y a prince, and the whole
business of the country, for it is a "country" the same as though it had
a king, is gambling. They have all the different kinds of gambling, from
chuck-a-luck at two bits to roulette at a million dollars a minute. What
started dad to come to Monte Carlo is more than I know, unless it was
a new American he has got acquainted with, a fellow from North Dakota,
that dad met at a sort of dance that he did not take me to. It seems
there is a place in Paris where they go to see men and women dance--one
of those dances where they kick so high that their feet hit the gas
fixtures.

Well, all I know about it is that one Wednesday night dad said he felt
as though it was his duty to go to prayer meeting, so he could say when
he got home that in all the frivolities of a trip abroad, even in wicked
Paris, he never neglected his church duties. I never was stuck on going
to prayer meeting, so dad let me stay at the hotel and play pool with
the cash register boy in the barroom, and dad took a hymn book and went
out, looking pious as I ever saw him.

[Illustration: Dance, like they had seen the people dance at the show
164]

My, what a difference there was in dad in the morning. I woke up about
daylight, and dad came into the room with a strange man, with spinach on
his chin, and they began to dance, like they had seen the people dance
at the show where they had passed the evening. They were undressed,
except their underclothes, which wore these combination suits, so when
a man gets into them he is sealed up like a bologna, and he has to have
help when he wants to get out to take a bath, and he has to have an
outsider button him in with a button hook. Gee, I would rather be a
sausage and done with it! Well, dad and this man from Dakota kicked high
until dad caught by the ankle on a gas bracket, and the strange man got
me up out of bed to help unloosen dad and get him down before he was
black in the face. Finally we got dad down and then the two old codgers
began to discuss a proposition to go to Monte Carlo to break the bank.

[Illustration: A system of gambling 162]

The Dakota man agreed that Americans had no right to be spending their
own money doing Europe, when their genius was equal to the task of
acquiring the money of the less intelligent foreigners. He said they
could go to Monte Carlo and by a system of gambling which he had used
successfully in the Black Hills they could carry away all the money