beeches at Fredensborg, where every summer King Christian gathered
together his children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren from
the courts of England, Russia, Denmark, Sweden, and Greece; and where
conversations took place which, if reported, would vitally interest
the whole round world. In his lifetime, the Czar Alexander III was
particularly fond of holding long talks at Fredensborg with his
nephew Karl, then a lieutenant of the navy, whom he found especially
intelligent and open-minded.

It is thought in Copenhagen that King Haakon may, even during the last
years of his father's life, have had some experience in the government
of Denmark, since his father, the Crown Prince, was called upon
to perform many of the old king's duties. At least, if he did not
actually transact royal business, he acquired no small acquaintance
with the working of government machinery.

Nothing, certainly, could have been more fitting than that a ruler of
Vikingland should be educated for the sea. Nor could anything have
been devised better calculated to knock the nonsense out of a
princeling than apprenticeship in the Danish navy. Hrolf Wisby, who
messed with Prince Karl when he was a naval cadet, says that the lad
was at first little more than a piece of court furniture. Any one who
is familiar with the appalling frankness and unvarnished brusquerie of
grown-up Danes can judge whether the hazing and horse-play on a Danish
man-of-war was agreeable, and whether it was medicinal in a case of
congenital self-esteem. Prince Karl lived the life of an ordinary
middy, scrubbed decks, mended his own clothes, slept in a hammock, and
ate provender which was anything but fit to set before a king. It is
recorded of him that he was an expert in polishing a certain brass
binnacle lantern. We wonder if he ever thinks now of a certain line in