Page:Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field.djvu/111

 A WISE PROVISION OF PROVIDENCE

From a window at the Hotel de Rome, Mark and friends were "reviewing" the ceremonial entry of the King of Italy in Berlin.

"Fine horse-flesh," Mark kept saying, "and the gee-gees look better fed and happier than all that bedizened and beribboned royalty."

"What's that string of riders following the 'four-poster'" (Mark's description of a state coach), "tied to the twelve horses? They seem to sport every conceivable uniform, Horse, Foot, and Artillery!"

"Those are the German kings and kinglets," it was explained.

"Let's count them," said Mark.

They counted some twenty crowned heads, "young, old, and mouse-colored," said our friend, as he retired from the window and attacked the coffee and cake. He sat musing for a while, but when somebody suggested "billiards," he became alert as usual.

"I have been thinking," he said—"thinking of wise Providence. Just fancy that Providence had run the Equator through Europe, instead of through the Pacific, or wherever it is now. If the Equator happened to be located in the Old World, each of the kings we have seen, and more to be heard from, would be itching and grabbing for it, pouring out their subjects' blood like water (saving their own, of course) to get hold of the blamed thing. I would make them sit on it. Hot dogs." 107