He showed us from a high hill, where the different portions of the battle were fought, and where they caught Napoleon Bonaparte, and where Blucher came up and made things hum in the German language, and then he took us off to his farm where the most of the relics were found, and began to sell things to dad, until he had filled the hind end of the wagon with bullets and grape-shot, sabres and bayonets, old rusty rifles, and everything dad wanted, and we had enough to fill a museum, and when the farmer had got dad's money we went back to Brussels, and got our stuff unloaded at the hotel. Say, when we came to look it over we found two rusty Colt's revolvers, and guns of modern construction, which have been bought on battlefields in all countries, and properly rusted to sell to tourists. I showed dad that the revolver was unknown at the time of the battle of Waterloo, and that every article he had bought was a fraud, the sabers having been made in America, before the war of the rebellion, and dad was mad, and gave the stuff to the porter of the hotel, who charged dad seven dollars for taking it away.
Dad kept one three-cornered hat that the farmer told him Bonaparte lost when his horse stampeded with him, and it drifted under a barbed wire fence, where it had lain until the day before we visited the battlefield. Say, that hat is as good as new, and dad says it is worth all the stuff cost, but I would not be found dead wearing it, cause it is all out of style.
We have seen the King of Belgium, and actually got the worth of our money. He is an old dandy, and looks like a Philadelphia Quaker, only he is not as pious as a Quaker. Dad wrote to the King and said he was a distinguished American, traveling for his health, and had a niece who had frequently visited Belgium with an opera company, and she had spoken of the King, and dad wanted to talk over matters that might be of interest both to Belgium and to America. Well, the messenger came back and said dad couldn't get to the palace a minute too quick, and so we went over, and as we were going through the park we saw an old man, in citizen's clothes, sitting on a bench, patting the head of a boar hound, and when he saw us he said, “Come here, Uncle Sam, and let my dog chew your pants.” Dad thought it must be some lunatic, and was going to make a sneak, and get out, when the man rose up and we saw it was the King, and we went up to him and sat down on the bench, and he asked dad if he had come as the relative of the opera singer, to commence suit against the King for breach of promise, or to settle for a money consideration, remarking that he had always rather pay cash than to have any fuss made about these little matters. Dad told him he had no claim against him for alienating anybody's affections, or for breach of promise, and that all he wanted was to have a little talk with the King, and find out how a King lived, and how he had any fun in running the king business, at his age, and they sat down and began to talk as friendly as two old chums, while the dog played tag with me. We found that the King was a regular boy, and that instead of his mind being occupied by affairs of state, or his African concessions in the Congo country, where he owns a few million slaves who steal ivory for him, and murder other tribes, he was enjoying life just as he did when he was a barefooted boy, fishing for perch at the old mill pond, and when he mentioned his career as a boy, and his enjoyments, dad told about his youth, and how he never got so much pleasure in after life as he did when he had a stone bruise on his heel, and went off into the woods and cut a tamarack pole and caught sunfish till the cows came home.
The King brightened up and told dad he had a pond in the palace grounds, stocked with old-fashioned fish, and every day he took off his shoes and rolled up his pants, and with nothing on but a shirt and pants held up by one suspender of striped bed ticking, he went out in a boat and fished as he did when a boy, with a bent pin for a hook, and he was never so happy as when so engaged, and they could all have their grand functions, and balls, and dinners, and Turkish baths, if they wanted them, but give him the old swimming hole. “Me, too,” said dad, and as dad looked down into the park he saw a little lake, and dad held up two fingers, just as boys do when they mean to say, “Come on, let's go in swimming,” and the King said, “I'll go you,” and they locked arms and started through the woods to the little lake, and the dog and I followed.
Well, sir, you'd a dide to see dad and Leopold make a rush for that swimming place. The King put his hand in the water, and said it was fine, and began to peel his clothes off, and dad took off his clothes and the King made a jump and went in all over, and came up with his eyes full of water, strangling because he did not hold his nose, and then dad made a leap and splashed the water like an elephant had fallen in, and there those two old men were in the lake, just like kids.
