In the evening Cousin Ferdinand and Uncle Henry came over.  Uncle Henry seemed very gloomy and depressed about what had happened and said very little, but Cousin Ferdinand was very much excited and angry.  He said what is the good of all his honesty and his industry if he is to be disgraced like this:  he asked of what use is his uprightness and business integrity if he is to have a first cousin in Sing-Sing.  He said that if it was known that he had a cousin there it would damage him with his best trade to an incalculable extent.  But later on he quieted down and said that perhaps with a certain part of his trade it would work the other way.  Uncle Ferdinand has grown to be much interested in what is called here “advertising,”—­a thing that he says all kings ought to study—­and he decided, after he had got over his first indignation, that Cousin Willie being in Sing-Sing would be a very good advertisement for him.  It might bring him, he said, quite a lot of new business; especially if it was known that he refused to help Cousin Willie in any way or to have anything more to do with any of the rest of us, and not to give us any money.  He said that this was a point of view which people could respect and admire.

So before he went home he said that we must not expect to see or hear from him any more, unless, of course, things should in some way brighten up, in which case he would come back.

CHAPTER V

It is a long time—­nearly three months—­since I have added anything to my memoirs.  The truth is I find it very hard to write memoirs here.  For one thing nobody else seems to do it.  Mrs. O’Halloran tells me that she never thinks of writing memoirs at all.  At the Potsdam palace it was different.  We all wrote memoirs.  Eugenia of Pless did, and Cecilia did, and I did, and all of us.  We all had our memoir books with little silver padlocks and keys.  We were brought up to do it because it helped us to realise how important everything was that we did and how important all the people about us were.  It was wonderful to realise that in the old life one met every day great world figures like Prince Rasselwitz-Windischkopf, the Grand Falconer of Reuss, and the Grand Duke of Schlitzin-Mein, and Field Marshall Topoff, General-in-Chief of the army of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt.  There are no such figures as these in America.

But another reason for not writing has been that things have been going so badly with us.  Uncle William still has no work and he seems to be getting older and more broken and stranger in his talk every day.  He is very shabby now in spite of all I can do with my needle, but he becomes more grandiloquent and consequential all the time.  Some of the mean looking young men at this boarding house have christened him “The Emperor”—­which seems a strange thing for them to have picked upon, and they draw him out in his talk, and when they meet him they make mock salutes to him which Uncle returns with very great dignity.  Quite a lot of the people on the nearby streets have taken it up and when they see Uncle come along they make him military salutes.  Uncle gets quite pleased and flushed as he goes along the street and answers the salutes with a sort of military bow.