THE DUKE’S BRIDE.

Dunstan Times, Issue 598, 3 October 1873, Page 3

THE DUKE’S BRIDE.

Mark Twain in Lis Innocents Abroad gives a capital description of a visit to the Russian Court, and in that description writes of the future bride of the Duke of Edinburgh the Grand Duchess, then, of course a comparative child, as follows : “ The Empress ami the little Grand Duchess wore simple suits of foulard (or foulard silk Ido rot know which is proper), with a small blue spot on it ; the dresses were trimmed with blue ; both ladies wore broad blue sashes about their waists ; linen collars and clerical ties of muslin ; low crowned straw hats tihomed with blue velvet ; parasols and flesh colored gloves. The Grand Duchess had no heels on her shoes I do not know this of my own knowledge, but one of our ladies told me so. I was not looking at her shoos. I was glad toobserve that she wore her own hair, plaited in thick braids against the back of her head instead of the uncomely thing they call a waterfall, which is about as much like a waterfall as a canvass- covered ham is like a cataract. Taking the kind expression that is in the Emperor’s face and the gentleness that is in his young daughter’s into consideration, I wondered if it would not tax the Czar’s firmness to the utmost to condemn a supplicating wretch to misery in the wastes of Siberia, if she pleaded for him. Every time their eyes mot, I saw more and more what a tremendous power that weak diffident school girl could wield, if she chose to do it. Many and many a time she might rule the Autocrat of Russia, whose lightest word is law to seventy millions of human beings ! She was only a girl, and she looks like a thousand others 1 have seen, hut never a girl provoked such a novol and peculiar interest ;b mo before.