their frames, thirty young couples dance a ballet, and when
they finish, the parvenu wakes up. It was very pretty and brought in a
lot of money, and there was a question of its being repeated for the
Emperor, but this was not done.

_February, 1908._

Dear L.,--The Crown Prince and the Crown Princess gave a small
_bal-costume_. It was their first entertainment of any importance,
though there were very few people invited. As Frederikke is a dancing
young person, we were invited, enabling me to take many girls under my
protecting wing. The Emperor was dressed as the Grand Elector of
Brandenburg. The Empress had copied an old family portrait at San
Souci. She had a voluminous blond peruke and a flowing blue dress. She
looked very handsome. The Princes were generally dressed as their
ancestors and looked very familiar, as almost all of them stand in the
_Sieges Allee_. I learned much of German history that evening. The
Emperor was very kind and gave me a spirited and concise history of
those whom his six sons represented. No one except the Kaiser would
ever have had the persistency to stay booted and spurred during the
whole evening without a murmur, though he must have suffered from the
heat and been uncomfortable to a great degree. He had thick, brown
curls which hung close about his ears; thick, high, and hot leather
boots; and heavy leather gloves which he conscientiously kept on till
the very end.

The Kaiser is a wonderful personality. The more I see him the more I
admire him. He impresses you as having a great sense of power and true
and sound judgment. And then he is kind and good. I do not think him
capable of doing a mean or small action.

Mrs. Vanderbilt drove me out to Potsdam in her motor, and, going
through the forest, we passed in our hurried flight an automobile
which we did not have time to remark upon. That evening there was a
ball at court. When the Emperor spoke to me he said: "You flew by the
Empress and me like lightning this afternoon when we were walking in
the forest."

"Was that your Majesty's motor?" I asked. "We went so fast that I did
little else than hold on to my seat. It must have seemed ill-mannered
to have flown by like that."

There is to-night a _Gesinde Ball_ to which we are going. I know that
you have no idea as to what a _Gesinde Ball_ is, so I will tell you
that it is a ball given at some kind house by a kind lady. People
dress themselves up as servants. It is our wildest d