AN ANECDOTE OF OUR FRITZ.
That fine soldier, the late lamented Emperor Frederick III., the devoted huiband of our beloved Queen's eldest daughter, the Princess Royal of England, was one of the strongest and most expert swimmers in the army, and during the summer months he was accustomed to take exercise early every morning in the vast garrison swimming school. at Potsdam. He was a man of a jovial disposition, and by no means averse to a harmless practical joke, and he frequently amused himself, when the school has been full of huge guardsmen, by swimming rapidly up to some clumsy Anak, seizing him by the neck, and ducking his head under till he gasped enough ; but the Emperor, or as he was best known as the Crown Prince, could take as well as play a joke, and one morning otter ducking several of the famous first regi ment of Grenadiers, in which he himself had graduated, he called out aloud, " Now you may try it on me if you can." He had hardly spoken the words when his neck was grasped from behind as by a vice, and he found himself compelled to perform several involuntary dives so prolonged that he presently fell short of breath and swallowed a considerable quantity of water, and soon cried out that he had more than enough, on which he was set free.
The Crown Prince turned to the grenadier and asked him his name, and in two days the Prince granted him a fortnight's furlough to visit at the same time generously forwarding the soldier money to defray his expenses. As my readers are aware, the Crown Prince became Emperor, but his life was cut short by a painful disease in his throat, his occupation of the Imperial throne being but a few months, and during the entire time and for a long period before, he was a con firmed invalid ; but as he had throughout his life, when in ordinary health, displayed in the highest degree all the noblest qualities ever possessed by man, he exhibited the same heroic patience to the end— his most anxious thoughts seemed to be to spare others. Althout a
splendid specimen of a great general,. he had an awful horror of war ; and it is well known, had it been the will of God to spare him, his life as Emperor of Germany would have been devoted to the emancipation people from that constant feverish preparedness for war which must deprive the country of much of its natural wealth, besides being detrimental to its general internal advancement as a nation—so singularly remarkable for intelligence and "great industry and patriotism.
It may or may not be known at some future date how important a part his truly devoted wife may have taken to bring about this well-known policy of the late Emperor, but there is one thing fully established, that the eldest daughter of our beloved Queen, the Princess Royal of England, was lovely and amiable in her youth, highly accomplished and devoted to duty as wife and mother, and in her exalted station showed herself never more happily employed than when ministering to those afflicted or distressed down to the humblest of the poor, and her future life, it is said, will be chiefly spent in this noble manner. The devotion and affection existing between herself and the Emperor was something sublime and heavenly; and all the English-speaking race throughout the globe, as well as the Germans and French, mourn with her in her comparatively early widowhood.