before we had got around all the box stalls I think if
any of them had started to dance dad would have stampeded in a body.

We finally got back to the great marble room, where the sultan was
sleeping in a stuffed chair, surrounded by his staff, and one of them
woke him up, and he asked dad what he thought of the home life of a
crowned head, and dad said it beat anything he had ever seen, and he
should recommend to his government that the harem system be adopted in
America, and actually the sultan seemed pleased. He said as an evidence
of his love for America he wanted to present to the president, through
dad, 50 of his wives, and if dad would indicate where he wanted them
delivered, they would be there, Johnny on the spot, or words to that
effect.

At first I thought dad would faint away, but I whispered to him that it
would be discourteous to decline a present, after giving the sultan a
gold mine, and that may be the old man would be so mad, if he declined
the wives, that he would tie stones to our legs and sink us in the
Bosphor-ous, so dad rallied and said, on behalf of his government, he
would accept the kindly and thoughtful gift of his highness, and that he
would cable for a war vessel to take the wives to his own America, and
he would notify the sultan when to round them up and load them on the
vessel.

Well, sir, I do not know what possessed me to make a scene, before we
got out of the presence of the sultan, but it all came to me sudden,
like an inspiration comes to a poet. I had been eating some fruit that
I bought in a paper bag, and when I had eaten the last of it, I wondered
what I would do with the bag, and then I thought what fun it would be to
blow the bag up, and suddenly burst it, when all was still. So I blowed
up the bag, so it was as hard as a bladder, and tied a string around
the neck, and waited. I did not think how afraid everybody in these old
countries is of bombs, or I never would have done it, honestly.

The sultan was signing some papers, and looking out of the corners of
his eyes to see if anybody was present who was suspicious, and dad was
getting ready to make a salam, and back out of the presence of the ruler
of Turkey, when I got behind some of the officials who were watching the
sultan, and I laid my paper bag on the marble floor, and it was as still
as death, and all you could hear was the scratching of the pen, when I
jumped up in the air as though I had a fit, and yelled "Allah