University of Virginia Library

CORONATION OF THE CZAR.
AMERICAN TOADYISM ON TAP.

WITH more barbaric mummery, flummery and vulgar waste of wealth than characterized even the late Marlborough-Vanderbilt wedding, Nicholas Two-Eyes was crowned Emperor of the the{sic} rag-tag and bob-tail of creation, officially known as “all the Russias.” Nick has a nice easy job at a salary considerably in excess of ye average country editor, and he gets it all in gold roubles instead of post-oak cord-wood and green watermelons, albeit his felicity is slightly marred by an ever-present fear that he may inadvertently swallow a few ounces of arsenic or sit down on an infernal machine.

Nick is emphatically an emperor who emps. He isn't

bothered with do-nothing congresses or Populist politicians who want him impeached. When he saith to a man “come,” he cometh p. d. q.; to another “go” he getteth a hustle on him that would shame a pneumatic tire. Nick is the greatest monarch “what they is.” He is the divinely ordained Chief Gyasticutus of that motley aggregation of tallow— munchers and unwashed ignorami whose very existence is a menace to modern civilization. The Goths and Visigoths were models of cleanliness and avatars of intelligence compared with a majority of the seventy different breeds of bipedal brutes who acknowledge the rule of the Romanoffs. A Russian peasant smells like the Chicago river on a summer's day, or Tolstoi's “Kreutzer Sonata.” He's more disagreeable to the olfactories than old John Jacob Astor's hide house, from whose effluvia sprung the master spirits of Gotham's Four Hundred. He will eat what would send a coyote howling out of the country. To him a jug of train-oil were as angel-food, a keg of stale soap-grease a ferial feast. During his entire life he enjoys but two baths—one when he is born, the other when he's buried. A religious fanatic, he obeys but one scriptural injunction—“Be fruitful and multiply.” Even the Russian ladies wash only to suit the dresses they wear—high-necked or décolleté. The average Slav is as stupidly ignorant as any Agency Indian. He respects no law but that of blind force. His Magna Charta is the dynamite bomb. He is courageous with the bravery of the brute, which has no conception of life's sacredness. Doubtless the rule of the bayonet is the only government possible for such a barbarous people—and the Romanoffs have not allowed it to rust.

The Czar is the immediate ruler of nearly 130,000,000 semi-savages, his lightest word their supreme law, while the chiefs of the robber hordes of Central Asia

acknowledge him their official head. Such tremendous power in the hands of a weak-minded, vacillating monarch like Nicholas II—descended from Catherine the Courtesan, and having in his veins the blood of cranks— may well cause western Europe to lie awake. Bonaparte declared that in a hundred years the continent would be all Russian or all Republican—by which he meant that unless this nation of savages in esse and Vandals in posse were stamped out it would imitate the example of Alaric and Attila and precipitate such another intellectual night as that known as the Dark Ages. In western Europe Republicanism is making but slight progress, while in the East the power of the Great White Khan is rapidly increasing. In a struggle between the semi-savagery of the East and the civilization of the West, China and Turkey would be the natural and inevitable allies of the Czar. Small wonder that the Great First Consul trudged home from Moscow with a heavy heart!

Some faint idea of the savage ignorance of Russia may be had from the history of the Siberian exiles and the fiendish persecutions of the Jewish people. Siberia is the Ice Hell of the old Norse mythologists, into which men, women and children have been indiscriminately cast on the bare suspicion of desiring to better the wretched condition of the Russian people. Its horrors, which have long been a hideous nightmare to civilized men, need no description here. The very name of Siberia causes humanity to shudder—it casts a shadow on the sun! The experience of the Jews in Russia was akin to that of the early settlers in America, who were exposed to the unbridled ferocity of the Aborigines; yet the so-called Christian nations dared do no more than petition the Czar that these savage atrocities should cease—futile prayers to the hog-headed god of the Ammonites!

The young man who has just been crowned at Moscow at an expense of some millions, and whose emblem of authority is ornamented with rubies as large as eggs and ablaze with 2,564 costly diamonds—while half his people are feeding on fetid offal—is a weak-faced pigmy who would probably be peddling Russia's favorite drunk promoter over a pine bar had he not chanced to be born in the purple. Having been spawned in a royal bed— perchance the same in which his great gran'dame Catherine was wont to receive her paramours—he becomes the most powerful of princes—haloed with “that divinity which doth behedge a king”—and all the earth rejoices to do him honor.

For months past wealthy Americans have been hastening to Moscow to enjoy the barbaric fête and perchance pick up a greasy count or scorbutic duke for their daughters. They were not permitted to witness the coronation, but they could look at the Kremlin, stand in the street and watch the Czar and his wooden-faced wife sail by in their chariot of gold, and perhaps be cuffed out of the way by a court chamberlain. Surely that were felicity enough for fools! Our boasted Republican government, whose shibboleth has ever been the equality of all men—that the harvester of the lowly hoop-pole stands on a parity with a prince swinging a gilded scepter and robbing a poverty-stricken people—considered that its paid representatives in Russia would be unequal to the task of spilling sufficient slobber over the chief representative of “divine right,” the great arch-enemy of human liberty, and sent special envoys to assist at the ceremony. These haughty American sovereigns were not permitted, however, to enter the sacred presence of the Czar attired in their regal robes—the dress of American gentlemen; but were required to dike out like English flunkeys at a fancy feed.

