Judge — December 27, 1919 — page 5: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Draen by Caveenr Suir Letters to the New By “Nonsense Kine Disconsouate IV- My dear Charles Mary OU will pardon me, I hope, this brief method of address. For the moment, I cannot recall the rest of your names I need hardly say how delighted and hon- ored I was to receive a letter from you written all in your own hand and spelt, as | saw at once, with- It was perhaps wrong of you to pay insuf But | do not forget that you were once a king and cannot at once get over it. You write in what are evidently wretchedly low spirits. You say that you are living in Schlitzen-Bad-unter Wein (if I get you right), in the simplest conceivable way. You have laid aside your royal title and are living incognito as the Hereditary Count in and of Salzensplitz. You have only a single valet and no retinue. You lunct you tell me, very plainly each day upon a pint of Rhein- wein and an egg, and at dinner you have merely a chop ora cutlet and a couple of quarts of Rudesberger. You retire to bed, it seems, after a plain supper—a forkful of macaroni, I think you said, with about half a tumbler of old Schnaps. Of all the thousands who fed at your table in the days of your kingship, none, you say, care now to share your simple fare. This is too bad. If I only had you and your little table in New York, I could give you the choice of a line-up of friends that would reach from the Winter G arden to the Battery. But that is by the way. The point is that you are singularly disconsolate. You tell me that at times you have thought of suicide. At other times you have almost made up your mind to work. Both of these things are bad, and I beg of To A out help. cient postage on it STEPHEN Is,” “Behind t A Frienp in Neep Rulers of the World Leacock Be you, my dear Sigismund, that before adopting either of these awful alternatives you will listen to a little nd will sit tight in Schlitzen-Bad-unter- Wein till things brighten up a bit. Unless I much mis- take, my dear Charles Mary Felix, the world has not finished with you yet, nor won't have for a long time tocome. It turns out, I am sorry to say, that the world is still an infinitely sillier place than we had imagined. You remember that morning when you ran away from your hereditary principality, concealed in a packing case and covered up with a load of hay. All the world roared with laughter at the ignominy and cowardice of your flight. You seemed all of a sudden changed into a comic figure. Your silly little dignity, the uniforms that you wore and that you changed twenty times a day, the medals which you bestowed upon yourself, the Insignia of the Duck’s Feather which you yourself all these things became suddenly laughable. me sensible and ra- quiet advice instituted- We thought that Europe had be tional, and was done with the absurdity of autocratic kings. I tell you frankly, Charles Mary Felix, you and your silly baubles had been no sooner swept into the little heap, than a thousand new kinds of folly sprang up to The merry Gheckosloval and the Unre- deemed Italian are running up a bill of taxes for peace- ful citizens like myself to pay. I am contributing my share to expeditions to Kieff, to Baku, and to Teheran and to Timbuctoo. General Choodenstitch is conduct- ing huge operations against General Gorfinski in Es- thonia, and I can’t even remember which is my general and where Esthonia is. I have occupied Anatolia, and Idon’t wantit. | have got an international gendarmerie in Albania that I think are a pack of bums, eating their replace you. comichoo!