When One is Received by Royalty

Remarking that court etiquette forbids repeating any of her half hour's conversation with the empress, Mrs. Wheeler said:

“But what I can say is that Her Majesty was more than gracious, has an extraordinary personal charm, is very handsome and looks so young nobody would take her for the Czar's mother. She talks perfect English. I have never had a more interesting. conversation and the memory of it will remain all my life.” — Public domain image.

Hallie Erminie Rives Received by Czarina

HALLIE ERMINIE RIVES has Just been received in special audience by the Dowager Cuarina. This honor the author of “Hearts Courageous” and other novels owes to the fact that her husband, George Post Wheeler of New York, is secretary of the American Embassy here. But the added honor of being received much earlier than is the custom to receive women whose husbands hold similar diplomatic positions undoubtedly is due to the Empress' appreciation of Mrs. Wheeler's literary achievements.

After the Imperial audience The World correspondent sought an interview with Mrs. Wheeler. Remarking that court etiquette forbids repeating any of her half hour's conversation with the empress, Mrs. Wheeler said:

“But what I can say is that Her Majesty was more than gracious, has an extraordinary personal charm, is very handsome and looks so young nobody would take her for the Czar's mother. She talks perfect English. I have never had a more interesting. conversation and the memory of it will remain all my life.”

Mrs. Wheeler has been studying Russian history for two years for material for a new novel.

"I am not going to write about the gloomy side of life," she observed with a smile. "We have enough of that side from Russia's Gorkys. I think there is much pathos in the patience of the higher people-and this I am going to portray. The Rus- sian aristocratic women I meet are all most charming. Social etiquette in Russia is complicated and Interesting, quite different from what it is anywhere else. 

Of course at the big official fetes it is impossible to get more than two or three minutes' conversation with each person. But all the Russian ladies I met asked me to call and are very nice indeed. This etiquette is, of course, quite different from ours. In America you never call to see a woman you have not met. The American girls I know who have married Russians say they make the best husbands in the world."

Mrs. Wheeler's sister, Amelia Rives, author of "The Quick and the Dead" and other books, married a Russian fourteen years ago, Prince Plerre Troubetskoy.

Hallie Erminie Rives wedded Mr. Wheeler three years and a half ago in Japan. Mr. Wheeler, long an ed- itor on a New York newspaper and an author of reputation, was then second secretary of the American Embassy in Tokio. Recently he was promoted to the position of first secretary and stationed here. — Fresno Bee, 1910

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