elcome in the land where
I was born. Old man, have a glass of Milwaukee beer and let's talk of
your home and my birthplace, and forget that there is such a country as
England." Dad sat down on the porch, and I went out on the lawn chasing
peacocks and treeing guinea hens, and setting dogs on the swans, until a
butler or a duke or something took me by the collar and shook me till my
teeth got loose, and he took me back to the veranda and sat me down on
the bottom step so hard my hair raised right up stiff, like a porcupine.
Then I listened to dad and Astor talk about America, and I never saw a
man who seemed to be so ashamed that he was a brevet Englishman, as he
did. He said he had so much money that it made his headache to hear the
interest accumulate, nights, when he couldn't sleep, and yet he had no
more enjoyment than Dreyfus did on Devil's Island. He had automobiles
that would fill our exposition building, horses and carriages by the
score, but he never enjoyed a ride about London, because only one person
in ten thousand knew him, and those who did looked upon him with pity
and contempt because he had renounced his country to get solid with the
English aristocracy, and nobody would speak to him unless they wanted to
borrow money, and if they did borrow money from him he was afraid they
would pay it back, and make him trouble counting it. He told dad he
wanted to get back into America, and become a citizen again of that
grand old country of the stars and stripes, and asked dad how he could
do it, for he said he had rather work in a slaughter house in America
than be a grand duke in England. I never saw dad look so sorry for a man
as he did for Astor, and he told him the only way was to sell out his
ranch in London and go back on an emigrant ship, take out his first
papers, vote the democratic ticket and eventually become a citizen.
Astor was thinking over the proposition, and dad had asked him if he
was not afraid of dynamiters, when he shuddered and said every day he
expected to be blown sky high, and finally he smelled something burning
and said the smell reminded him of an American 4th of July. You see, I
had been sitting still on the step of the veranda so long I got nervous,
for something exciting, so I took a giant firecracker out of my
pocket and lit the long tail, and shoved it under the porch and looked
innocent, and just then one of the flunkies with the tightest pants you
ever saw came along and patted me o