ions after us?" said he, as the hired villains
roared.

[Illustration: He took the lead for good old Rome 235]

Well, you'd a died to see dad get up out of that prickly cactus and take
the lead for good old Rome. I didn't know he was such a sprinter, but
we trailed along behind, roaring like lions and snarling like tigers and
yip-yapping like hyenas and barking like timber wolves, and we couldn't
see dad for the dust, on that moonlight night.

We slowed up and let dad run ahead, and he got to the hotel first, and
we paid off the villains, and finally we went in the hotel and found
dad in the bar-room puffing and drinking a high-ball. "Pretty near hell,
wasn't it," said dad, to the soap man. "Did the lions catch anybody?"
"O, a few of the lower classes," said the soap man, "but none of the
nobility. The nobility were in the boxes and that part of the Coliseum
never falls during an earthquake," and the soap man joined dad in a
high-ball.

After dad got through puffing and had wiped about two quarts of
perspiration off his head and neck, and the soap man had told him what
a great thing it was to perspire in Rome, on account of the Roman fever,
that catches a man at night and kills him before morning, dad turned
to me and said: "Hennery, you go pack up and we get out of this in the
morning, for I feel as though I had been chewed by one of those hyenas.
Not any more Rome for papa," and the high-ball party broke up, and we
went to bed to get sleep enough to leave town.

Do you know, the next morning those hired villains made the soap man and
I pay ten dollars extra on account of straining their lungs roaring
like lions? But we paid for their lungs all right, rather than have them
present a bill to dad.

Well, good-by, old man. We are getting all the fun there is going.

Your only,

Hennery.

CHAPTER XIX.

The Bad Boy and His Dad Visit the Pope--They Bow to the King
of Italy and His Nine Spots--Dad Finds That "The Catacombs"
Is Not a Comic Opera.

Rome, Italy.--Dear Old Friend: You remember, don't you when you were
a boy, playing "tag, you're it," and "button, button, who's got the
button?" that one of the trying situations was to be judged to "go to
Rome," which meant that you were to kiss every girl in the room.

[Illustration: Had to kiss anybody they brought to me 238]

I never got enough "going to Rome" when I attended church sociables
and parties, but always got blindfolded, and had