“Where do you live?” I inquired.

“On Eighth Avenue, of course,” returned the king, as if that were a foregone conclusion.[Pg 52] “Lucifer named and numbered the streets after a recent visit to New York. Ward McAllister wanted me to live in apartments at Twenty-third Street and Fifth Avenue, but the ‘skidoo set’ was not exclusive enough for me and I said I would live on Eighth Avenue or go back to England. Charon wouldn’t listen to that, as he said I had given him only a single trip ticket. So I am domiciled on Eighth Avenue, which we have now reached. Here I live with my six wives.”

[Pg 52]

“Six?” I exclaimed, as we entered the royal palace. “I thought it was eight wives. Why did they call you Henry the Eighth if it were not because of the number of your consorts? The only thing we Americans know about you is that you had more wives than the law allows, and instituted a church to enable you to get another.”

“America?” muttered the king. “I don’t remember where that is. Down here, however, we refer all questions of geography to Atlas. My dear, won’t you ask him to come here if he isn’t too weary from carrying on his shoulder the chip of a world which no one will knock off.”

But Her Grace did not move.

“Your church was instituted too late to be binding on me,” she said, her nose becoming an acute retrousse. “The word obey didn’t cut any figure in our matrimonial contract.”

“If I once chopped off your head, as the historians say, you’ve snapped mine off since,” grumbled his hen-pecked Majesty.

[Pg 53]

[Pg 53]

“My head was divorced from my shoulders. I should have preferred the courts of law to courting the axe.”

“There! don’t cry or you will cause the carpet to mildew. My dear, never try to salt down a man’s affections with briny tears.”

A queenly woman entered the room. I arose to greet her. The king’s fat interfered with his gallantry; besides, the woman was his wife, which explains while it does not justify.

“My sister and my wife,” said Henry, presenting me to Catharine of Arragon. “It’s the only case on record where a woman, after promising to be a 

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