Rensselaer Union, Volume 1, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 November 1868 — A King’s Passion for Large Soldiers [ARTICLE]

A King’s Passion for Large Soldiers

Galkjnanj’s Gazette has the following anecdote: You will probably have laughed with the rest of us at a Prussian peculiarity pointed out by Macaulay in the. .Great Frederick. < Se the most economical King in ; hristendom. If you doubt it, go ana seo I his threadbare uniform, run to seed, 1 I darned and worn jusa a la eorde, and his sword scabbord, which ho had mended himself with sealing-wax. These relics, in th? museum at Berlin, mark the littleness of the great King. B»t he had a weakness for big grenadiers, and would outbid all buyers in tho mau-innrket fcr any giant to whose stature nature had added a cubit or so, until at last he got together a regiment of the biggest, gawkiest, uugainliest fel- [ Jows pnssibla, and hie great'tleligtttntfreFt playing the flute and sending his bad J verses to be furbished up at Ferney, was to drill this awkward squad. That the supply of giants upon earth might be kept up, he was always on the look-out forbrood merci. Whenever, in Ids rides about tho country, he fell in with a huge female, he sent her with a note to the Colonel, with orders to marry her, nolens Vblens, to the biggest grenadier. A stalwart peasant girl, who had been picked out by his majesty, mistrusted the mission, and dispatched an old hag, wrinkled td : tatters, in her place. The orders were peremptory, and left the Colonel no so that the giant soldier was buckled to the.old harridan. Hur cm tnol{fs, M. Barhas written a lively little opera, fizzing with sparkling melodies, which flame and dance within their bounds like the effervescence of tho Mint Julep which Cornua invented long before our American cousins ever thought of concocting that brewed enchantment. A stalwart youth is about to be married to his betrothed, when his huge proportions attract the eye of the grenadier-seeker, and the poor youth is carried off and made a SMatmaljre’.ui, the title of this lively little opera. *