Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 July 1896 — Unreal Life of Kings. [ARTICLE]

Unreal Life of Kings.

This young man—the Kaiser helm—from all I have observed since he became my neighbor in Venice (writes Mr. Zangwill in Astor’s magazine) lives a highly colored dramatie existence, in which there are sixty minutes to every hour and sixty seconds to every minute, the sort of life that should have pleased Walter Pater. He must be a disciple of Nietzsche, a lover of the strong and the splendid, this German gentleman, who is just off to Vienna to prance at the head of 1,500 horsemen. While he lived opposite me it was all excursions and alarums. As a neighbor an emperor is distinctly noisy. And yet. 'tis a strange life, a king's. What an unreal universe of flags and cannons and phrases must monarchs inhabit. Do they think that the streets are always gay with streamers and bunting and triumphal arches, always thunderous with throats of men or guns, always impassable? Do they imagine their subjects pass all their lives in packed black masses, waving hats? Poor kings! I always class them with novelists for ignorance of real life. And to think that they can only get to know life from novels! The Kansas wheat crop will be double that of 1895.