BISMARCK'S CHARACTERISTICS.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 478, 7 June 1890, Page 3

BISMARCK'S CHARACTERISTICS.

The father is not less affectionate than the husband. At the time when his three children—a daughter and two sons—were young, they had to appear every Saturday before him, to give an account of their proceedings during the past week. Of the three children, Countess Marie is the eldest. As are the relations of the Prince with his wife and children, so are those with his sister and brother, very affectionate. It is especially in his letters to his sister Malvine that he appears a most affectionate and amiable brother. He calls her jestingly, ‘my angel,’ ‘my ‘MMplear little one,’ etc. ‘He ti'eatad a future wife,’ the old people at Schonhausen will still say. As a true and faithful. combines a deep love of nwhich is often expressed in his letters in so poetical a form thatthey leave the impression of little lyrical poems. In a few strokes he paints exquisite pictures, such as from the castle at Ofen, ‘ the dull silvery Danube and tho dark hills on a pale red background, hills bluer and bluer than reddish brown against the evening sky which glows behind them.’ Prince Bismarck is a great horseman, and in war time he has remained on horseback for days together. But he is not always fortunate in his equestrian performances, as, according to his own words, ho has been thrown off about fifty times, and sometimes got dangerously injured. The facility with which Prince Bismarok acquires foreign idioms is exceptional among Germans, who, though they learn without difficulty loreign languages well enough to read a paper or book, rarely acquire the correct accent. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule, and Bismarck’s is one of the most striking ones. As he talks German without dialect he hasacquired French to n degree that even tho higher circles of sooiety at Geneva or St. Petersburg would hardly find fault with. Besides this he knows sufficient English to come up to rather high expectations.