“_December 10._--On our return from church we found a telegram from Sandringham, which Gussy tremblingly opened. _Es lautete, ‘a shade better.’_ Thank God! I ran with it to Tante.…
“_December 11._--About noon Geraldo rushed in with two telegrams, one sent off last night, the other this morning; both _heartrendingly sad_, and giving next to no hope, but for the words, ‘Yet we hope.’ They were a _cruel_ check to our faint hopes. We could think and talk of nothing else.…
“_December 12._--Dolphus brought us a very hopeless telegram from Alice: ‘Night restless, very delirious, no signs of improvement.’ After a while I went to my room and read the papers with accounts from Sandringham and Windsor.…
“_December 13._--… To Mama’s _entrée_, where I found her, Gussy, and Tante much upset over a very disquieting message from Alice, which said, ‘Night without rest. No important change in the general state. Breathing is weak. Anxiety increased.’ One can only look to God’s great mercy for further hope!
“_December 14._--… Bülow congratulated me on the better accounts which had just been received from Sandringham! It was the first I had heard of it; just at that moment Wenckstern appeared with the telegram: ‘Quiet sleep at intervals, gravity of symptoms diminished, state more hopeful.--Alice.’ God be thanked for this blessed change!… I read aloud in Mama’s room, amid tears and sobs, the touching account in the _Daily Telegraph_ of our dear Wales’s illness, of all that goes on at Sandringham, of the prayers for him and the sermons preached about him.
“_December 15._--A much more hopeful telegram from Alice, as follows: ‘Bertie has passed a quiet night. The debility is great, but the conditions are much more favourable.’ Thank God for this great mercy.”
The feeling aroused through the United Kingdom was far greater than any public expression of emotion since the death of Princess Charlotte in 1817. In every town, crowds waited anxiously for the issue of newspapers containing the latest news of the Royal patient’s condition, and the Government found it expedient to forward the medical bulletins to every telegraph office in the United Kingdom. In the churches of every religious communion, prayers were offered, though almost without hope, for the recovery of King Edward.