We have experienced an irreparable loss; I can scarcely endure life since our misfortune, and will never be able to think of the princess royal without the most bitter regret. I have not yet seen her husband; some say that he is ill, and cannot long survive his wife, but others speak of him as quite well: I know not whom to believe.
I sometimes see their daughter, the Princess Mary, whom I love with all my heart, but whom I can only visit once during the week. She is charming, and already gives promise of a noble character. The princess royal, during her dying moments, left her under the protection of Elizabeth, the king's daughter and the prince royal's sister. Elizabeth is warmly interested in the young princess, and sincerely attached to her brother; she is a highly meritorious personage.
May I beg you, madame, to continue toward me your previous sentiments of kindness, and to accept the expression of my unbounded esteem. L. MOSZYNSKA.
The prince royal, Charles, survived his wife several months, and their daughter, still very young, was confided to the guardianship of Prince Charles's sister. When she reached a marriageable age, she wedded Prince Carignan, of Savoy, and their descendants are now allied to the reigning family of Sardinia.
Lucian of Samosata is responsible for the strange story of Minerva--how Jupiter commanded Vulcan to split open his skull with a sharp axe, and how the warlike virgin leaped in full maturity from the cleft in the brain, thoroughly armed and ready for deeds of martial daring, brandishing her glittering weapons with fiery energy, and breaking at once into the wild Pyrrhic dance. We refer to this myth, bearing, as it doubtless does, an important moral in its bosom, as suggestive of the sudden and gigantic proportions of a traffic which has recently loomed up in the region of Western Pennsylvania. The petroleum trade has worn no swaddling bands, acknowledged no leading strings, but sprung at once into full maturity. In less than one year from the moment of its inception, it has fairly eclipsed the Whale Fishery, gray with time, and strong through the energy and vigor with which it has ever been prosecuted. And who can measure its extent in the future, since it can only be limited by the sources of the supply flowing in the depths of the laboratories of the Great Chemist?