socks, and all that kind of rot, and men's
furnishers began to call upon us to take our measure for clothes, but
when they told us how much it would cost, dad kicked. He said he had
a golf suit he had made in Oshkosh at the time of the tournament, that
every one in Oshkosh said was out of sight, and was good enough for
any king, and so he rigged up in it, and I hired a suit at a masquerade
place, and dad hired a coat, kind of red, to go with his golf pants and
socks, and he wore canvas tennis shoes.

[Illustration: Suit he had made in Oshkosh 111]

I looked like a picture out of a fourteenth century book, but dad looked
like a clown in a circus. One of dad's calves made him look as though he
had a milk leg, cause the padding would not stay around where the calf
ought to be, but worked around towards his shin. We went to Marlboro
House in a hansom cab, and all the way there the driver kept looking
down from the hurricane deck, through the scuttle hole, to see if we
were there yet, and he must have talked with other cab drivers in sign
language about us, for every driver kept along with us, looked at us and
laughed, as though we were a wild west show.

On the way to the king's residence it was all I could do to keep dad
braced up to go through the ordeal. He was brave enough before we got
the invitation, and told what he was going to say to the king, and you
would think he wasn't afraid of anybody, but when we got nearer to the
house and dad thought of going up to the throne and seeing a king in all
his glory, surrounded by his hundreds of lords and dukes and things, a
crown on his head, and an ermine cloak trimmed with red velvet, and a
six-quart milk pan full of diamonds, some of them as big as a chunk of
alum, dad weakened, and wanted to give the whole thing up and go to a
matinee, but I wouldn't have it, and told him if he didn't get into the
king row now that I would shake him right there in London and start in
business as a Claude Duval highwayman and hold up stage coaches, and
be hung on Tyburn Tree, as I used to read about in my history of
Sixteen-String Jack and other English highwaymen. Dad didn't want to see
the family disgraced, so he let the cabman drive on, but he said if
we got out of this visit to royalty alive, it was the last tommyrot he
would indulge in.

Well, old man, it is like having an operation for appendicitis, you feel
better when you come out from under the influence of the chloroform and
t