Well, we have taken in the town, looked at the cathedrals, attended the sessions of the cortez, and thew gambling houses, saw the people sell the staple products of the country, which are prunes, tomatoes and wine. The people do not care what happens as long as they have a quart of wine. In some countries the question of existence is bread, but in Spain it is wine. No one is so poor they cannot have poor wine, and with wine nothing else is necessary, but a piece of cheese and bread helps the wine some, though either could be dispensed with. In some countries “wine, women and song” are all that is necessary to live. Here it is wine, cheese and an onion. We went to see the king, because he is such a young boy, and dad thought it would encourage the ruler to see an American statesman, and to mingle with an American boy who could give him cards and spades, and little casino, and beat him at any game. I made dad put on a lot of badges we had collected in our town when there were conventions held there, and when they were all pinned on dad's breast he looked like an admiral. There was a badge of Modern Woodmen, one of the Hardware Dealers' Association, one of the Wholesale Druggists, one of the Amalgamated Association of Railway Trainmen, one of the Farmers' Alliance, one of the Butter and Cheese-men's Convention, one of the State Undertakers' Guild, and half a dozen others in brass, bronze and tin, on various colored ribbons. Say, do you know, when they ushered us into the throne room at the palace, and the little king, who looked like a student in the high school, with dyspepsia from overstudy and cake between meals, saw dad, he thought he was the most distinguished American he had ever seen, and he invited dad up beside him on the throne, and dad sat in the chair that the queen will sit in when the boy king gets married, and I sat down on a front seat and watched dad. Dad had read in the papers that the boy king wanted to marry an American girl who was the possessor of a lot of money, so dad began to tell the king of girls in America that were more beautiful than any in the world, and had hundreds of millions of cold dollars, and an appetite for raw kings, and that he could arrange a match for the king that would make him richer than any king on any throne. The boy king was becoming interested, and I guess dad would have had him married off all right, if the king had not seen me take out a bag of candy and begin to eat, when he said to me, “Come up here, Bub, and give me some of that.” Gosh, but I trembled like a leaf, but I went right up the steps of the throne and handed him the bag, and said, “Help yourself, Bub.” Well, sir, the queerest thing happened. I had bought two pieces of candy filled with cayenne pepper, for April fool, and the king handed the bag to the master of ceremonies, a big Spaniard all covered over with gold lace, and if you will believe me the king got one piece of the cayenne pepper candy, and that spangled prime minister got the other, and the king chewed his piece first, and he opened his mouth like a dog that has picked up a hot boiled egg and he blew out his breath to cool his tongue and said, “Whoosh,” and strangled, and sputtered, and then the prime minister he got his, and he yelled murder in Spanish, and the king called for water, and put his hands on his stomach and had a cramp, and the other man he tied himself up in a double bowknot, and called for a priest, and the king said he would have to go to the chapel, and the fellows who were guarding the king took him away, breathing hard, and red in the face, and dad said to me, “What the bloody hell you trying to do with the crowned heads? Cause you have poisoned the whole bunch, and we better get out.”
So we went out of the palace while the king's retainers were filling him with ice water. Well, they got the cayenne pepper out of him, because we saw him at the bull fight in the afternoon, but for a while he had the hottest box there ever was outside of a freight train, and if he lives to be as old as Mr. Methuselah he will always remember his interview with little Hennery. The bull fights ain't much. Bulls come in the ring mad as wet hens, cause they stick daggers in them, and they bellow around, and the Spaniards dodge and shake red rags at them, and after a bull has ripped a mess of bowels out of a few horses, then a man with a saber stabs the bull between the shoulders, and he drops dead, and the crowd cheers the assassin of the bull, and they bring in another bull. Well, sir, dad came mighty near his finish at the bull fight. When the second bull came in, and ripped the stomach out of a blind horse, and the bull was just charging the man who was to stab it, dad couldn't stand it any longer and he climbed right over into the ring, and he said: “Look a here, you heathen; I protest, in the name of the American Humane Society, against this cruelty to animals, and unless this business stops right here I will have this place pulled, and———”
Well, sir, you would of thought that bull would have had sense enough to see that dad was his friend, but he probably couldn't understand what dad was driving at, for he made a rush for dad, and dad started to run for the fence, and the bull caught dad just like dad was sitting in a rocking chair, and tossed him over the fence, and dad's pants stayed on the bull's horns, and dad landed in amongst a lot of male and female grandees and everybody yelled, “Bravo, Americano,” and the police wrapped a blanket around dad's legs and were going to take him to the emergency hospital, but I claimed dad, and took him to the hotel. Dad is ready to come home now. He says he is through.
Yours,