splendeur and whispered: "Bill, what this place needs is a boss
buster movement. How the Kansas legislature would wallop this
splendeur in the appropriation bill! How the Sixth District outfit
would strip the blue plush off our upholstered friend by the
elevator and send him shinning home in a barrel. Topeka," sighed
Henry, deeply impressed, "never will equal this!"

[Illustration: He wore a scarlet coat of unimaginable vividness,
a cutaway coat of glaring scarlet broadcloth]

In this room we met a soldierly young prince, in a dark blue dress
uniform, with a light blue sash across his shoulder. He shook hands
with us. And he wore gloves and didn't say, "Excuse my glove," as
we do in Kansas! But he was polite enough for the Grand Duke himself;
indeed we thought he was the Grand Duke until we saw Medill and the
minister stalking through another door, saw the minister formally
bowing and then we found that we had been moved into another room--a
rather plainly furnished office room, such as one might find in
New York or Chicago when one called on the head of a bank or of an
industrial corporation. We had left the "days of old when knights
were bold," and had come bang! into the latest moment of the twentieth
century. We were shaking hands rather cordially with a kindly-eyed,
bald-headed little man in a grey VanDyke beard, who wore a black
frock coat, rather a low-cut white vest, a black four-in-hand rather
wider than the Fifth Avenue mode, striped dark grey trousers, and
no jewelry except a light double-breasted gold watch-chain. He was
the Duke of Genoa, who to all intents and purposes is the civilian
ruler of Italy while the King is with the army. We found four chairs
grouped around a sofa, and we sat while the duke, with a diffidence
that amounted to shyness, talked with us about most unimportant