geometry, and literature, and read poetry, history, and the drama for recreation. From eighteen to twenty-four she studied, traveled and taught the poor. She had both talent and inclination for teaching, and was actually preparing herself for a school-teacher’s position, when the marriage with the Prince of Roumania prevented her from carrying out her plan.

In 1866, Prince Karl of Hohenzollern had been placed upon the throne of Moldo-Wallachia by the European powers, with the title as Prince of Roumania. He proved himself an efficient and energetic ruler, and his popularity was soon so well founded that he was induced to go out a-wooing, so as to be able to insure the perpetuation of his race to the principality. In earlier years he had met Princess Elisabeth of Neuwied at the Court of Berlin, and he there almost saved her life. She was descending the stairs when her foot slipped, and no one knows what the result might have been, had not the gallant prince, then a handsome young lieutenant, caught her in his arms and saved her. Be this as it may, when the princess and her mother were in Cologne, in 1868, Prince Karl, then Prince Carol I. of Roumania, paid them a visit. “What a handsome fellow he has grown to be!” exclaimed Princess Elisabeth. “Yes,” replied her mother, “and he is here for the purpose of asking for your hand.” “He is a man whom everyone must admire,” answered the princess, and on the following day her betrothal to the young ruler on the Lower Danube was officially announced. In November, 1869, they were married, and on the 22d of the same month, Princess Elisabeth first trod Roumanian soil and was received by thousands upon thousands of the people, who sang to her the Roumanian hymn as welcome and greeting. With Prince Carol she was supremely happy; he worshipped her and declared that she was his better self. A little daughter was born to them, but after a few short years of happy motherhood the Queen bowed in anguish over a tiny grave, in which she felt that all her hopes were buried.

It was then, that she made the decision thenceforth to labor for the good of the children of her adopted country, to unveil to them the treasures of folk-lore that existed among the dwellers of the Carpathian Mountains, and to do her part in educating them in patriotism by the narration of simple stories of Roumanian peasant-life and peasant-fidelity. The royal heart that had lost its own child, went out and sought to make the children of a nation its own, and succeeded. Year after year, from her beautiful castle in the Carpathians, where the wild Pelesch in its calmer moods whispers to her its stories, the poet-queen has devoted herself to writing for the benefit of her Roumanian child-subjects, and with each year she has drawn the bond of sympathy between her husband—who in 1881 had been proclaimed King of Roumania—and his people closer and surer.

The Queen’s best-known book, “Aus Carmen Sylva’s Königreich” had its origin in this wise: In the spring of 1882, the Roumanian Minister of Public Instruction asked Her Majesty, if she would not deign to write a book that could be used in the public schools of the kingdom as a prize-book to be given to the best scholars at the close of the year’s work. To this request the Queen readily consented and the result was the delightful stories and legends from the mountains and valleys around her home in the Carpathians with illustrations by her own hand. They were written in German and translated into Roumanian. From this book, the present volume contains a selection of those tales, which, the Editor thinks, may prove the most interesting to young English and American readers.

The special charm of “Carmen Sylva’s” stories is their sweet simplicity of thought and language, their freedom from all conventional methods and their homely