sit to some wealthy noble, and at
the end of the month the yachting week calls him to Kiel. Once that is
over he proceeds on his annual tour along the coast of Norway.
September sees him back in Germany for the autumn manoeuvres. October
and November are devoted to shooting at Rominten or some other
imperial hunting lodge, or with some large landowner or industrial
magnate. The whole of December is usually spent at Potsdam, save for
an annual visit to his friend Prince Fuerstenberg at Donaueschingen.
Naturally he is in Potsdam for Christmas, when all the imperial family
assemble to celebrate the festival in good old German style.

In music, as we know, he retains the classical tastes he has always
cultivated and sometimes dictatorially recommended. Good music, he has
said, is like a piece of lace, not like a display of fireworks. He
still has most musical enjoyment in listening to Bach and Handel. The
former he has spoken of as one of the most "modern" of composers, and
will point out that his works contain melodious passages that might be
the musical thought of Franz Lehar or Leo Fall. He has no great liking
for the music of Richard Strauss, and his admiration of Wagner, if
certain themes, that must, one feels, have been drawn from the music
of the spheres, be excepted, is respectful rather than rapturous. Of
Wagner's works the "Meistersingers" is "my favourite."

A faculty that in the Emperor has developed with the years is that of
applying a sense of humour, not originally small, to the events of
everyday life. He is always ready to joke with his soldiers and
sailors, with artists, professors, ministers--in short, with men of
every class and occupation. Several stories in illustration of his
humour are current, but a homely example or two may here suffice. He
is sitting in semi-darkness in the parquet at the Royal Opera House.
"Le Prophete" is in rehearsal, and it is the last act, in which there
is a powder cask, ready to blow everything to atoms, standing outside
the cathedral. Fraulein Frieda Hempel, as the heroine, appears with a
lighted torch and is about to take her seat on the cask. Suddenly the
imperial voice is heard from the semi-gloom: "Fraulein Hempel, it is
evident you haven't had a military training or you wouldn't take a
light so near a barrel of gunpowder." And the _prima donna_ has to
take her place on the other side of the stage. Or he is presenting
Professor Siegfried Ochs, the famous manager of th