Oshkosh, Wisconsin, U.S.A.
26 May 1890
Cable reports from England announce that Prince Victor Albert, eldest son of the Prince of Wales and heir presumptive to the throne, has returned from India, where he had gone to escape the smoke of the Cleveland street scandal, in which he was mixed up. The information is further vouchsafed that Prince Victor insists on marrying his cousin against the protests of the royal house, and offers to renounce his claims to the throne in favor of his next younger brother, George, if he is allowed to marry the girl of his choice and have a satisfactory competency settled upon him. It is hinted that the people generally would prefer to see the wild young prince accommodated in his freak, for the reason that physically and mentally he is something of a wreck and not half the man in all the attributes of a manly makeup that characterizes George. Victor seems to inherit his father's vices without retaining many of his virtues, and his connection with the Cleveland street scandal is only another indication of the debauchery which too conspicuously tinctures European royalty. The inbred crowd of royal stock of all Europe is becoming sadly deteriorated both bodily and mentally, and cannot long, in any event, survive the strength of a higher order of governmental civilization which the common people are attaining. Whether England will ever have a king after the Prince of Wales is a matter of speculation, and some prophets have even gone so far as to predict that England will never have another king.