Under this the budding monarch had written the same words six times, with childish care to keep the strokes straight and the spaces regular. My account of this having led the princess to ask me to take her and her friend to the library and to show them some of these things, I gladly agreed, wrote the director, secured an appointment for a certain afternoon, and when the time came called for the ladies. But a curious contretemps arose. I had met, the day before, two bright American ladies, and on their asking me about the things best worth seeing, I had especially recommended them to visit the Imperial Library. On arriving at the door with the princess and the duchess, I was surprised to find that no preparations had been made to meet us,--in fact, that our coming seemed to be a matter of surprise; and a considerable time elapsed before the director and other officials came to us. Then I learned what the difficulty was. The two American ladies, in perfectly good faith, had visited the library a few hours before; and, on their saying that the American minister had recommended them to come, it had been taken for granted at once that THEY were the princess and the duchess, and they had been shown everything with almost regal honors, the officials never discovering the mistake until our arrival. The American colony at St. Petersburg was very small. Interesting compatriots came from time to time on various errands, and I was glad to see them; but one whose visits were most heartily welcomed was a former consul, Mr. Prince, an original, shrewd "down-easter," and his reminiscences of some of my predecessors were full of interest to me. One especially dwells in my mind. It had reference to a former senator of the United States who, about the year 1840, was sent to Russia as minister. There were various evidences in the archives of the legation that sobriety was not this gentleman's especial virtue, and among them very many copies of notes in which the minister, through the secretary of legation, excused himself from keeping engagements at the Foreign Office on the ground of "sudden indisposition." Mr. Prince told me that one day this minister's valet, who was an Irishman, came to the consulate and said: "Oi 'll not stay wid his igsillincy anny longer; Oi 've done wid him." "What's the trouble now?' said Mr. Prince. "Well," said the man, "this morning Oi thought it was toime to get his igsillincy out of bed, for he had been dhrunk about a week and in bed most of the toime; and so Oi went to him, and says Oi, gentle-loike, 'Would your igsillincy have a cup of coffee?' whin he rose up and shtruck me in the face. On that Oi took him by the collar, lifted him out of bed, took him acrass the room, showed him his ugly face in the glass, and Oi said to him, says Oi, 'Is thim the eyes of an invoy extraorr-rrdinarry and ministher plinipotentiarry?'"