" and he handed her a
five-dollar gold piece, and went outdoors for a breath of fresh air, and
let her keep the change. He said she was welcome to the four dollars and
fifty cents if she would not breathe towards him again.

[Illustration: Breathed in his face 339]

Well, we have taken in the town, looked at the cathedrals, attended the
sessions of the cortez, and thew gambling houses, saw the people sell
the staple products of the country, which are prunes, tomatoes and wine.
The people do not care what happens as long as they have a quart of
wine. In some countries the question of existence is bread, but in Spain
it is wine. No one is so poor they cannot have poor wine, and with wine
nothing else is necessary, but a piece of cheese and bread helps the
wine some, though either could be dispensed with. In some countries
"wine, women and song" are all that is necessary to live. Here it is
wine, cheese and an onion. We went to see the king, because he is such
a young boy, and dad thought it would encourage the ruler to see an
American statesman, and to mingle with an American boy who could give
him cards and spades, and little casino, and beat him at any game. I
made dad put on a lot of badges we had collected in our town when there
were conventions held there, and when they were all pinned on dad's
breast he looked like an admiral. There was a badge of Modern Woodmen,
one of the Hardware Dealers' Association, one of the Wholesale
Druggists, one of the Amalgamated Association of Railway Trainmen, one
of the Farmers' Alliance, one of the Butter and Cheese-men's Convention,
one of the State Undertakers' Guild, and half a dozen others in brass,
bronze and tin, on various colored ribbons. Say, do you know, when they
ushered us into the throne room at the palace, and the little king, who
looked like a student in the high school, with dyspepsia from
overstudy and cake between meals, saw dad, he thought he was the most
distinguished American he had ever seen, and he invited dad up beside
him on the throne, and dad sat in the chair that the queen will sit
in when the boy king gets married, and I sat down on a front seat and
watched dad. Dad had read in the papers that the boy king wanted to
marry an American girl who was the possessor of a lot of money, so dad
began to tell the king of girls in America that were more beautiful than
any in the world, and had hundreds of millions of cold dollars, and an
appetite for raw kings, and