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rule of the worthless Prince Couza. She little realized that later she would be taken at her word. Meantime she went home again to Wied, and resumed her offices in the sick-room and her studies; for until she was twenty-five, indeed until she married, Princess Elizabeth never ceased to take lessons. Her favorite tutor, a cultivated minister of that small sect, the Mennonites, told me that he used to allow her in later years to regulate her own studies. He had early trained her to think, and often for hours master and pupil would discuss their readings. What the Queen never could and never will suffer is surface talk. She has a manner of at once leading conversation away from trivialities, and with her fine knowledge of human nature and kindly sympathy with her fellows, she invariably succeeds in drawing out the best that is in people, and also in making them speak of that which they know best or care for most. She has the rare gift of questioning with esprit; she has the yet rarer gift of listening well; and at the same time she is herself an excellent talker, and knows how to set conversation going and to maintain it. In her youth she was a great reader, and had acquired Dr. Johnson's art of tearing out the heart of a book, for she has little patience to wade through detail. Her powers in this respect often perplexed her slower-witted, thorough-going German tutor.
     In 1862 her little brother died, and soon after her most intimate friend. In 1867 it was thought well that the Princess should be removed awhile from the house over which ever hung the shadows of sorrow and death. Therefore her aunt, the Grand Duchess Helena of Russia, took her traveling to various parts of Europe. While at St. Petersburg she was struck down with typhus fever, and when she recovered it was to learn the bitter tidings that her adored father had passed away. "Must all I love on earth be borne to the grave?" is the burden of a mournful poem written in her journal of that date. Music became her only consolation, and during her convalescence she took lessons from Mme. Schumann and Rubinstein. In the summer she went home, to find the quiet home yet quieter and sadder. During the next years every summer was spent at home on the Rhine, every winter traveling with her aunt. Even when away she diligently pursued her studies. Thus, one winter at Naples was entirely dedicated to the works of Shakspere, Scott, and Dickens. From childhood she had spoken English with ease, and had been attracted to English literature.
     Meanwhile European public events were changing, a change destined to affect the "wild rose-bud of Wied," as her friends loved to call her. In 1868 Prince Charles of Hohenzollern had been chosen ruler of Roumania, and in the autumn of the next year he came to the Rhine to remind the Princess Elizabeth of her desire to rule over that kingdom. Even so it was a little while before she could consent to resign her fiercely cherished independence, but she yielded, and in November of the same year he took her to his home amid the Carpathians, after she had been united to him four times over, namely: according to the German civil code, according to the Lutheran, her own religion, according to the Roman Catholic, which is his, and according to the rites of the Greek Church, which is the creed of their kingdom. Arrived in her new home, she at once threw herself with native ardor into all her new duties. She learned to read and write Roumanian, she made herself acquainted with the needs and requirements of the land, and soon saw that she had not been wrong when, years ago, she had aspired after this throne as one which would give her a noble work to do. While keeping herself carefully aloof from the entanglements of politics, the result of her endeavors was soon felt more beneficially than those of cannon or diplomatists. She founded schools, hospitals, soup-kitchens, convalescent homes, cooking-schools and crèches; she encouraged popular lectures; she inculcated respect for sanitary laws, most needful in an eastern land; she founded art galleries and art schools. These institutions now bear practical testimony to the Queen's energetic love for her nation and her kind. It was her endeavor from the first to be a mother of her people in the best sense of the word, and "little mother" has long been the tender name by which her people call her. To give but one instance, a small matter, and yet one that has had much influence and greatly contributed to her popularity: It seems that Roumanian women have ever been famed for their powers of spinning and weaving, their deftness in embroidery; but the new Queen found that a love for tawdry West-European clothes and Parisian fashions threatened to extinguish their national art and to render the picturesque costume of the country a thing of the past. Out of her own private purse she founded a school of embroidery, in which the old Byzantine patterns were carefully reproduced. She encouraged the peasants to bring to her the robes they had embroidered, and when in the country she donned the national costume, and made her ladies wear it too, the only difference between her dress and that of the peasants being that she wears the veil, which, as in old Greek costume, as we may learn from the story of Helen, is the mark of queenly dignity. She further made