REGARDING THE QUEEN AND KING.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 29 January 1901, Page 3

REGARDING THE QUEEN AND KING.

A Prince’s Letter Bag.

In the course of just twenty days at Marienbad, the present King (then Prince of Wales) is said to have received 1300 common begging letters, 320 requests for his autograph, 260 requests from ladies — all, of course, entire strangers to his Eojal Highness—for a lock of his hair, or other personal momento, besides more than 300 presents of all sorts from miscellaneous admirers. The presents included smart neckties, ornamental studs, gloves, sweets, watches, cigars, walking sticks, scented soap, chessmen and moustache brushes. Such gifts (says “ M.A.P.”) are returned, or when from anonymous donors, devoted to charitable purposes. The Queen and Lord Roberts. Before Lord Roberts went out to take command of the forces in South Africa the Queen sent for him to Windsor. In saying “Good-bye,” her Majesty, a London paper says, took hold of both Lord Roberts’s hands, and, with tears in her eyes, said: “God be with you, Lord Roberts, and with all my brave men fighting for me. Please tell all my soldiers how I feel their loyalty and love. Duty will be done, I know, by you and a 11..” “Madame,” steadily replied Lord Roberts, “many thousands of soldiers in England, who have perhaps only seen their Queen, would willingly die for her. I have not only seen, but know my Queen; how much more then would I lay down my life for one whom to know is to honour and to love ?” The Queen and the Field Hospitals. Nothing (says a “Free Lance” writer) has distressed the Queen more than the reports with regard to the inefficiency of tho field hospitals in South Africa, and I am enabled to say that her Majesty has given private instructions that in all cases whese help is needed she will be responsible for the money necessary. In view of the enquiry into the hospital management, it would have been impossible for our Ruler openly to declare this great kindness of hers; and, indeed, even now such succour is afforded in the most quiet way. I need scarcely say that the prime mover in carrying out the Queen’s bounty is that gracious lady, Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein, the death of whose gallant son has added another chaplet of glory to tho regiment to which ho belonged. His chargor, by the way, is now at Cumberland Lodge, and will never be ridden again.

The Record Reign. Queen Victoria during her lifetime has seen the entire world transformed. On the day of her birth, May 24th, 1819, the first steamboat which over crossed the Atlantic or any other ocean started from Savannah to Liverpool, making the voyage in twenty-six days. The same distance is now made in less than six. She was six years of age when the first railway train in the world started to carry passengers. She was eighteen years of age. and had just ascended the throne, when the Morse system of telegraphy was first patented. Thirty-nine years of her life had passed when the first cable was laid under the Atlantic, Fifty-six years of it expired before the first telephone went into practical operation. At the time of her birth the tramp of Bonaparte’s armies had just ceased to shake the world, and Bonaparte himself was a prisoner on the British island in the South Atlantic. She has seen every throne in Europe vacated

many times, She has seen her own conn try transformed, politically, from an oligarchy, in which only one out of fifty of the population was permitted to vote, into a democracy in which the voters numbered one out of sis inhabitants.