Steele High School - Annual Yearbook (Dayton, OH)

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Page fourteen THE ANNUAL THE OTHER PRINCESS By KATHERINE K UNZ O the day arrived when the Prince was to marry the lady whom his father had chosen for him, though his heart was sad for his own dear Princess. But, suddenly, a brief moment before the marriage, his Princess, who had gone over a mountain of glass and braved a sea of flame for his sake, found him again. And he rejoiced, and showed her to his father, the King, who gave them his blessing. And so they were married, and lived happily ever after. So many--almost all, in fact-of the old fairy stories end in this same way. The Princess always finds the lover for whom she has undergone a world of agony and pain. It is the proper ending of every well-regulated fairy tale, it is the conventional ending that we have come to expect. But, remember-there was another Princess-she who nearly married the Prince and whom his father had chosen-for her no lover is produced, no wedding festivities are hers. She fades out of the story, and the Prince and his Princess live happy ever after-as they ought to, of course. But what of the other Princess--some one tell me that! Since childhood I have always felt a grudge against Grimm, Anderson, and all the other writers of marvelous fairy lore, because the other Princess was always left in the end with no visible or even prospective lover. On the delineation of the fortunate Princess all their energies seem to have been ex- hausted-and the poor little other Princess is simply left alone. How would you like it if you were just on the point of marrying a Prince-a thing which your royal parents had urged on you since you were very young-how would you like it if some strange Princess came and claimed your Prince as her own? How could you help it that before you knew the Prince he had fallen in love with some one else-some one who had lost him in some magic way, and who had worn herself out trying to find him again-would you be expected to know about that? And then if you were thrust into the outer dark and saw your erstwhile Prince and his bride right in the dazzle of the innermost circle of happiness, then how would you feel?. Yet every Prince, you know, must get his Princess-it is the fairy law, no matter what luck- less unfortunates must suffer because of it, the law endures, and there is no amendment possible. You forgot her completely, did you not-that other Princess? And you thought that, when the book told you they lived happy ever after, that everything had gone well and that you might close the book with a satisfied feeling? But sometimes in a cluster of flowers there is one of the wrong