AMERICA, GERMANY, AND CHINA 1899-1902 195 



recent successful public speech of her eldest son, a student 

 at Bonn, she had dwelt, in a motherly way, upon the diffi 

 culties which environ a future sovereign at a great univer 

 sity. In more recent days, and especially during the years 

 before her death, she had been, at her table in Berlin and 

 at her castle of Kronberg, especially courteous. There 

 comes back to me pleasantly a kindly retort of hers. I had 

 spoken to her of a portrait of George III which had in 

 terested me at the old castle of Homburg nearly forty years 

 before. It had been sent to his daughter, the Landgravine 

 of Hesse-Homburg, who had evidently wished to see her 

 father s face as it had really become ; for it represented the 

 King, not in the gold-laced uniform, not in the trim wig, 

 not in the jauntily tied queue of his official portraits and 

 statues, but as he was: in confinement, wretched and de 

 mented; in a slouching gown, with a face sad beyond ex 

 pression ; his long, white hair falling about it and over it ; 

 of all portraits in the world, save that, at Florence, of 

 Charles V in his old age, the saddest. So, the conversa 

 tion drifting upon George III and upon the old feeling be 

 tween the United States and Great Britain, now so happily 

 changed, I happened to say, * * It is a remembrance of mine, 

 now hard to realize, that I was brought up to abhor the 

 memory of George III. At this she smiled and answered, 

 &quot; That was very unjust ; for I was brought up to adore the 

 memory of Washington.&quot; Then she spoke at length re 

 garding the feeling of her father and mother toward the 

 United States during our Civil War, saying that again and 

 again she had heard her father argue to her mother, Queen 

 Victoria, for the Union and against slavery. She dis 

 cussed current matters of world politics with the strength 

 of a statesman; yet nothing could be more womanly 

 in the highest sense. On my saying that I hoped to see 

 the day when Germany, Great Britain, and the United 

 States would stand together in guarding the peace of the 

 world, she threw up her hands and replied, 1 1 Heaven grant 

 it ; but you forget Japan. The funeral at Potsdam dwells 

 in my mind as worthy of her. There were, indeed, pomp 



