This fair-faced, flabby-skinned youth, in the lobster colored and laced coat, who stood up in the open carriage, (hired from the New York Corporation hack-driver-in-chief, and charged for in the bill afterward rendered, at five times the real price,) was no less a personage than Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, Fellow of Trinity House, Colonel of a Regiment of Foot, a General in the British Army, (like Captain Jinks,) Baron Renfrew, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Dublin, and eldest son of Queen Victoria that is, and in the future to be King of England and Defender of the Faith, by the Grace of God and the permission of the Radical English Trades Unions.
A CHANGE FOR THE WORSE.
He was not a very bad looking lad of nineteen or twenty, that sunny afternoon, as he bowed repeatedly and raised his Generals' chapeau, with its plume of feathers, and doffed it to the radiant republican female faces, and curtesied like a backward school boy, in acknowledgement of the wild shouts which pealed upward in the clear atmosphere, although no spectator there could have accused him of having an intellectual or cultured face. How well we can all now remember, to our shame, the manner in which he was petted, and caressed, and toadied, and dined, and wined, until in the estimation of his toadies he had almost attained the stature of a God, this boy with the retreating chin and imbecile face—this hope and pride of the Guelph family.
Still with all the marked and inherent imbecility of a descendant of George III in his features, the young scion of royalty had not, at that time when I first saw him, developed the seeds of immorality, want of honor, meanness, and utter sottishness which have since made his name infamous among his subjects, and despised by the princes of Europe.
The young lad for whom America could not do too much honor in feteing and feasting, has since surrounded himself with pimps, panders, parasites, and blackguards, of the lowest kind.
His name is a bye word of scorn in the British metropolis, and for a lady of rank or position to be seen three times in his neighborhood, is certain dishonor to her and her relatives.
It was nearly ten years after that bright sunny day, in Broadway, with its shouting multitudes and noisy cheers, before I again saw His Royal Highness Albert-Edward Prince of Wales.
One night, in going through High Holborn, and being without any settled purpose as to where and how I should spend the evening, I accidentally noticed the blazing gas lamps of the "Casino," a well-known dancing hall, frequented by the loose livers and aristocratic idlers of the English Capital.
After a moment's hesitation I entered and found the place—as is usual on summer evenings at all the London dancing halls—pretty well crowded.