continental dam for anybody, but in a moment of passion I renounced my country, swore allegiance to this blawsted country, and everybody hates me here, and I don't dare go home to collect my rent for fear I will be quarantined at Ellis Island and sent back to England as an undesirable emigrant who has committed a crime, and is not welcome in the land where I was born. Old man, have a glass of Milwaukee beer and let's talk of your home and my birthplace, and forget that there is such a country as England.” Dad sat down on the porch, and I went out on the lawn chasing peacocks and treeing guinea hens, and setting dogs on the swans, until a butler or a duke or something took me by the collar and shook me till my teeth got loose, and he took me back to the veranda and sat me down on the bottom step so hard my hair raised right up stiff, like a porcupine. Then I listened to dad and Astor talk about America, and I never saw a man who seemed to be so ashamed that he was a brevet Englishman, as he did. He said he had so much money that it made his headache to hear the interest accumulate, nights, when he couldn't sleep, and yet he had no more enjoyment than Dreyfus did on Devil's Island. He had automobiles that would fill our exposition building, horses and carriages by the score, but he never enjoyed a ride about London, because only one person in ten thousand knew him, and those who did looked upon him with pity and contempt because he had renounced his country to get solid with the English aristocracy, and nobody would speak to him unless they wanted to borrow money, and if they did borrow money from him he was afraid they would pay it back, and make him trouble counting it. He told dad he wanted to get back into America, and become a citizen again of that grand old country of the stars and stripes, and asked dad how he could do it, for he said he had rather work in a slaughter house in America than be a grand duke in England. I never saw dad look so sorry for a man as he did for Astor, and he told him the only way was to sell out his ranch in London and go back on an emigrant ship, take out his first papers, vote the democratic ticket and eventually become a citizen. Astor was thinking over the proposition, and dad had asked him if he was not afraid of dynamiters, when he shuddered and said every day he expected to be blown sky high, and finally he smelled something burning and said the smell reminded him of an American 4th of July. You see, I had been sitting still on the step of the veranda so long I got nervous, for something exciting, so I took a giant firecracker out of my pocket and lit the long tail, and shoved it under the porch and looked innocent, and just then one of the flunkies with the tightest pants you ever saw came along and patted me on the head and said I was a nice boy, and that made me mad, and when he went to sit down beside me on the step I took my horse chestnut out of my pocket and put it on the step just