Life — December 10, 1885 — page 18: what you’re looking at

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

HOW COULD YOU FAIL. SING a maiden fair, I sing an easy chair With carvings quaint and rare And arms. Ah, foolish easy chair, When you had Kitty there How could you fail to dare To use your arms? OUR XMAS AT WINDSOR. ER Imperial Majesty Queen Vic- toria upon learning that your cor- respondent was in London, immediately dispatched the Marquis of Salisbury with the Royal com- mand that he should make himself at home at Windsor Castle during his stay. Your correspondent having in mind some of the Victorian peculiarities, replied somewhat haughtily to Her Majesty that before he would lend his presence to the Royal Orgies it was necessary that some arrangements as to terms should be made. If the representative of LiFE was invited to par- take of her [mperial hospitality simply as the intimate friend of the Guelph family, and was to have the freedom of the Castle in every sense of the word without paying for it, he would gladly accept. If on the other hand Her Majesty, as is her custom, intended making the reporter pay his third of the expenses of the establishment as well as give the Imperial spree a notice next to reading matter in the Xmas issue, his terms were so much per Agate line, and no discount to the Royal family. A telegram, not prepaid, was received shortly after, bear- ing the Imperial autograph, and intimating that the Queen | had arranged matters so that if the correspondent’s presence should drain the Crown treasure to too great an extent, Par- liament would order the Burmese war off for two or three weeks, and the war appropriation would go toward the correspondent’s sustenance. The letter likewise said that there was a Ducal suite in the north-east corner of the attic at the correspondent's disposal, which he could occupy tem- porarily until the old Brown apartments on the parlor floor could be got ready. So it was settled, and the reporter packed his valise and started for Windsor. The Queen had forgotten apparently the hour at which he was expected, and no conveyance met him at the depot. Naturally incensed at such treatment, the correspondent telephoned several yards of indignant eloquence to the Castle, which brought the whole Royal Family down in short order. Wales cut a ludicrous figure enough. In his haste to meet his mother’s guest he had mixed up several of his eighty-nine uniforms. He presented a combination of Uhlan Colonel, Highland Chief, and Troubadour, and it being an excessively raw day, he caught such a bad cold in the Highland Chief and Troubadour portions of his body that his knees smote and teeth chattered for three hours comicbooks.com