furnished flat.

I didn't think there was going to be anything going on in Russia except
bloodshed and bombs, and things to make you sorry that you were here,
and I was willing to take chloroform and let them carry me home in a
box, with my description on the cover, until the doctor told me that dad
was in a condition of nervousness, that he needed something to happen to
get his mind off of the awful scenes he had witnessed, and asked me if I
couldn't think of something to excite him and wake him up, and then dad
said, after he got so he could go out doors: "Hennery, you have always
been Johnny on the spot when I needed diversion, and I want you to take
your brain apart, and oil the works, and see if you can't conjure up
something to get my blood circulating and my pores open for business,
and anything you think of goes, and I swear I will not kick if you scare
the boots off of me."

Well, that was right into my hand; and I set my mind to strike at four
p. m. I had been out riding once with the Chicago man, in a sledge, with
three horses abreast, all runaway horses, and the driver was a Cossack
who lashed the horses into a run every smooth place he found in the
road, and it was like running to a fire, so I got the Chicago fellow
to go with me and we found the Cossack, and he was drunker than usual.
There is a kind of liquor here called vodka, which skins wood alcohol
and carbolic acid to a finish, and when a man is full of it he is so mad
he wants to cut his own throat. This driver had put up sideboards on his
neck and had two jags in one, and we hired him by the hour.

I told the Chicago man the circumstances and that I had got to get dad
out of his trance, and he said he would help me. When I was out riding
the day before I noticed that the road was full of great dane dogs, wolf
hounds and stag hounds, which followed their master's sledges out in
the country, and the dogs loafed around, hungry, looking for bones, and
fighting each other, so I decided to get the dogs to chase our sledge
and make dad think we were chased by wolves. I thought that would make
dad stand without hitching, and it did.

The Chicago man bought some cannon firecrackers, and I bought a cow's
liver, and hitched it to a rope, and hid it in the back seat, and my
Chicago friend and I took the back seat, and we got dad in the seat
behind the driver, and started about an hour before dark out in the
country, through a piece of woods that looked quit