“Evening coat with plain metal buttons, white vest, knee-breeches, black silk stockings, no ornaments”— such was the ukase issued to the envoys of Uncle Sam by the royal seneschal. They “obeyed with alacrity.” Of course they did. Had they been ordered to appear in their shirt-tails, one flap dyed green and the other yellow, their legs painted like barber-poles and wearing asses' ears, they would have “obeyed with alacrity”—without ever a thought of advising the seneschal to go to Siberia. The rear admiral in command of the Mediterranean fleet was ordered to Kronstadt with his flagship; sent to attend the coronation “as the naval envoy of the United States”—a journey of some thousands of miles at a minimum expense of $1,000 a day, to watch a young dude stick a million-dollar dog muzzle on his own foolish pate, while his female running mate cavorted around with a dozen dudines supporting her tail-feathers! And “Jones he pays the freight”—puts up for this egregious folly. It has cost the American tax-payers a quarter of a million dollars to have their mis-representatives prancing around the Kremlin in short-stop pants and silk stockings, bowing and scraping like a Pullman porter who has just received a dollar tip from some reckless Tezsan.

We have nothing in common with Russia. One government is the antithesis of the other. They are “on friendly terms” because they have practically no intercourse. Russia has no American possessions upon which we can pull the foolish manifesto of the erstwhile Monroe. There's no trade between the two countries—hasn't been since Russia unloaded her Alaskan glaciers upon us at a fancy price. It would have been eminently proper had Minister Breckinridge presented himself—togged out in his best Arkansas jeans instead of being attired like a troubadour— to wish Nick exemption from the Nihilists and express

the hope that the occasion wouldn't swell his head; but there was absolutely no excuse for sending warships on an expensive cruise, and special envoys 5,000 miles to make unmitigated asses of themselves.

The unpalatable fact is that we are a nation of toad-eaters. President Cleveland is, in this respect at least, eminently representative of the American people. The axiom that “like takes to like” accounts for his popularity. It was that which enabled him to beat Jim Blaine. When the Grand Duke Alexis was in this country, upper-tendom slopped over him so persistently and offensively that the young man incontinently fled. The adulation he received from American belles made him such a misogynist that he never got married. The girl who got an introduction to the Duke was pointed out for years thereafter as an especial favorite of fortune. The obituary of a Louisville lady who died a short time ago contained the startling announcement that she had actually danced with the Duke. Every chappie who was permitted to pay for a mint julep absorbed by this subject of a crack-brained Czar secured a certificate to that effect and had it framed.

In 1892, when more than the usual number of Russians were going hungry to bed, America undertook to abrogate the law of the survival of the fittest by sending the starving wretches a ship-load of provisions. Dr. T. DeWitt Talmage, Dr. Louis Klopsch and other prominent Americans were sent over as commissioners to give out the grub. While in Russia they were permitted, as a special concession, to speak to the Cæsarovitch, who afterwards succeeded to the crown. Of course these American Sovereigns were “overcome with such condescension,” could “hardly get their breath”—even in short pants. They all wrote it up for the American press, and now Dr. Klopsch is rehearsing

every detail of that important event—the crowning felicity of his life. He tells us how the commissioners “received full instructions as to dress”; what a “bountiful repast” they enjoyed with the crown prince's servants—while millions were starving to death; how they cooled their heels in the hall for an hour or two while their invisible host finished his cigar; how their “hearts fluttered” when the seneschal gave them their final instructions in court etiquette—not to expectorate on the carpet or scratch the furniture—then trotted them in; how the crown prince graciously permitted them to stand with uncovered heads for a few moments in his august presence, and then managed to get rid of them without actually kicking them down stairs! He “shook hands” with the party as a signal for them to pull their freight. And to this good day Drs. Talmage and Klopsch will not use toilet paper with the hand that has been pressed by royalty! But the charity commissioners wreaked a terrible revenge on the crown prince—whose starving people they were feeding— for thus insulting American manhood; they sent him a handsomely bound copy of Talmage's book! The fact that he has not broken off diplomatic relations with the United States may be accepted, however, as prima facie evidence that he has not yet read it. Perhaps he added insult to injury by sending it to the Siberian exiles. The Czaritza, or Empress, is a grand-daughter of Queen Victoria. She is rather handsome, but her face, like that of all those born to the house of Hanover is expressionless as a clothing store dummy, hard as a blue-steel hatchet. Princess Alice, as she was known in England, was a very devout Protestant; but she promptly abjured the religion in which she was raised and changed her name to Alexandra Theodorovna for the blessed privilege of sharing an emperor's bed and board. Thrift is a characteristic of Queen Victoria's kids, and their religious scruples count for naught when weighed against a crown.