“Oh! my stars!” ejaculated Bumpus. “I should say so; and you couldn’t change it, I suppose?”
“I’d been billed under my own name as the greatest freak alive, the man whose body was decorated with more dragons and flags and pretty girls than anything ever seen before. Yes, and until a week ago I was proud of that name of Kaiser. Now it threatens to be the death of me.”
He groaned a little, and then started to eating voraciously. After a while, when he had seemingly taken the sharp edge off his appetite, he condescended to explain further, knowing of course that his kind entertainers must be curious to hear his story.
“You see, they know me all over Belgium by now. Crowds would stand and stare at me, and try to ask questions. The boss had to keep an interpreter nearby to answer these. Some of them were terribly foolish. It even seemed to many of these simple people that I was in some way connected by blood with Kaiser Wilhelm; and fool that I was, I never bothered correcting that silly idea. Bitterly have I repented that mistake. It has cost me dearly.”
“After the circus disbanded and you had to shift for yourself,” remarked Thad, “I suppose you thought to get out of the country before the fighting began?”
“Well, at first I wasn’t in any hurry,” came the reply, with a shrug of the bony shoulders of the side-show freak. “When I did wake up and get busy it was just too late. You see the people remembered that I was a Kaiser, and they had it in for me. Oh! what I have suffered. Turned back one day, kicked out of a town the next, threatened with prison, and doors shut in my face when I tried to beg or buy something to eat, I’ve lived the life of a dog for days.”
“Well, that was too bad,” said the kind-hearted Bumpus; “here, let me fill your tin cup again with coffee, Mr. Kaiser.”
“Please don’t mention that name again above a whisper, while we’re in Belgium,” pleaded the other. “It’s just like showing a red flag to a mad bull. Call me Bob, if you feel like it, boys. I’ll come to any name these days, especially if there’s a feed like this goes with it.”
“What are you aiming to do next?” asked Thad.
“I’m heading north the best I can,” he explained. “When after being kicked and cuffed around I found that it was useless to hope to get to Antwerp where I might steam over to England, I knew that the next best thing for me to do was to cross into the Netherlands, where they wouldn’t abuse me on account of my name.”