HOAXING MONARCHS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 173, 14 August 1909, Page 3

HOAXING MONARCHS.

SHOWING THAT THE JOKER IS NO RESPECTER OF PERSONS.

The "Zeppelin telegram" is not the first hoax which jokers have played upon the Kaiser (says a Home paper). A few years ago a .paragraph appeared in a lierlin daily stating that Prince .•Henry who had just returned from his visit "to the United States, had brought home, as a present to his brother, a number of plants of a new variety of crimson carnation. ."As everyone knows," the paragraph concluded, "th j red carnation is his Imperial Majesty's favorite flower." J On the day after the publication of | this news the Kaiser was due at Aix-1

h-Chapelle. A member of the Town Council suggested that everyone in the town should wear a buttonhole of the Kaiser's favorite flower. "GETTING AT" THE KAISER.

The suggestion was at once acted on. | The frock-coated members of the deputation which waited next morning on the platform each wore proudly a buttonhole of the deepest crimson. The poor fellows could not coneeive why the Kaiser's' demeanour was so freezing. He dismissed them with a few words, got into his carriage, and drove off.

At the Town Hall was another deputation, similarly decorated. Then his Majesty's wrath exploded. "What is the meaning of this insult?" he demanded. Someone explained, and then one of the Kaiser's attendants took the mayor as'ide. "My dear sir," he said, "surely you knew that the red carnation is the emblem of the Social Democrats, and, of all flowers, the one which his Majesty chiefly detests!" Many years ago, our own King, then Prince of Wales, was the object of a stupid hoax. He received a letter informing him of his unanimous election as honorary member of the Princeton Medical Faculty, and signed by three students'. With liis invariable courtesy, the recipient of the letter requested his private secretary to acknowledge it. The reply says, "His Royal Highness will remember with pride and satisfaction the mark of distinction received at the hands of the Princeton Medical Faculty." As a matter of fact, there 'm not, and never was, such an organisation.

LIBELLING PRINCESS LOUISE. As impudent a hoax as ever was heard of was perpetrated in 1901 upon a Belgian paper. A letter, purporting to bs '■n the handwriting and above the signature of Princess Louise of Coburg, was received by the editor, who very foolishly published it without first assuring himself as' to its genuineness. This lette r gave a long catalogue of the wrongs of Princess Louise and of her sisters, and constituted a most brutal attack upon her father, the King of the Belgians. The letter was at once copied by a number of other papers, includhg more than oue in this country. Naturally, it gave great pain to the Princess herself, and tire oaly wonder is that a prosecution for libel was not the immediate result.

Five years ago a young American woman who was staying in Copenhagen made a bet with a friend that she would propose to the King of Denmark. His late Majesty was accustomed to devote one morning a week to the reception of anyone who desired to prosent any kind of petition to him, and it was' on one of these occasions that the American found he r way to the Royal residence* '

"What can I do for you, madam?" asked the King. "Your Majesty, I desired to ask you if you would like to marry me?" was the reply. The King merely smiled. "I am afraid I am a little too old," he said. And at the same moment he beckoned to one of the officials to conduct the lady to the door. He had put her down as a harmless lunatic. THE DUKE'S PILEMMA.

A joke of rather a rough order was played upon the first cousin of the Emperor of Austria, the Archduke Salvator. Two or three years ago the duke, who is very fond of travelling, was in Paris. He was passing the Bourse—the Parisian equivalent of our Stock Exchange—when his companion, a larky young French count, suggested that lie might like to look inside. t "If you walk straight in," ho said, "no one will notice you. They will take you for a stockbroker.' The duke took hiin at his word, but, of course, he was no sooner inside than ho was at once recognised as a sightseer. Hi- silk hat was instantly spirited away, and he was at once surrounded bv a mob of dealers with notebooks, shouting fabulous offers to bnv or soli stock.

The duke had a desperate struggle, to reach the fro Tit lobby, and when at last lie got tflei'3, hatlcss and breathless, he found that some genial soul had pinned a long price-list to the tails of his coat. PRINCE FERDINAND FOOLED.

It is not likely that any reigning sovereign ever got a more unpleasant scare thau did Ferdinand of Bulgaria some five years ago. His private secretary, a young baron, was away in Austria on a vacation, when a letter arrived for his Royal master announcing that he did- not propose to return, a:ul that he would be glad of the sum of £40,000. Otherwise, ho wrote, he would be compelled to sell a number of secret documents' which he had taken away with him.

Instantly Prince Ferdinand despatched a couple of secret service envoys in chaso of his missing secretary, whom they ran to ground peacefully shooting on his own estate. Further investigation proved the missive to bo nothing but a hoax.