nd the
boys got out their knives, and we played mumbletypeg on the carpet, just
as though we were at home, and all the boys talked English, and we had
a bully time. The princes had all read "Peck's Bad Boy" and I think the
Emperor and Empress have encouraged them in their wickedness, for the
boys told me of several tricks they had played on their father, the
Emperor, which they had copied from the Bad Boy, and it made me blush
when they told of initiating their father into the Masons, the way my
chum and I initiated dad into the Masons with the aid of a goat.

I asked the boys how their dad took it, and told them from what we in
America heard about the Emperor of Germany, we would think he would
kill anybody that played a trick on him; but they said he would stand
anything from the children, and enjoy it; but if grown men attempted
to monkey with him, the fur would fly. The Crown Prince came in and was
introduced to me, and he seemed proud to see me, cause his uncle, Prince
Henry, had told him about being in Milwaukee, and how all the women in
that town were the handsomest he had ever seen in his trip around the
world, and he asked me if it was so. I referred him to dad, and dad
told him the women were the greatest in the world, and then dad made
his usual break. He said: "Look ahere, Mister Prince, you have got to be
married some day, and raise a family to hand the German empire down to,
and my advice to you is not to let them saw off on to you no duchess or
princess as homely as a hedge fence, with no ginger in her blood, but
you skip out to America, and come to Milwaukee, and I will introduce you
to girls that are so handsome they will make you toe the mark, and if
you marry one of them she will raise a family of healthy young royalty
with no humor in the blood, and you won't have to go off and be gay away
from home, cause an American wife will take you by the ear if you
show any signs of wandering from your own fireside, like lots of your
relatives have done."

Gee, but that made the Emperor hot, and he said dad needn't instill any
of his American ideas into the German nobility, as he could run
things all right without any help, and dad got ready to go, cause the
atmosphere was getting sort of chilly, but the Emperor soon got over
his huff, and told dad not to hurry, and then he turned to me and said,
"Now, little American Bad Boy, what kind of a trick are you going to
play on me, 'cause from what I have read of yo