THE ROYAL POSTBAG.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13307, 13 October 1906, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE ROYAL POSTBAG.

The visit of, King Edward under the title of Duke of Lancaster to the German Emperor reminds one of the many odd letters sent to him by cranks on the Continent as soon as they learn the name of his hotel in whatever city he is staying. When His Majesty was Prince of Wales there came in by one post to the Hotel Bristol in Paris, where he was at the time, in addition to a score of the ordinary sort of begging letters, a petition from an old lady for a dot" for her lovely daughter, aged 18, the child of an officer who had left his family in much distress. ' , Other Tetters contained a request from a mechanic that the Prince would put on' a swimming dress and take a header into the Seine to test its merits" et dans cer cas, monseigneur," added the inventor, " j'aurai ma fortune assuree" (" in that case, my lord, my fortune will be assured"); a demand for a loan of 10,000 francs to enable a student in. natural history to go on an etomological excursion to South America a proposal that lie should join the applicant in an experimental vineyard in the Vosges ; and an entreaty that lie would enable a working jeweller to redeem his lathe and tools. Needless to say, lie is also assailed by the ignoble, malicious, or silly people who write anonymously, and by the crack-brained "prophets" dealing in menaces of death and of eternal destruction on various theological or political bases, who with the writers of threatening letters form a very considerable legion.— , ~, '• i ; v' ■ v.. - -