backwards,
bowing. There was a little hassock back of me, and I kicked it back of
dad, and when dad's heels struck it he went over backwards and struck
on his golf pants, and dad said: "El, 'Ennery, I'ave broken my bloomink
back, but who cares," and when the servants picked dad up and took him
out in the hall and marched us to the entrance, dad got in the cab, gave
the grand hailing sign of distress, started to sing God save something
or other, and went to sleep in the cab, and I took him to the hotel.

Yours,

Hennery.

[Illustration: He went over backwards 121]

CHAPTER X.

The Bad Boy Writes of Ancient and Modern Highwaymen--They
Get a Taste of High Life in London and Dad Tells the Story
of the Picklemaker's Daughter.

London, England.--My Dear Old Skate: Well, if we are going to see any of
the other countries on this side of the water before our return ticket
expires, we have got to be getting a move on, and dad says in about
a week we will be doing stunts in Paris that will bring about a
revolution, and wind up the republic of France, and seat some nine-spot
on the throne that Napoleon used to wear out his buckskin pants on.

Dad asked me tother day what I cared most to see in London, and I told
him I wanted to visit Newgate prison, and the places made famous by the
bold highwaymen of a century or two ago. He thought I was daffy, but
when I told him how I had read "Claude Duval" and "Six-teen-String Jack"
and all the highway literature, in the haymow, when dad thought I was
weeding the garden, he confessed that he used to hunt those yellow
covered books out of the manger when I was not reading them, and that
he had read them all himself, when I thought he was studying for his
campaign speeches, and so he said he would go with me. So we visited
Homestead Heath, where Claude Duval used to ride "Black Bess," and hold
up people who traveled at night in post chaises, and we found splendid
spots where there had been more highway robbery going on than any place
east of Missouri, but I was disgusted when I thought what chumps those
old highway robbers were, compared to the American highway robbers and
hold up men of the present day.

In Claude Duval's time he had a brace of flintlock pistols, which he had
to examine the priming every time a victim showed up, and while he
was polite when he robbed a duchess, he used to kill people all right,
though if they had had cameras at that time the fla