But we know he was not in favor with the Kaiser, in those old years; so the military coercion had been done by other hands, and he had not shared in the management at all.

He merely watched the course of things; always advised the Duke to submit to Law, and be peaceable; was sometimes rather sorry for him, too, as would appear.
Last year, however (1728),--doubtless it was one of Seckendorf's minor measures, done in Tobacco-Parliament,--Friedrich Wilhelm, now a pet of the Kaiser's, is discovered to be fairly concerned in that matter; and is conjoined with the Hanover-Brunswick Commissioners for Mecklenburg; Kaiser specially requiring that his Prussian Majesty shall "help in executing Imperial Orders" in the neighboring Anarchic Country.

Which rather huffed little George,--hitherto, since, his Father's death, the principal, or as good as sole Commissioner,--if so big a Britannic Majesty COULD be huffed by paltry slights of that kind! Friedrich Wilhelm, who has much meditated Mecklenburg, strains his intellect, sometimes to an intense degree, to find out ways of settling it: George, who has never cared to meditate it, nor been able if he had, is capable of sniffing scornfully at Friedrich Wilhelm's projects on the matter, and dismissing them as moonshine.

[Dubourgay Despatches and the Answers to them (more than once).] To a wise much-meditative House-Mastiff, can that be pleasant, from an unthinking dizened creature of the Ape species?
The troubles of Mecklenburg, and discrepancies thereupon, are capable of becoming a SECOND source of quarrel.
CAUSES THIRD AND FOURTH:--AND CAUSE FIFTH, WORTH ALL THE OTHERS.
Cause THIRD is the old story of recruiting; a standing cause between Prussia and all its neighbors.

And the FOURTH cause is the tiniest of all: the "Meadow of Clamei." Meadow of Clamei, some square yards of boggy ground; which, after long study, one does find to exist in the obscurest manner, discoverable in the best Maps of Germany,--some twenty miles south of the Elbe river, on the boundary between Hanover-Luneburg and Prussia-Magdeburg, dubious on which side of the boundary.