Three funeral processions which have lately moved through Stuttgart streets have awakened, on account of peculiar associations connected with each, more attention and interest, more feeling I might perhaps say, than we selfish beings usually accord to these mournful black trains that mean other people's sorrows.

Of these three, the first was the train that bore the Herzog Eugen of WÜrtemberg to his last resting-place. Young, popular, after Prinz Wilhelm presumptive heir to the throne; the husband of the Princess Vera,—who is the niece and adopted daughter of the queen, and according to report a very lovable person,—he had apparently enough to make life sweet at the moment he was called from it. Recently he went to DÜsseldorf to take command of a regiment there. The Princess Vera remained at the Residenz in Stuttgart, but was intending to join him immediately. A slight cold neglected,—a rich banquet followed by night-air,—and suddenly all was over. He died after an illness of a day or two, while the princess, summoned by a telegram, was on the train half-way between Stuttgart and DÜsseldorf.

The air is full of fables, and the common people “make great eyes” when they speak of the poor duke, and dark hints of foul play, poison, enemies, cabals, perfidy, delight all good souls with a taste for the sensational. They, however, who have the slightest ground for knowing anything about the matter, and, indeed, all rational people, declare it was simply a cold, inflammation, congestion, such as makes havoc among frail mortal flesh, and never draws any distinction in favor of blood royal.

After the ceremonies at DÜsseldorf came the solemn reception of the remains here. Early in the evening the streets were thronged with an immense but quiet, patiently waiting crowd, and, along the line where the procession was to pass, burning tar cast a fitful light over the mass of people: and the flickering flames, fanned by the night breeze, now would illumine the Residenz and Schloss Platz and the fine outline of the “Old Palace,” in the chapel of which the duke was to lie; now, subsiding, would leave the scene in half gloom. The slow, sad voice of the dirge announced the approach of the procession, the whole effect of which was intensely solemn and impressive. Outriders with flickering torches, the escort of cavalry, Uhlans of the WÜrtemberg regiment in which he had served, floating streamers of black and white, the hearse drawn by coal-black horses, slowly passing, with the loud ringing of all the bells, made one hold one's breath as the black figures went by in the lurid light. The inevitable hour had, indeed, awaited him, and snatched him from his worldly honors and family affection, and “der edle Ritter,” in spite of all the “boast of heraldry and pomp of power” that so lately had surrounded him, lay silent and cold, while the flames burned strong and warm and the loud bells clanged, and he rode slowly on to the chapel in the old castle, beneath which he now rests with others of his race.

This is not the first sad, stately night-procession that has occurred here. Wilhelm, father of the present king, was a strong, original nature, averse to form, and gave strict orders concerning his own burial. They were to bury him on a hill, some miles from the city, between midnight and dawn, and simply fire one gun over him, he had said. His son, however, while observing his wishes as to time and place of burial, took care that the state and dignity of the procession should befit royalty dethroned by death. At midnight the train left the palace, and, with its long line of nobles, cavaliers, and soldiers, swept slowly out of the city amid the constant ringing of bells and booming of cannon, and wound through the soft summer night along the Neckar's banks, over the bridge at Cannstadt, while great fires blazed on every hill-top, and the old king, in the majesty of death, was borne on, past the fair vineyards and soft fertile slopes of the land he had loved so well, to the Rothenberg, on the summit of which they laid him to rest and fired one gun just as the morning star dropped below the horizon.

“And had he not high honor?

The hillside for his pall,

To lie in state while angels wait

With stars for tapers tall,

And the dark rock-pines, like tossing plumes,

Over his bier to wave—.”

Certainly, nothing less than the “Burial of Moses” can have been so grand as this last dark ride of the strong old king! We behold the train in its magnificent gloom winding along the Neckar and up the vine-clad hillside, so often as we see its route, after nightfall. Dusky, stately forms ride by, and the wail of the dirge sounds on the evening breeze. Why may we not all be laid at rest at night? Sunlight is cruel to eyes blinded by tears, and glaring day hurts grieved hearts. The Night is so solemn and tender, why may she not help us bury our dead?

