the Christmas dinner the Kaiser meant to eat in Paris. I’d like to prepare his Christmas dinner, and surely I[70] would serve a hors-d’œuvre of rough-on-rats, an entrée of ptomaines, and finish off with a dessert of hanging, which would be too sweet for him. Now just suppose this letter is seized and they see this above remark—what then? I must not be allowed to write my opinion of their ruler to my own daughter, but these Prussians who go to United States and get all they can from our country, feel at perfect liberty to publish newspapers vilifying our President and to burst into print at any moment about our men who are high in authority.

[70]

Berlin is wild with enthusiasm and joy over her victories. Every Belgian village that is razed to the ground makes them think it is cause for a torch-light procession. I can’t understand them. They can hardly be the same kindly folk we have so often stayed among. They are still kind, kind to each other and kind in a way to us and to all the strangers within their gates, but how they can rejoice over the reports of their victories I cannot see.

They one and all believe that they were forced[71] to fight. They say France was marching to Berlin for the President to eat Christmas dinner here, and that Belgium had promised they should go straight through her gates unmolested and did not regard the agreement of neutrality. I say nonsense to such statements. At least I think nonsense. I really say very little for one who has so much to say. I am bubbling over to talk politics with some one. Your poor little mumsy listens to me but she never jaws back. I want some one to jaw back. I have promised her to keep off the subject with these Prussians. They are so violent and so on the lookout for treason. There is one thing I am sure of and that is that no Frenchman would want to eat Christmas dinner or any other kind of dinner here if he could eat it in Paris. I am sick of raw goose and blood pudding and Limburger cheese.

[71]

As I write this tirade, I am wondering, my dear daughter, where you are. Did you go back to America with Kent Brown, who, you wrote me in your last letter, was sailing in a week, or are[72] you in Paris? I hope not there! Since I see the transports of joy these law-abiding, home-loving citizens, women and men, can get in over an account of what seems to me mere massacre, I tremble to think what the soldiers are capable of in the lust of bloodshed.

[72]

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