The Minneapolis journal., 1902-07-26

royalty must never for moment relax
the appearance of having the time of It's
life. -,
He has to get up speeches appropriate:
to the opening Of new institutions,
make well chosen remarks appropriate
to the laying of innumerable corner
stones and prepare set speeches to be de-
livered at public banquets with the un-S
easy consciousness that every word will
be printed in every newspaper.
As the kings representative, and
being therefore, necessarily aloof from
he is expected to avoid saying anything
more daring than that consumption is
plague that must be suppressed, or that
1t is the firm royal conviction that the
fine arts should be promoted, or that, If
the distinguished company there as
sembled would permit the observation,
the speaker would beg to say that he
firmly believed education to be good
thing. ~" - - r. : -. - -.
His share Of public work in the past
year, and the heavy shadow of future
responsibilities has added dignity to the
princes figure An English novelist,
whose name you know almost as we'll as
that of Kipling, once said that she never
saw the prince without thinking of the
funny man in the circus, who pops into
the ring saying, "Whoop!s Here we are
again!" But that Is all changed now,
and the pale, prominent blue eye of his
royal highness doesn't twinkle so often
with the light that dawns on Senator
Chauncey Depew's face just as he is
about to tell a funny story: ,,-@<.z p.
In his earlier days, the prince was tho
acknowledged and licensed jester of the
family circle. In his capacity as of1cial
humorist he could play pranks that were,
forbidden to his sisters, and that were
scorned by his stiff elder brother, the
Duke Of Clarence. ..,1y.-.- -. ..-@a.z.
Court chroniclers tell with glee of how
he furtively pulled the pigtails Of the
Chinese buffers In Hongkong, how he once
manged to redistribute the music on the
stands in the intermission Of a band con-
cert, going into ecstacies Of delight at the
confusion resulting when each instrument
tried to play the part assigned to an
other, and how he sedately dropped
penny in the slot on one occasion when a
portly and pompous official stepped up on
the scales to get out. of the way of the
crowd in an exhibition hall. - -, s'.s :
He entered the navy when he was 12,
and followed the sea. pretty steadily for
some fifteen years.: rising, step: by step.
through the various grades up to captain,
learning the business more thoroughly
than you might expect In; the circum-
stances. and winning great reputation
among his messmates, as Jolly Prince
George There never was "a man on
record in the navy who took so keen and
unwearied delight in funny stories as
the sailor prince, or who put. on SO few
airs in proportion to the number that he
might have put on If he had been so in
clined. ~s' L~'' "...'- =
The king is to some extent leader of
fashions as we'll as the autocrat of soci-
ETY., but it seems likely that when Prince
George comes to the throne fashions will
have to look elsewhere for a model. and
society will find itself mostly in the hands
OF the energetic forceful princess, who
will then be queen in place of the gentle,
retiring and timid Alexandra. - =
But when 1t comes to good-natured
| common sense, broad experience OF the
world and its ways, a fixed disposition to
attend to duty without fuss and feathers,
a solid Teutonic carefulness in details, a
philosophte calm with more thought and
reading behind it than is generally sup
posed--for all these highly desirable
qualities in a king, whose work it is to
reign and not to rule, one can look to the
present Prince 'of Wales with complete
! confidence. a. IT, :