The next procession that we saw with earnest eyes, after the Duke Eugen's, was that of a student of the Polytechnic School, who died from the effects of a sword-wound. There was no anger, no provocation, nothing which according to the student code might perhaps soften the memory of the deed. It was simply a trial of skill with the Degen, a slender, murderous-looking sword. Both were expert fencers. The presence of friends incited them to do their best. Their pride was roused; neither would yield, and in the excitement one received a cut in the head, from the effects of which he died in a few days. He was a promising scholar and a favorite with the students, and the affair seems very shocking in the cruel uselessness of such a death, though the more bitter fate of course is his who unwittingly did the deed and must live with the memory of it in his heart.

These student funerals occur now and then. We have had three or four this winter. Our countrymen, not sympathizing with student ways and student traditions, are sometimes apt to call such spectacles “comedies,” but to us the comic element has never been apparent. First come the musicians, playing a dirge,—on this last occasion a funeral march from Beethoven. Near the hearse walk the students of the corps of which the deceased had been a member. They wear their most elegant uniform,—black velvet blouses or jackets, buff knee-breeches, high boots, the cap and sash of the color which distinguishes the corps, long buff gauntlets, and swords,—altogether quite striking. On the draped coffin are the dead student's cap, sash, and sword. The other corps walk behind, the professors also, and friends.

The last funeral of the three was hardly grand enough to be called a procession. It was only a few carriages winding slowly out to the new Friedhof. A touching little story preceded it, perhaps not uncommon, yet, to those who watched its close, invested with a peculiar pathos. A young American girl came here last fall, with high hopes and unbounded energy and courage. She was in the art-school, and it may be her eager spirit forgot that bodies too must be cared for, and it may be that her naturally frail constitution had been weakened by overwork before she came; but at all events a cold, which she ignored in her zeal and devotion to her studies, led to an illness from which she never recovered. She was entirely alone and unknown, and at first no one except the people in her pension knew of her sickness. Patient, uncomplaining, and reserved, she bore whatever came, and was finally taken, as she grew worse, to a hospital, where she could command better and more exclusive care. As the facts became known in the American colony, she was ministered to most tenderly, and flowers and delicacies of every description were sent daily to her little room at the Olga Heil Anstalt. Indeed, the good sister who nursed her there found it difficult to guard her from the visits and kindly proffered administrations of newly made friends, who came full of tender sympathy for the lonely girl. Of her loneliness she never made complaint. When asked by our consul why she had not at once sent for him when she was first ill, she replied, smilingly, “Because I knew you had quite enough to do without taking care of me.” In fact, she sent for no one, and only through accident did the English clergyman and the consul hear of her case. And, lying in her bare room in a foreign hospital, hearing only the foreign tongue of which she was not yet mistress, and at best, when her countrywomen came to cheer her, seeing only new faces, instead of her own home-people, her brave, bright smile was always ready to greet the visitor, even when she was too languid to utter a word. Her one confessed regret was that her illness took her from her art-studies; and her eyes would beam with delight when a fellow-student in the art-school would speak of it, of the professors, and the work there. Her whole enthusiastic soul was absorbed in this theme, so that her suffering seemed, to her, of no account in comparison with her high aims and ideal. Utterly single-hearted, she lay there, brave and uncomplaining to the last, and seemed the only one unconscious of the pathos of her position. Her thoughts were so given to the beautiful pictures she longed to make, and to the beautiful pictures others had made, she had none at all left for the poor girl dying alone in a strange land, who was filling so many eyes with tears and so many hearts with pain. She faded away very gently, and, for a long time before her death, suffered more from extreme languor than from acute distress. After it was all over, there was a little, solemn service in the hospital chapel, attended by the many who had interested themselves for her, and some of the professors and pupils of the Kunst Schule, who added their exquisite wreaths to the lovely flowers about her. And then she was taken to the new Friedhof and laid beneath the pavement of the Arcade, while a little band of wanderers stood by—united, many of them, only through their sympathy with her who was gone—and listened to the solemn words of the English service, and looked thoughtfully out through the arches upon a tender gray sky, a wide expanse of land—now almost an unbroken surface, but one day to be filled with graves—and off upon the hills rising softly beyond; and the last violets and tuberoses were strewn upon her resting-place, and the little band separated, each going his way, but in many hearts was a tender memory for the young girl whose brief story was just ended,—a sad thought for her who never seemed sad for herself.

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