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Show UNDERSTUDIES OF KINGS. Kvery Kampeen Mnnsrrh Mas One but the Job Is (Iron-lug t'npopnlar. Practically every Kuropean potentate poten-tate hires an understudy, whose duty It Is to Impersonate hla royal master what time the latter desires to be left fiee from public observation or Intru-alon. Intru-alon. At one period posts of this kind were eagerly sought after; but that waa before the evolution of the anarchist an-archist and the nihilist. Candidates nowadays are apt to rein re-in 1 1 with a shudder the fate of Serglua Komarofr, the late rxar'a double, aa-lOuiinated aa-lOuiinated In mistake for hla sovereign sover-eign and employer at Moscow a few yeara back: and of Abdul llamld'a unhappy un-happy understudy (so like hla royal master that even the palace officials, so It waa aald, could scarcely "tell t'other from which"), who was "removed1 "re-moved1 by the emlasartea of one of the Armenian revolutionary committee only lust Bummer. Not that the "billet" waa ever a particular "aoft" one. Count Capo d'lstrla, president of Greece, originated originat-ed the Idea, and he had the mortification mortifica-tion of losing two of his best doubles In lose than eighteen months. In Spain, where court etiquette la exacting and Inexorable beyond all conception. It would be well-nigh Impossible Im-possible even for a sovereign who waa a man or woman grown to do without an understudy. To a child, aucb an ordeal would be quite out of the question. ques-tion. Consequently, the little I .eon Al-phonso, Al-phonso, who, aa all the world knows, came Into the world a king, has ha a aurcesslon of understudies from his ruoat part, however, had a fairly aafe If not particularly easy time of It, their duties being principally limited lo deputizing for the boy monarch In as many as possible of the endless and tiresome court ceremonials. The last understudy of Queen Victoria Vic-toria Is now living quietly In retirement retire-ment In a little (iloucestersliirs village. |
