So it was a great disappointment to-day when they refused to give him the presidency.  I went with him to the college, but I cannot quite understand what happened or why they won’t give it to him.  We walked all the way up and I carried a handbag filled with Uncle’s degrees and diplomas from Oxford and all over the world.  All the way up Uncle talked about the majesty and the freedom of learning and what he would do to the college when he was made president, and how all the professors should sit up and obey him.  At times he got so excited that he would stop on the street and wave his hands and gesticulate so that people turned and looked at him.  At Potsdam we never realized that Uncle was excited all the time, and, in any case, with his uniform on and his sabre clattering as he walked, it all seemed different.  But here in the street, in his faded frock coat and knitted tie, and with his face flushed and his eyes rambling, people seemed to mistake it and thought that his mind was not quite right.

So I think he made a wrong impression when we went into the offices of the college.  Uncle was still quite excited from his talking.  “Let the trustees be brought,” he said in a peremptory way to the two young men in black frock coats, secretaries of some sort, I suppose, who received us.  Then he turned to me.  “Princess,” he said, “my diplomas!” He began pulling them out of the bag and throwing them on the table in a wild sort of way.  The other people waiting in the room were all staring at him.  Then the young men took Uncle by the arm and led him into an inner room and I went out into the corridor and waited.  Presently one of the young men came out and told me not to wait, as Uncle had been sent home in a cab.  He was very civil and showed me where to go to get the elevated railroad.  But while I was waiting I had overheard some of the people talking about Uncle.  One said, “That’s that same old German that was on board our ship last week in the steerage—­has megalomania or something of the sort, they say, and thinks he’s the former Emperor:  I saw the Kaiser once at a review in Berlin,—­not much resemblance, is there?”

CHAPTER III

For weeks and weeks I have written nothing in my diary because it has been so discouraging.  After Uncle William’s offer to take over the presidency of Columbia University had been refused, he debated with Uncle Henry and with Cousin Ferdinand of Bulgaria (who is not living in our boarding house now but who comes over quite often in the evenings) whether he would accept the presidency of Harvard.  Cousin Ferdinand looked up the salary in a book and told him not to take it.  Cousin Ferdinand has little books with all the salaries of people in America and he says that these books are fine and much better than the Almanach de Gotha which we used to use in Europe to hunt people up.  He says that if he ever goes back to be King of Bulgaria again he is