WHEN ROYALTY TRAVELS.
BY WILLIAM HEMMINGWAY.
To live like a king is all very well, but to travel like one—may we all be delivered from such a fate! The modern monarch flits from his palace like the pheasant from his covert. True, the hunter may not pot him this time, but the danger of being killed is very great, and the king, like the golden-hued bird, knows that many of his brothers have fallen before the destroyer, who is constantly on the alert. Pheasants may be shot only during certain weeks, but anarchists never cease devising and trying new ways of king-killing.
Whenever a monarch starts on a journey he is haunted by the belief that the anarchists must have found out all about it beforehand in their usual way, and that they are busy with plots for his destruction. Even Queen Victoria, that best-beloved wearer of a crown, is bound to use almost as many precautions as the Czar of Russia. No common traveller has so much to be thankful for at the end of a journey as a safely arrived monarch. It is much pleasanter to be a President of the United States, pay your own fare, and feel afraid of nobody.
"THERE GOES THE QUEEN."
When the Queen of Great Britain starts for Windsor or Balmoral, or on any other railway journey, a time is chosen that will cause the least inconvenience to traffic; for the invariable rule is that no other trains may run over the road the Queen is using. All the switches are locked. Preceded and followed by galloping troopers of the Household Guard, the Queen's carriage is driven to the railway station at a furious pace. No one—I mean no ordinary person—knows the hour at which she will start or the streets through which she will go. The special royal train is waiting at the platform, and the royal carriage goes whirling toward it through the most unexpected streets. Every loyal Briton loves to show his love for her Majesty by a hearty roar, but no one has a chance to cheer her on her travels. There is a distant clatter of hoofs; it comes nearer, and you hear the rattling of sabres and whir of wheels. A blur of redcoats and nodding plumes shoots past, and the hoof-beats are dying in the distance before you can say, "There goes the Queen."
Of course the royal coach goes at a sedate pace during a royal progress or parade. Then there are more soldiers along the streets than you or I could count, and the Queen appears bowing in her open carriage of state, with all her outriders and officers and guards and the burly English footmen and Scotch gillies necessary for display.