The indefatigable deaconess had trained ten small boys to form a guard of honour and to present arms and go through certain military exercises whenever Royalty appeared, one tiny fellow performing laboriously on a very inadequate drum the while. When the Emperor came in sight they always went through all these evolutions, _Präsentirt das Gewehr_, _Gewehr ab_, and so on, the small _Unter-Offizier_, aged seven, giving his orders with the greatest coolness and precision. The German Empress has always played a somewhat subordinate rôle, but it is unnecessary to deduce from this obvious fact the idea that she is a nonentity or a mere _Haus-frau_, because Her Majesty is nothing of the kind, but a woman with wide interests, who from morning till night is occupied with social schemes for the betterment of the people. Of her it may be said, as Thackeray wrote of Lady Castlewood, “It is this lady’s disposition to think kindnesses, and devise silent bounties, and to scheme benevolence for those about her.... To be doing good for some one else is the life of most good women. They are exuberant of kindness, as it were, and must impart it to some one else.” And if kindness is the most conspicuous trait in the Empress’s character, it is a kindness directed into many useful public channels, finding an outlet in worthy objects, in social service, and much arduous work for the help and uplifting of mankind. It is safe to say that perhaps no other woman in the world would have been so admirably suited to the Emperor’s varying moods, to his suddenness, his volcanic outbursts of energy. In the presence of her husband she is self-sacrificing, self-effacing, but when apart from him shows plenty of initiative and self-confidence. For the first twenty years of her married life she was occupied in the care of her children, but by no means entirely absorbed by them, for she has always been deeply interested in problems of poverty and disease, and in the nurture of children, and has thrown all her influence in the scale against that excessive exploitation of the childish brain against which modern scientists are now upraising their voices. She is not at all pleased when poor little nervous children are thrust forward to recite poetry to her; she much prefers a bunch of flowers and something frankly childish, like the greeting of the small maiden who, having totally forgotten the speech she was to make, and finding the Empress so different from what she expected, just said shortly, employing to the horror of her parents the familiar _Du_: “You’re the Empress, aren’t you? I’m Anna Kruger. Here, these flowers are for you.” And the unabashed infant thrust her flowers into the hand of the Empress, turned her back and toddled off.