THE DAUPHIN ELEAZAR

On the boat which takes you to all the fine places around the lake, there is a man distributing prospectuses, who forces you to accept one of his bits of paper. In Paris when one of these gentry offers you an advertisement you take it, because commerce must be encouraged, but you are careful to throw it into the gutter ten paces later. I had the good sense not to do this with the sheet I had been given, and I was well recompensed. The document placed in my hands, almost forced upon me, is a precious paper which might have the greatest influence on the destinies of France. It begins like any ordinary guidebook, by pointing out the beauties found on the shores of the lake, but it contains a most curious passage and I am delighted to be able to give the full text:

Howe Point, near the outlet of the lake, is named in order to honor the idol of the army, Lord Howe, who was killed in this place in the first engagement with the French. Here it was that Louis XVI of France through the instrumentality of two French priests in 1795 banished his son THE ROYAL DAUPHIN, when but seven years old, and arranged with an Indian chief, Thomas Williams, to adopt him as his own son. He received the name of ELEAZAR, and afterwards as the Rev. Eleazar Williams was educated and ordained to the ministry, officiating for many years among the Oneidas of western New York, and afterwards in Wisconsin where he was visited a few years later by the PRINCE DE JOINVILLE, and offered large estates in France if he would renounce his right to the THRONE OF FRANCE. These tempting offers he declined, preferring to retain his right as KING OF FRANCE, although he might spend his life in preaching the gospel to poor savages, which he did until the time of his death some years later.

After I had read this tale as touching as it was unlikely, I investigated and found that the Reverend Dauphin Eleazar had left a son. Another pretender to the throne! Can you imagine this gentleman arriving in France? What complications! I tremble at the thought.