The inference you must draw from the heading of this letter is that dad and I have taken all the degree of badness and are now winding up our career by taking the last degree, before passing in our chips and committing suicide. Do you know what this place is, old man? Monaco is a principality, about six miles square, ruled by a prince, and the whole business of the country, for it is a “country” the same as though it had a king, is gambling. They have all the different kinds of gambling, from chuck-a-luck at two bits to roulette at a million dollars a minute. What started dad to come to Monte Carlo is more than I know, unless it was a new American he has got acquainted with, a fellow from North Dakota, that dad met at a sort of dance that he did not take me to. It seems there is a place in Paris where they go to see men and women dance—one of those dances where they kick so high that their feet hit the gas fixtures.
Well, all I know about it is that one Wednesday night dad said he felt as though it was his duty to go to prayer meeting, so he could say when he got home that in all the frivolities of a trip abroad, even in wicked Paris, he never neglected his church duties. I never was stuck on going to prayer meeting, so dad let me stay at the hotel and play pool with the cash register boy in the barroom, and dad took a hymn book and went out, looking pious as I ever saw him.
My, what a difference there was in dad in the morning. I woke up about daylight, and dad came into the room with a strange man, with spinach on his chin, and they began to dance, like they had seen the people dance at the show where they had passed the evening. They were undressed, except their underclothes, which wore these combination suits, so when a man gets into them he is sealed up like a bologna, and he has to have help when he wants to get out to take a bath, and he has to have an outsider button him in with a button hook. Gee, I would rather be a sausage and done with it! Well, dad and this man from Dakota kicked high until dad caught by the ankle on a gas bracket, and the strange man got me up out of bed to help unloosen dad and get him down before he was black in the face. Finally we got dad down and then the two old codgers began to discuss a proposition to go to Monte Carlo to break the bank.
The Dakota man agreed that Americans had no right to be spending their own money doing Europe, when their genius was equal to the task of acquiring the money of the less intelligent foreigners. He said they could go to Monte Carlo and by a system of gambling which he had used successfully in the Black Hills they could carry away all the money they could pile into sacks. The man said he would guarantee to break the bank if dad would put his money against the Dakota man's experience as a gambler, and they would divide the proceeds equally. Dad bit like a bass. He said he had always had an element of adventure in his make-up, and had always liked to take chances, and from what he had heard of the fabulous sums won and lost at Monte Carlo he could see that if a syndicate could be formed that would win most of the time, he could see that there was more money in it than in any manufacturing enterprise, and he was willing to finance the scheme.
The Dakota man fairly hugged dad, and he told dad in confidence that they two could divide up money enough to make them richer than they ever dreamed of, and all the morning they discussed the plan, and made a list of things they would need to get away with the money. They provided themselves with canvas sacks to carry away the gold, and dad drew all his money out of the bank, and that evening we took a train for Monte Carlo. All the way here dad and his new friend chuckled over the sensation they would make among the gamblers, and I became real interested in the scheme. There was to be some fun besides the winning of the money, because they talked of going out in the park and on the terraces when they were tired of winning money, and seeing the poor devils who had gone broke commit suicide, as that is said to be one of the features of the place.