The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1899-02-18
End OF \ BLACKBOARD
How Alfred of Coburg Went
the Killing Pace.
JUST HOW 1T KILLED HIM
Is One of the Mysteries Roy
atty Never Reveals,
JUST HOW 1T KILLED HIM

| New York, Feb. 17-Edgar saltus says
| in the Journal: In the Prussian guards
three is a vacancy. Prince Alfred of Sake
| Coburg and Gotha has received his dis
charge. Behind the announcement of it
| there IS a romance enough to busy syn
dictate Of novelists and drama in sufficient
quantity to equip dozen plays. II is
story of splendid revels and mean crimes,
tragi-comedy. through which saunter
kings and pawns. There are no ordinary
people in ii. AT each halt there is an echo
of sonorous names. There are professions
Of princesses, defiles Of dukes, the glare
Of regaHas, the aroma which royals eX-
hale. There no ordinary people in it, yet
IL is extraordinary how ordinary everyone
of them is In the grouping and setting
of their splendor one needs blue glasses to
withstand the brlliance which they pro-
ject. 1t is Death only they can't abash.
When it comes, the majesty which has
hedged them crumbles into common clay.
Last week he took boy who was train
ing for a throne. Here briefly is the plot:
The debut o fPrince Alfred was effected
at the age of four, twenty years ago, at
the breakfast table Of his grandmother
Queen Victoria. We forget the precise
fashion in which he then distinguished
himself. II may be tat he struck his baby
sister. It may be that he drank out Of
finger bowl. In any event, so did he vex
the Queen that she ordered him under the
table which his bad manners ad disgraced.
When ultimately the punishment was re-
garded as sufficient and he was told that
he might come out, he crawled at once
into view, but minus every stitch Of cloth
ing which previously he had worn. There
and ten il was felt that a child of such
notable originality would surely make his
mark, that he would follow perhaps in
his fathers steps, and develope into a
brave sailor of safe seas, afraid of nothing
but danger and expense. For, at that
time the Coburg accession was remote, the
boy was but one of many other princes
born in the purple, yet not TO rule, a
charge merely on the taxpayer of Great
Britain But when half-dazen years ago,
trough the death Of a granduncle, he be-
came ipso facto heir to a throne, il was
felt not merely that it was unnecessary
for him to make mark. but that it would
be best for all concerned were to avoid
making any.
Hereditary princes are like young per-
sons, the less gossip they invite the bet
ter. Hitherto the boy had done nothing
worthy of praise or blame. The promise
of his grandmotheTs breakfast table was
unfulflled. He had failed to either charm
or shock. Like all the Guelphs, he might
have been colorless had it not happened
that in addition to being a Guelph he was
a Romanoff as well. His mother, sister of
the last Tsar of Russia and aunt of the
actual incumbent was one of the imperi-
GU sbaauties that the present Court of Eng
land has beheld. The precedence of the
Princess Of Wales chafed her extraordin-
arily; the niggardHness of her husband,
the Duke of Edinburgh, was to her, by
comparison, a matter trivial in the ex-
IRENE. She wanted to be first. Failing
that, the presence or absence of pomp was
a detail, and when the Duke, his rank
and violin aiding, made himself king OF
Bohemia, which only London knows, such
was her disgust that only tie prospect OF
future sovereignty at Coburg reconciled
her to the back seat in which fate and the
Lord Chamberlain had temporarily con-
demned her to sit. A little of the fire which
was in her, little of the PRIDE a little
of that imperial unwillingness to be any
thing but first, descended to her son, tmep-
ored however by the mixed negatives
which reached him from his fathers side
Yet at eighteen, when as already recited,
he became the future occupant of a throne,
e was, outwardly, at least, neither bet |
ter nor worse than the average young |
Englishman Of his age. Then, at once, !
with new prospects came new possibili- !
ties. From the nonentity the prince emerg- |
ed.
\ few months previously his sister had |
married her cousin, Ferdinand of Rou- |
mania. A few months later another mar |
ried another cousin. the Grand Duke Of /
Hesse. At this juncture another cousin be /
came Tsar of Russia. Already a fourth |
cousin was Emperor Of Germany. There
was just 50 many courts at which, apart F.
from that of his grandmother and indie 4
pendent of his father, he was entirely az
home. OF the lot those of his sisters pleas
ed him most. But that was natural. At /
St Petersburg there was-and is-a little I
Of the archansel. At Berlin there was
and is-too much of the spirit of the |
spirit Dl mar llItlN- Bll I bucharest ana J
al Darmstadt there was good deal OF |
what we think We have seen described |
as laissez-aller, tho effort Of young royals |
to have a royal old time. Darmstadt Is |
stil part and parcel of the Middle Ages. /
Bucharest j. n fringe Of The Orient yet
In the Middle Ages sovereigns lived in a
fashion entirely sovereignty. In the Orient
princes were princes in something else '
than name. These young people did their
best TO live up, or. if il he preferred. 20
live down. 70 the traditions Of the past .
Alfred's collaboration in their aspirations .
was earnest. constant and close. II was .
an apprenticeship 20 which he took very
kindly. and for which. much a. if il de-
serves our condemnation, we do NOT blame .
him in the least In the heyday of youth
ne was in the lick Of the fun. Though il /
fails 20 shock Us. it scsndalized his grand /
mother, and in any event wac TOO fast - .
last The quarrels and ruptures which /
- AZURE CRAZE CREAM c. TARTAR zewpEs