A Haunted Palace.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 387, 24 July 1889, Page 4

A Haunted Palace.

Tiiekk can no longer be any frank gaiety in this Winter Palace (of St Petersburg), haunted as it must be by one of those formidable souvenirs which impose upon ' royal dwellings a lugubrious physiognomy. In entering this palace under the new reign, on the days when Alexander 111. is holding court, the servitors of his father cannot for- | get the last receptions of Alexander 11. , which were darkened by so many tragedies. One in particular we can see before our eyes as if it were yesterday. On March 2nd, 1880, was celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the accession to the throne of the Emancipator, who at that memorable date was to receive the tribute of gratitude fiom hit, people. Magnificent fetes had been arranged, but two weeks before the anniversary day, the 18th of February, the explosion at the Winter Palace occurred, ruined all those projects, and spread mourning and terror around the sovereign. A repetition of the attempt was announced for the 2nd of March, and in the capital, smitten with unreasonable panic, the precautions of the police caused people to believe that it was a day of riot rather than ot festivity. When we entered these sumptuous halls, where tho imagination &aw nothing but mines and ambuscades, alarm was betrayed on many a face. Alexander 11. appeared ; his visible fatigue and emotion scarcely allowed him to address a few words to his guests. Prince Gortchakoff, who had been absent from llussia for several years, was seen there for the last time. The old companions of the Emperor, witnesses 25 years previously of the prodigal hopes that had greeted his accession to the throne, looked without courage through the veil of piesent sadness upon their master, grown old, smitten physically and morally by so many blows, a prisoner in thi3 palace which threatened to fall in ruins over his head. The illustrious Chancellor, in the decline of age and success, betrayed by his strength as well as by his plans, leaned painfully on a console in the salon of Peter the ftreat, in the midst of that court where absence had made him for so long a timo a stranger. A presentiment of an inevitable misfortune oppressed all hoards and hovered over all this august pomp and circumstance. One year after, March 13th, 1881, there was a tresh meeting in this palace, in presence of the bleeding body that had heen brought in from a neighbouring street. The unforgetable vision of that afternoon i& still present in the minds of the youngest of the dancers when a ball calls them to the palace. They see once more the terror and desolation of these vast rooms ; the courtiers watching for the doctors to give them news of the agony ; the immense square all black with people ; the stupor of the crowd waiting with eyes fixed on the imperial standard ; finally the sign of the cross which passed over all these tearful visages when the standard fell down the flagstaff, announcing that the drama was over. The habitual guests of the palace who passed there the winter months of 1881, and heard on two occasions the dull explosion of dynamite, retain in their ears that besetting anguish, and more than once catch themselves listening 'for ib between two bars of a waltz. — * Harper's Magazine.'

Mr Pooler (enthusiastically) : 'Aurora, you should have seen little Jimmie Carroll slide in and plant both feet on the home plate at this afternoon's ball game.' Mrs Pooler: 'He did, oh? If my boy should plant his feot on the dinner service, do you know what I'd do ?^