There is a perfect downpour of books eulogizing monarchs and monarchy; royal governments spend millions of the people's money to uphold and aggrandize exalted kingship and seedy princeship alike; three-fourths of the press of Europe is swayed by king-worship, or subsidized to sing the praises of "God's Anointed," while in our own country the aping of monarchical institutions, the admiration for court life, the idealization of kings, their sayings, doings and pretended superiority, as carried on by the multi-rich, are undermining love for the Republic and the institutions our fathers fought and bled for. _Un-American Folly_ It's the purpose of the present volume to show the guilty folly of such un-American, un-republican, wholly unjustifiable, reprehensible and altogether ridiculous King-worship, not by argument, or a more or less fanciful story, but by the unbiased testimony of an "insider." Let it be considered, above all, that a member of the proudest Imperial family in the wide, wide world demonstrates, by inference, the absurdity of King-worship! Of course, whether or not you'll obey the impassioned appeal of the corner sermonizer, who, espying a number of very decolletee ladies passing by in a carriage, cried out: "_Quand vous voyez ces tetons rebondies, qui se montrent avec tant d'impudence, bandez! bandez! bandez! vous--les yeux!_" is a matter for you to decide. * * * * * Seek not for descriptions of ceremonials and festivities in these pages; only imbeciles among kings are interested in such wearying spectacles, intended to dazzle the multitude. The Czar Paul, who became insane and had his head knocked off by his own officers, appeared upon the scene vacated by his brilliant mother, Catharine the Great, with a valise full of petty regulations, ready drawn up, by which, every day, every hour, every minute, he announced some foolish change, punishment or favor, but I often saw Kaiser Wilhelm and other kings look intensely bored and disgusted when obliged to attend dull and superfluous court or government functions. _Royalty's Loose Talk_ But for genuine expressions of the royal self consult Louise. Those who think that royalty shapes its language in accordance with the plural of the personal pronoun, sometimes used in state papers, will be shocked at the "neglige talk" of one royal highness and the "rag-time" expressions of others. Louise, herself, assures us over and over again that she "_feels like a dog_," a statement no self-respecting publisher's reader would allow to pass, yet I was told by a friend of King Frederick of Denmark that he loved to compare his "all-highest person" to a "_mut_," and I remember a letter from Victor Emanuel II to his great Minister, Count Cavour, solemnly protesting that he (the King) was "_no ass_."