Royal Romances of To-day

Once upon a time, not so many years ago, there lived on a lovely island of the sea, a beautiful, golden-haired, blue-eyed Princess. The mother of this Princess was kind and good to everybody on the island and all who knew her loved her. The father of the princess was a soldier, a warrior who led men to battle, and who sailed over distant seas to fight for the honour and glory of his country. The grandmother of the little Princess was a great Queen, known and revered by the whole world, for she enjoyed a long life and a long reign. The little Princess was born in the fiftieth year of the reign of the good old Queen and so the little Princess was called “the Jubilee baby.”

The Jubilee baby became the favourite grandchild of the old Queen who loved to have the young Princess with her, and so it happened that the training of the Princess was largely at the knees of the great Queen,—and her nursery days were spent on the steps of a throne.

When the Princess was eight years old, her soldier father was sent to a foreign land to fight in a cruel war. The ship that carried him and the soldiers who left their homes with him, stopped for a few days at the port of a friendly country and the officers, including the father of the Princess, got off the ship to visit the strange country. It was a pleasant land, a land of sunshine and flowers, where even in midwinter, the fragrance of roses and orange blossoms filled the air. The island home of the Princess was cold in winter, and harsh winds swept in from the sea. The Prince, seeing all the beauty of the new land, would have liked to linger in the balmy atmosphere where birds were as merry at Christmas as in his own land at Easter. But he was on a stern journey, fulfilling a great and responsible duty. The ship was about to start on to its destination—the land of discord and strife where war was being waged, and human lives were being sacrificed—where blood was running and suffering and sorrow came with each day’s sun; the ship was about to start on, and the Prince, thinking of the country whither he was going, and of the land which he now was glimpsing like a beautiful dream, thought also of the home he had left and his fair-haired, darling daughter, her three baby brothers, and their mother whom he loved very dearly. Then he sat down and wrote a letter to the little Princess. It was the first time he had ever written a letter to her, because she was still a wee girl and had never left his side. In this letter he told her how beautiful was the land that he then was visiting, and he went on to say to her: “Always be a good girl, and love your mother. If you do this, when you grow up and are big, you too, will travel, and you will come to this beautiful country. You will see for yourself that you will like it and how happy you will be here.”

The little Princess was very pleased when she received this letter from her father of whom she was extremely proud, and being the only one she had from him treasured it like a relic. She never dreamed how wonderfully prophetic were the simple words he wrote.