of sunny France and the pomegranates of the South, while bunches of veritable acorns were studded here and there among the fruit, an heraldic emblem in the princely coat of arms.

Then the Baroness von Pummer Esche and I sat down to wait in Berlin while the ship was convoyed to Friedrichsruh by special messenger, together with a little letter which I had written, and another, elegant in diplomatic phrase and diction, from the American Ambassador. On his return we learned that the man had been taken into an anteroom in the Castle, whence, while the Old Chancellor and his family were gathered at table, he could peep through the glass door and watch the Prince, to whom the butler at once carried my beautiful "Ship of State." The Prince, surprised, rose to his feet, made a little tour of inspection around the laurel ship, perused the letters which had been handed to him, and called for a telegraph form. The message he then dictated reached me before the man could return to Berlin; after thanking Von Herzen for the schöne Geshenck, the message read, "Ich werde mich freuen Sie zu sehen," and asked me to telegraph the date of my visit, as the Prince would order the Hamburg express, which rushes past the Castle, to stop at the Friedrichsruh station-an insignificant place by the roadside. Thus did his Excellency the Ambassador's " utterly impossible" come to pass !

As the carriage, with rather dilapidated blue liveries, drew up before the Castle, several gentlemen and a bevy of men servants stood at the entrance, and barely was there sufficient time to get out of my long Alexandrine coat before Countess Rantzan-Bis

marck, the only daughter and lady of the house, entered the garde-robe, and directly behind her stood the Prince!

From that moment through the long hours of my visit, amazement came like a series of electric shocks. I had looked to see an old man, a little bent, a little tremulous, the burden and neat of the day written visibly over face and figure. But as his Serene Highness presented his arm, and, with the great Dane, Tyrus II., close at heel, we swept through a series of receptionrooms to the waiting lunchtable, he seemed like a magnificent running soldier, erect, swift, the personification of physical grace and power, who had come to greet me out of

some old Ro

spair for his statue and I for my reminiscences. Soon, however, the contracted features relaxed under the revivifying influence of meat and drink, and the conversation subsided as the Prince began to talk.

Immediately there was a sustained hush, an eager leaning forward to catch every word as if an oracle now spoke, the family manifesting a reverent attention which I fancied was mixed with a good deal of fear and personal dread springing from a close

Dr. Schweninger, as dark and as handsome as the Mephistopheles whom he resembles, and the handsome young sculptor, BerwaldSchwerin, a soc-in-law of the famous Kopf, invited here at the solicitation of the Grand Duchess of Mecklenberg-Sterlitz to study. the features of his Excellency for a statue he was to model. Tre Prince, who suffers from an acute neuralgic affection which contracts the entire right side of the face, rendering speech impossible for the time, began the meal in great pain; the sculptor sat in de

and frequent acquaintance with 'emper and moodiness. But nervousness

and irascibleness are hardly to be wondered at in the great, lonely old man who supported

casional suggestion, is all on one side. None can desire a greater privilege than to be an entranced listener, nor does the Prince desire better than to win a perpetual atten

tion.

it rang again. That pleases the garrulous old gentleman."

His speech was marked by great deliberation and a perceɔtible hesitancy, as if hs mind sought the neatest phraseology to cloak his thought. Each word was freighted to send an echo down the avenue of time. Occasionally his sentences were as terribly involved as an editorial in a German newspaper, and in his parliamentary speeches they have been known to exceed a foot of print.

"But surely, Durchlaucht," I said in response to a neat compliment on my knowledge of his native tongue, "you speak English?"

"Yes," he replied, with a smile, "I believe I am more or less fami iar with all the languages. As a young man of forty-two, while I was at St. Petersburg, I studied and spoke Russian. That was an excellent school,

Among other things I learned there the art of saying nothing in a great many words. I made a practice of writing elaborate articles for our diplomatic bureau, which I polished to the highest degree, and of which neither I nor any one else could comprehend as much as a word this, we considered, was diplomacy. I was married then, and I remember the smallness of our income did not admit of our entertaining elaborately, so we would invite the people in to pot-luck. I was compelled to expend fifteen or twenty, sometimes even twenty-five, roubles each time I paid the Czar a visit. If I went at the request of the Fmperor, it cost even more. The coachman and foo men who fetched me, the house steward and other servants, must all be feed. Then there was the runner with high, round feathers on his head like an Indian, who got five roubles for going before me through the great corridors of the palace to the Emperor's rooms