The ropes, red flags, buckets, eggs, spoons and other things were regarded with excited anticipation and wonderment--especially the basket containing the prizes, which, I may as well mention here, cost individually not more than twopence each, collectively just eighteen shillings--a sum afterwards refunded to us by Her Majesty the Empress, who thought it “extremely cheap for so much joy,” providing, as it did, more than ninety prizes. By a subtly-arranged system of handicapping and consolation races each girl, whatever her abilities in the domain of athletics, was eventually enabled to obtain one of the coveted prizes, presented, it is needless to say, at the conclusion of the proceedings by the little Princess herself, who, an ardent devotee of sport, had competed with success in many of the races, waiving, however, her right to a prize in favour of her guests. This untried excursion into the unknown turned out a brilliant success from every point of view; the teachers, who had been formed into a Sports Committee, with quick feminine intuition had immediately grasped their duties, which they carried out with the greatest intelligence and impartiality; the girls themselves were the keenest and most enthusiastic I ever met; their achievements in the sack-race--won by the young Baroness Irma von Kramm--must have been seen to be believed (“Is this a usual English sport for ladies?” asked the head-mistress, as they hopped screaming past the winning-post); but the only rift within the lute was the attitude of the tutors, which, to say the least of it, was decidedly chilly. Perhaps they felt uncomfortable in the midst of that vortex of femeninity, or they may have been offended at not being on the Committee, or that they were not invited in their manly capacity to take the direction of affairs; be that as it may, they remained austerely aloof, only occasionally interfering when some one fell down or seemed likely to get overheated. One of more genial mood than his fellows had stood near the hurdle in the obstacle race, and on its being knocked [Illustration: THE CROWN PRINCE AND HIS HEIR, PRINCE WILHELM] over had proposed to substitute in its place a rope, which, as he pointed out, “could be easily lowered as each girl jumped it”; but his suggestion meeting with no approval, rather with general derision as likely to make a mock of competitors, he retired from all further active participation in our gambollings. The sons of the Emperor were unusually fortunate in their Governor, who together with his military training possessed the broad-minded, more tolerant liberal spirit of the age, and knew when to sink the martinet in the man. He was able to realize that the formation of character is first of all a development from within, chiefly moulded by the cast of the minds that surround it--a growth of mind modified, not produced, by outward circumstances.