The Hohenzollerns in America eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 190 pages of information about The Hohenzollerns in America.

The Hohenzollerns in America eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 190 pages of information about The Hohenzollerns in America.

So when everything was all right with Uncle William, Mr. Peters and I were married and it was on our wedding morning that Uncle conferred the Order on my husband which made me very proud.  That was a year ago, and since then we have lived in a very fine place of our own with four rooms, all to ourselves, and a gallery at the back.  I have cooked all the meals and done all the work of our apartment, except just at the time when our little boy was born.  We both think he is a very wonderful child.  At first I wanted to call him after the Hohenzollerns and to name him William Frederick Charles Mary Augustus Francis Felix, but somehow it seemed out of place and so we have called him simply Joe Peters.  I think it sounds better.  Uncle William drew up an act of abnegation of Joe, whereby he gives up all claim to a reversion of the throne of Prussia, Brunswick and Waldeck.  I was sorry for this at first but Uncle said that all the Hohenzollerns had done it and had made just as great a sacrifice as Joe has in doing it.  But my husband says that under the constitution of the United States, Joe can be President, which I think I will like better.

It was one day last week that Uncle William met with the accident that caused his death.  He had walked far away from his “territory” up to where the Great Park is, because in this lovely spring weather he liked to wander about.  And he came to where there was a great crowd of people gathered to see the unveiling of a new monument.  It is called the Lusitania Monument and it is put up in memory of the people that were lost when one of our war boats fought the English cruiser Lusitania.  There were a lot of soldiers lining the streets and regiments of cavalry riding between.  And it seems that when Uncle William saw the crowd and the soldiers he was drawn nearer and nearer by a sort of curiosity, and when he saw the great white veil drawn away from the monument, and read the word “Lusitania” that is carved in large letters across the base, he screamed out in a sudden fear, and clashed among the horses of the cavalry and was ridden down.

They carried him to the hospital, but he never spoke again, and died on the next day but one.  My husband would not let me go to see him, as he was not conscious and it could do no good, but after Uncle William was dead they let me see him in his coffin.

Lying there he seemed such a pitiful and ghastly lump of clay that it seemed strange that he could, in his old life, have vexed the world as he did.

I had thought that when Uncle William died there would have been long accounts of him in the papers; at least I couldn’t help thinking so, by a sort of confusion of mind, as it is hard to get used to things as they are and to remember that our other life is unknown here and that we are known only as ourselves.

But though I looked in all the papers I could find nothing except one little notice, which I cut out of an evening paper and which I put in here as a conclusion to my memoirs.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
The Hohenzollerns in America from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.