George III was born in England June 4, 1738, and ran for king in 1760. He
was a son of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and held the office of king for
sixty years. He was a natural born king and succeeded his grandfather,
George II. Look as you will a-down the long page of English history, and
you will not fail to notice the scarcity of self-made kings. How few of
them were poor boys and had to skin along for years with no money, no
influential friends and no fun.
Ah, little does the English king know of hard times and carrying two or
three barrels of water to a tired elephant in order that he may get into
the afternoon performance without money. When he gets tired of being
prince, all he has to do is just to be king all day at good wages, and
then at night take off his high-priced crown, hang it up on the hat-rack,
put on a soft hat and take in the town.
George III quit being prince at the age of 22 years, and began to hold
down the English throne. He would reign along for a few years, taking it
kind of quiet, and then all at once he would declare war and pick out some
people to go abroad and leave their skeletons on some foreign shore. That
was George's favorite amusement. He got up the Spanish war in two years
after he clome the throne; then he had an American revolution, a French
revolution, an Irish rebellion and a Napoleonic war. He dearly loved
carnage, if it could be prepared on a foreign strand. George always wanted
imported carnage, even if it came higher. It was in 1765, and early in
George's reign, that the American stamp act passed the Legislature and the
Goddess of Liberty began to kick over the dashboard.
George was different from most English kings, morally. When he spit on his
hand and grasped the sceptre, he took his scruples with him right onto the
throne. He was not talked about half so much as other kings before or
since his time. Nine o'clock most always found George in bed, with his
sceptre under the window-sash, so that he could get plenty of fresh air.
As it got along toward 9 o'clock, he would call the hired girl, tell her
to spread a linen lap-robe on the throne till morning, issue a royal ukase
directing her to turn out the cat, and instructing the cook to set the
pancake batter behind the royal stove in the council chamber, then he
would wind the clock and retire. Early in the morning George would be up
and dressed, have all his chores done and the throne dusted off ready for
another hard day's reign.
[Illustration: WRAPPED IN SLUMBER.]
George III is the party referred to in the Declaration of Independence the
present king of Great Britain, and of whom many bitter personal remarks
were made by American patriots. On this side of the water George was not
highly esteemed. If he had come over here to spend the summer with friends
in Boston, during the days of the stamp act excitement, he could have gone
home packed in ice, no doubt, and with a Swiss sunset under each eye.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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