What the Red Prince Drank.

Te Aroha News, Volume III, Issue 126, 31 October 1885, Page 5

What the Red Prince Drank.

I am afraid the journals have been overrating Prince Frederick Charles as a great captain. On the principle of rendering justice to the living and truth to the dead, £ shall try and judge him according to my light. I saw him twice— once at Baden, before the war, and afterward at Mentone, where he had been engaged in topographical work for Moltke. He was incognito at both places, and dined at the table-d'hdte. I never saw a face so incapable of brightening up ; he seemed to mo, too, to be slow of apprehension, which may to some extent explain the irascibility of his temper. There is nothing so vexes a cantankerous man as to find that he cannot at once understand what is patent at a glance to those around him. He had a great mass of brain, but a great deal of it must have been formed of cellular tissue. Though a double fir^t cousin of the Crown Prince, he was very unlike him. After the war he became a man mountain formed of bloated flesh. He was in the habit of soaking a great deal of alcoholic drink, and mixed his liquors terribly. The owner of Frescati, where he negotiated with Bazaine for the purchape of Metz, gave me a list of his before-dinner, hisdinner.and his after dinner drinks. Champagne, beor, Chartreuse, schnapps, Bordeaux, Burgundy, Moselle, and coffee wereimbibed and reimbibed. The} induced no bacchanalian joiity. The " Red Prince," as the journals call him, became rubicund. He was very unsociable in his cups, and it must have been a relief to his wife whenever he was sent from home on military duty. She was an amiable woman, and in youth very lignt hearted. Her sister the Grand Duchess Constantino, was considered one of the most beautiful women in Germany, and the Princess Frederick Charles was not wanting in good looks. When she got all her three daughters married she revolted against her husbandV tyranny. The Emperor of Germany, with his accustomed equity, took her part. But as he thought a divorce court scandal would be bad for the interests of his family, he recommended her not to repudiate her husband formally, but to veturn from SaxeAltenburg, whither she had gone, and place herself under His Majesty's protection. Prince Frederick Charles was advised to absent himself from Germany. He went to see the theatre of the Duke of Connaught's military achievements and to make a tour in the Holy Land The dry, hot climate, with his habits, disordered his liver and hastened the progress of fatty degeneration. The depleting baths of Marienbad were tried to keep down obesity. He was so weakened by them that his brain arteries could not bear the cerebral congestion to which he was subject. — " London Truth."

There are 333 inmates in Auckland Lunatic Asylum. A White Cross Society is being formed in Dunedin Mrs Parker, leoturing on "Our Fallen Sisters " at Sydney lately, said that - one young man had declared that Amerioan women "were too fond of wearing the breeches,"- and the cause of woman's fall was her love of dress. Mrs Parker laid the blame of fallen woman's condition, on the teachings of ,the Bible iuoulcating the lordship of man and the subjection of woman.