BISMARCK'S STORY OF THE SENTRY.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 2, Issue 164, 20 May 1879, Page 2

BISMARCK'S STORY OF THE SENTRY.

All the world has been laughing at Prince Bismarck's story about the Russian sentry standing sentry in the middle of a lawn. He did not know why lie was sent there, the officer who sent him (lid not know, nor was the Czar, when questioned, a whit more capable of giving the" raison d'etre" of tliat stolid sentinel. It turned out that the Empress Catherine, just a hundred years ago, wishing to preserve a snow-drop from being plucked, set a sentry to watch it. The snow-drop faded, summer came, and yet tho sentry remained, and thero he remained for iv. The story is an apt illustration of the.if mechanical nature at onco of the official • mind and of Russian militarism. But v/e fear it is all but apocryphal, for a similar tale is told in half-a-dozen countries. For instance, in " Greville's Memoirs" it is related that a sentry used to stand in ono of the corridors of tho Foreign Office. His only business was to request all comers to" keep to the left. Why they should keep to the left, or why he was sent to tell them so, nobody knew. Finally it was discovered that, many years before, tho walls being painted, a soldier was temporarily posted there to warn people off the wet paint. He had remained-or rather a succession of soldiers had—ever since. But a tale told by General Klinger, one of Goethe's early friends, is exactly the same as Bismarck's, only in Klinger s anecdote it was a moss-rose which had been guarded for a century, aud the lawn was in front of a German palace instead a Russian one. But these variorum readings of the same story do not end there. The Empress Catherine found her son Paul charged with many thousands of bottles of brandy. As the Prince never touched that liquor, she caused an inquiry to be made, and found that, when a child, he had on one occasion required a glass of brandy as a lotion for an excoriaton on his leg. From that time a bottle of brandy had been either sent or charged to him. Hence the liquor bill. Finally, not to multiply these tales, not many years ago some inquisitive person noticed that year after year the sum of £4O was charged in the Estimates as the salary of a British noncomissioned officer in the Low Countries. He found, moreover, that it had been charged for a great number of years—indeed, nobody remembered when it was not charged in the English Army Estimates. This led to inquiry, when it was discovered that after the battle of Malplaquet, fought in 1709, the Duke of Marlborough left a sergeant to take charge of some stores. The sergeant was in time forgotten, but liking his post, took care not to remind his superiors of his existance, and so continued drawing his salary to the end of his life, and his children and grand-children and great-grand-children did so after him. We are afraid, however, that all these good stories must be bracketed as myths,