BISMARCK'S DEATH CHAMBER.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 8329, 30 September 1898, Page 4

BISMARCK'S DEATH CHAMBER.

Julias Ralph, who upon the death of Prince Bismarck visited Fredericksruh for the Daily Mail, telegraphed to that journal : — 1 I have just left the Schloss, where I saw ! a sight unlike any that, has been witnessed jin tho world before. In a small space aetween the inner and outer gate two stalwart sentries, with bayonets fixed, still paced like young lions in an all too small cage. The servants of the Scliloss, dressed all in green, or iv grey with collars oi green, and with guilt bugles on their caps, went in and out with telegrams and answers. A great van waited beside me loaded with floral tributes in large packing cases, each marked "Blunien." I entered, and stood in an atmosphere closest to the dead giant in his lifetime. In the park of maples, oaks, and h'rs, threaded by a yellow carriage drive, with its cream-toned stucco, the Schloss is really only a summer villa peeping through the breaks in the foliage. •'There" said a member of the household, pointing to a corner window at the rear end of the Schloss, "There lies the dead master. It is all black there." But it was for from all black where I stood, and where the color I saw was so brilliant that I could not interest myself in imagining the sombre chamber, For everywhere — against trees and ornamental vases, all over the grass, and edging the carriage drivewherever I looked were wreaths of palms, cypress, laurels, lilies, and roses. From each trailed golden - lettered silken streamers. The resources of the florists of an empire were taxed to produce in this single garden thegloriesof a thousand. Hidden where the trees were thickest were scores of unopened boxes which the workmen were taking out, opening three at a time. And still the trains kept bringing more and more to the station. It was as if the tears of a poetic people had been transformed to blossoms, and had been wafted from every town in the nation into that peaceful garden beside the bier of the empire builder. A painter, in a brown smock, with paints and brushes littering the grass beside him, was fixing on canvas for posterity this downpour of symbols of the resurrection and immortality. They were from Parliaments, councils, corporations, towns, States, societies, and individual mourners, not alone in Germany, but from far beyond. " But why are they outdoors ? " I asked. " Because the house can hold no more," said my guide. He led me to it and I saw the four largest apartments so heaped up with ribboned wreaths that the furniture was submerged. Perhaps the most affecting tribute of all was the huge circlet of palm, laurel, lily, and rose, which marked the healing of an old wound. It was the tribute of the Empress Frederick. Of telegrams I said nothing, but since Professor Schweninger got 400 while be waa here, it is a moderate guess that Prince Herbert received 10,000,