“* * * a tide in the affairs of men,
      Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.”

LEOPOLD said he had heard of that tide; but he didn’t believe in always “follerin’ on it,” no matter what betided.  Then the Duchess got up her Dutch spunk, and spoke out pretty freely, saying as much as if LEOPOLD were a tame sort of poodle, and that she ought to have been born to wear breeches, just to show him how a man should act in a great crisis like the present.

“Just so,” says LEOPOLD, “but you see the ‘crisis’ is what’s the matter.  If it wasn’t for the ‘crisis,’ I’d go in for ISABELLA’S old armchair faster than a hungry pig could root up potatoes.”  FLANDERS saw at a glance how the goose hung, and that her bread would all be dough if something wasn’t done, and that quickly.  She knew LEOPOLD’S weakness for Schnapps, when he was a boy at Schiedam, and, producing a bottle of the Aromatic elixir, with which she had previously armed herself in expectation of his obstinacy, poured out a glassful and requested him to clear his voice with it.  Fifteen minutes after his vocal organs had been thus renewed, LEOPOLD was in a condition to see things in an entirely new light, and hesitated no longer to write the following note to General PRIM: 

Dear PRIM:  The thing has been satisfactorily explained to me, and I accept.  Enclosed find a bottle of Schnapps.  You never tasted Schnapps like this.  The Duchess says she don’t care a cuss for NAP, and that I mustn’t neither.

—­LEOPOLD, SIGMARINGEN-HOHENZOLLERN.

This is a veritable account of the origin of the European “unpleasantness,” and can be certified to any one who will call upon us and examine the original dispatches.

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