The Hattiesburg news. (Hattiesburg, Miss.) 1908-1917, 1909-09-16

A QUEEN OF TEARS
DESIGNATION WELL FITS DOW.
AGER EMPRESS OF RUSSIA.
Well Loved In Her Adopted Land, She
Has Had Few Bright Moments
Since Her Marriage to
Late Gar.

No other royal lady in Europe has
more claim to the title "a Queen of
Tears" than the Dow ager Empress of
Russia, and the brightest moments of
her life now are during her yearly
visits to England as the guest of her
sister, Queen Alexandra.
She was little more than child
when she became betrothed to the
then czarevitch, but before the mar.
rage could take place her fiance was
stricken down with mortal illness.
He summoned the princess and his
younger brother to his bedside.
Marry her." he said to his broth
er, joining their hands. ut is my dy.
ing request. And you, my dearest,
you will be empress Of Russia all tho
same. Your destiny will be accomp-
lished."
A few years after this marriage had
taken place her father-in-law, the EN-
peror Alexander H., was blown al
most to pieces in the streets of st.
Petersburg. This horrible tragedy
brought home to her the daily, almost
hourly, danger in which she and her
husband lived.
She resolved, therefore, never to al
low her husband to appear in public
if she could possibly help it without
being herself at his SIDE She felt
that her best way of shielding him
from assassination was to give him
the protection of her presence.
And, indeed, she is regarded with
superstitious reverence by the Rus
slams. Many of the poorer classes are
firmly convinced that she is surround
ed by host of guardian angels, and
she has been spoken of as 1.-THE bomb
proof empress
The emperors nerves had been so
shattered and his health so under.
| mined by the shock of his fathers
assassination that his reign was prac-
tically slow death The unhappy
empress was in despair. Hoping that
change of air might do good she hur-
| ried her husband off to the palace at
| Livadia in the Crimea.
At the same time arrangements were
fastened for the betrothal of the still
unmarried Czarevitch Nicholas. The
Princess Alix of Hesse was chosen as
the future empress, and few days
after the dying emperor had received
her he breathed his last, and the
brave empress was widow.
The next great horror that engulfed
her took place at the coronation of
her son, the present Emperor Nicholas.
| An imperial dole of food was to be
distributed among the poorer classes
/ of MOSCOW, where the coronation took
place. Eager crowds began to assem-
BILE the previous night on the Khodin.
sky plain. BY the next morning the
crowds had assumed enormous pro-
portions, and through the broken
ground and the faulty arrangements
they became uncomfortable, and a
great panic ensued. Nearly fifteen
hundred people were crushed to death
and many hundreds were injured.
The dowager empress, as she had
now become, hurried from the cor.
onation festivities and went round the
different hospitals to relieve, by her
charity an gentleness, the sufferings
of the victims of this awful calamity
On the same evening a much-talked
of ball took place at the
French embassy and, instead of re-
questing that it should be postponed
the new emperor and empress attend
ed in full state.
This callous indifference made them
very unpopular, while the tender care
the dowager empress took of the sur
vivors produced an impression.
She has now no fears for herself
but few can know the agonies she
suffers on account of her son and his
wife and their children.