Read Ebook: Peeps at People Being Certain Papers from the Writings of Anne Warrington Witherup by Bangs John Kendrick Penfield Edward Illustrator

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Ebook has 565 lines and 26333 words, and 12 pages

The novelist paused, and after eying me somewhat closely for a moment, turned to his notes, lying on his desk alongside the rack, while a tremor of fear passed over me.

"Curious coincidence," he remarked, looking up from an abstract of his story. "In my very next chapter I take up the sufferings in captivity of a young and beautiful American girl who is languishing and starving in a loathsome cell, full of reptiles and poisonous beasts, like Gila monsters and centipedes. She is to be just your height and coloring and age."

I grew rigid with horror.

"You wouldn't--" I began.

"Oh yes, I would," replied the author, pleasantly. "Would you like to see the cell?"

"I would like to see the outside of your castle!" I cried, turning to the stairs.

The novelist laughed hollowly at the expression of hopelessness that came over my face as I observed that a huge iron grating had slid down from above and cut off my retreat.

"I am sorry, Miss Witherup, but I haven't got the outside of my castle in here. If I had I'd show it to you at once," he said.

"I beg of you, sir," I cried, going down on my knees before him. "Do let me go. I--"

"Don't be emotional, my dear," he replied, in a nice, fatherly way. "You will have an alternative. When I have receipted this," he added, writing out a bill and tossing it to me--"when I have receipted this, you can go."

I glanced at the paper. It called for ?1500 for an interview of an hour and a half, at ?1000 an hour.

"If you will give me your check for that amount, you may go. Otherwise I am afraid I shall have to use you for a model."

"I have only ?1200 in the bank," I replied, bursting into tears.

Whereupon I wrote him a check for ?1200 and made my escape.

"I'll expose you to the world!" I roared back at him in my wrath as I walked down the path to the road.

"Do," he cried. "I never object to a free advertisement. By-bye."

With that I left him, and hastened back to London to stop payment on the check; but in some fashion he got the better of me, for it happened to be on a bank holiday that I arrived, and ere I could give notice to the cashier to refuse to honor my draft it had been cashed.

EMPEROR WILLIAM

After recovering from the attack of nervous prostration which was the natural result of my short visit to Gloomster Abbey, acting on my physician's advice I left England for a time. Finding myself, some weeks later, in Berlin, I resolved to call upon his Imperial Highness William the Second, better known as the Yellow Kid of Potsdam.

I was there on the stroke of the hour, and found his Imperial Highness sitting on a small gilt throne surrounded by mirrors, having his tintype taken. This is one of the Emperor's daily duties, and one which he has never neglected from the day of his birth. He has a complete set of these tintypes ranged about the walls of his private sanctum in the form of a frieze, and he frequently spends hours at a time seated on a step-ladder examining himself as he looked on certain days in the past.

He smiled affably as the Grand High Chamberlain announced "The Princess of Haarlem Heights," and on my entrance threw me one of his imperial gloves to shake.

"Hoch!" he cried as he did so.

"Ditto hic," I answered, with my most charming smile. "I hope I do not disturb you, my dear Emperor?"

"Not in the least," he replied. "Nothing disturbs us. We are the very centre of equanimity. We are a sort of human Gibraltar which nothing can move. It is a nice day out," he added.

"We are glad you find it so, madame."

"Excuse me, sire," I said, firmly--"Princess."

"Indeed yes. We had forgotten," he replied, with a courteous wave of his hand. "It could not be otherwise. We are glad, Princess, that you find the day nice out. We ordered it so, and it is pleasant to feel that what we do for the world is appreciated. We shall not ask you why you have sought this interview," he continued. "We can quite understand, without wasting our time on frivolous questions, why any one, even a beautiful American like yourself, should wish to see us in person. Are you in Berlin for long?"

"Only until next Thursday, sire," I replied.

"What a pity!" he commented, rising from the throne and stroking his mustache before one of the mirrors. "What a tremendous pity! We should have been pleased to have had you with us longer."

"Emperor," said I, "this is no time for vain compliments, however pleasing to me they may be. Let us get down to business. Let us talk about the great problems of the day."

"As you will, Princess," he replied. "To begin with, we were born--"

"Pardon me, sire," I interrupted. "But I know all about your history."

"They study us in your schools, do they? Ah, well, they do rightly," said the Emperor, with a wink of satisfaction at himself in the glass. "They indeed do rightly to study us. When one considers what we are the result of! Far back, Princess, in the days of Thor, the original plans for William Second were made. This person, whom we have the distinguished and sacred honor to be, was contemplated in the days when chaos ruled. Gods have dreamed of him; goddesses have sighed for him; epochs have shed bitter tears because he was not yet; and finally he is here, in us--incarnate sublimity that we are!"

The Emperor thumped his chest proudly as he spoke, until the gold on his uniform fairly rang.

"Are we--ah--are we appreciated in America?" he asked.

"To the full, Emperor--to the full!" I replied, instantly. "I do not know any country on the face of this grand green earth where you are quoted more often at your full value than with us."

"And--ah," he added, with a slight coyness of manner--"we are--ah--supposed to be at what you Americans call par and a premium, eh?"

"Emperor," said I, "you are known to us as yourself."

"Madame--or rather Princess," he cried, ecstatically, "you could not have praised us more highly."

He touched an electric button as he spoke, and instantly a Buttons appeared.

"The iron cross!" he cried.

"Not for me--oh, sire--not for me?" said I, almost swooning with joy.

"No, Princess, not for you," said the Emperor. "For ourself. We shall give you one of the buttons off our imperial coat. It is our habit every morning at this hour to decorate our imperial self, and we have rung for the usual thing just as you Americans would ring for a Manhattan cocktail."

"What!" I cried, wondering at the man's marvellous acquaintance with the slightest details of American life. "You know the--Manhattan cocktail?"

"Princess," said the Emperor, proudly, "we know everything."

And this was the man they call Willie-boy in London!

"Emperor," said I, "about the partition of China?"

"Well," said he, "what of the partition of China?"

"Is it to be partitioned?"

The Emperor's eye twinkled.

"Why not?" said he, with a smile at the looking-glass.

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