s. Well, I thought dad had nerve before, but
he beat the band, right there. He unbuttoned his overcoat and put his
finger on a Grand Army button in his buttonhole, and said, "Gentlemen,
I am an American citizen, visiting the crowned heads of the old world,
with credentials from the President of the United States, and day after
tomorrow I have a date to meet your king, on official business that
means much to the future peace of our respective countries. Lay a hand
on me and you hang from the yard arm of an American battleship." Well,
sir, I have seen a good many bluffs in my time, but I never saw the
equal of that, for the detective turned white, and apologized, and asked
dad and I out to luncheon at the next station, and we went and ate all
there was, and when the time was up the detective disappeared and dad
had to pay for the luncheon, but he kicked all the way to London, and
the guard would not listen to his complaints, but told him if he tried
to hold up the train he would be thrown out the window and run over by
the train. We had the compartment to ourselves the rest of the way to
London, except about an hour, when the guard shoved in a farmer who
smelled like cows, and dad tried to get in a quarrel with him, about
English roast beef coming from America, but the man didn't have his
arguing clothes on, so dad began to find fault with me, and the man
told dad to let up on the kid or he would punch his bloody 'ed off. That
settled it, when the man dropped his "h," dad thought he was one of the
nobility, and he got quite chummy with the Englishman, and then we
got to London, and dad had a quarrel about his baggage, and after
threatening to have a lot of fights he got his trunk on the roof of a
cab, and in about an hour we got to the hotel, and then the fog began an
engagement. If the fog here ever froze stiff, the town would look like
a piece of ice with fish frozen in. Gee, but I would like to have it
freeze in front of our hotel, so I could take an ax and go out and chop
a frozen girl out, and thaw her till she came to.

Say, old man, if anybody ever wants to treat you to a trip to Europe,
don't come here, but go to some place where they don't think they
can speak English. You can understand a Nitalian or a Frenchman, or a
Dutchman, who can't speak English, and knows he can't, better than you
can an Englishman who thinks he can speak English, and can't, "don't you
know." Everything is "don't you know." If a servant gi