PRINCE BISMARCK.

Auckland Star, Volume XXVIII, Issue 276, 27 November 1897, Page 3 (Supplement)

PRINCE BISMARCK.

A writer in the Leipziger 'Neueste Nachrichten' reports that Prince Bismarck often dwells on his early life. Speaking lately of his great skill in pistol shooting, he said : 'To shoot five bullets running into the crossbars of a window at thirty paces was a feat I could always trust myself to perform.' For years past he has neither drunk claret nor smoked cigars. His favourite drinks are beer (sedlmayr), champagne, and a quite exquisite hock (Foster Kirchensteuck) which throws every connoisseur who has good luck to drink it with him at his table into raptures. A glass of whisky, too, or old cognac, he does not despise ; but, above all, he loves at table his long - accustomed pipe. Coffee I have seldom or ever seen him drink during the last few years. It is remarkable that he has had no dogs since the last two, Tyras and Beksch, died. When the letters he wrote in former years to his sister and others were published some weeks ago, he said, 'Yes, that is all very pretty, but one feels always when such private letters are published rather as if one were put out in one's shirt sleeves on the balcony.' The Prince's memory is still quite amazing. The importance he attaches to the fostering of German relations with Eussia is strikingly noticeable.