Peck's Bad Boy Abroad Part 6

Dad looked at the Dakota man and said: "You started me in all right.

What happened to your system?" The Dakota man was silent for a moment, and then he pointed to me and said: "That imp of yours crossed his fingers every time I bet, except the first time." Dad called me to him, and he said: "Hennery, let this be a lesson to you. Never to cross your fingers. You have ruined your dad," and he turned his pockets inside out, and hadn't change for a dollar note, and he gave me the empty sack to carry, and we went to our suite of rooms, knowing we would be fired out into the cold world.

It will take a week to get money from the states, and we may be sent to the work house, as we are broke, and haven't got the means even to commit suicide. Don't tell ma.

Yours,

Hennery.

CHAPTER XIV.

The Bad Boy and His Dad Have an Automobile Ride--They Run Over a Peasant--Climb "Glaziers"--Dad Falls Over a Precipice, But Is Rescued by the Guides After a Hard Time of It.

Geneva, Switzerland.--My Dear Old Man: By ginger, but I would like to be home now. I have had enough of foreign travel; I don't see what is the use of traveling, to see people of foreign countries, when you can go to any large city in America, and find more people belonging to any foreign country than you can find by going to that country, and they know a confounded sight more. Take the Russians in New York, the Norwegians of Minnesota, the Italians of Chicago, and the Germans of Milwaukee, and they can talk English, and you can find out all about their own countries by talking with them, but you go to their countries and the natives don't know that there is such a language as the United States language, and they laugh at you when you ask questions. I am sick of the whole business, and would give all I ever expect to be worth, to be home right now, with my skates sharp.

I would like to open the door of your old grocery, and take one long breath and die right there on the doorstep, rather than to live in luxury in any foreign country. Do you know, I sometimes go into a grocery store abroad, and smell around, in order to get my thoughts on dear old America, but nothing abroad smells as the same thing does in our country. If I could get one more smell of that keg of sauerkraut back of your counter, when it is ripe enough to pick, I think I would break right down and cry for joy. Of course I have smelled sauerkraut over here, but it all seems new and tame compared to yours. It may be the kraut here is not aged enough to be good, but yours is aged enough to vote and sticks to your clothes. Gee, but I just ache to get into your grocery and eat things, and smell smells, and then lay down on the counter with the cat with my head on a pile of wrapping paper and go to sleep and wake up in America, an American citizen, that no king or queen can tell to "hush up" and take off my hat when I want my hat on.

You may wonder how we got out of Monte Carlo, when we had lost every cent we had gambling. Well, we wondered about it all night, and had our breakfast sent up to our room, and had it charged, expecting that when the bill came in we would have to jump into the ocean, as we had no gun to kill ourselves with. Just after breakfast a duke, or something, came to our room, and dad said it was all off, and he called upon the Dakota man to make a speech on politics, while dad and I skipped out. We thought the duke, who was the manager of the hotel, would not understand the speech, and would think we were great people, who had got stranded.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Started in on a democratic speech 175]

The Dakota man started in on a democratic speech that he used to deliver in the campaign of '96, and in half an hour the duke held up his hands, and the Dakota man let up on the speech. Then the duke took out a roll of bills and said: "Ze shentlemen is what you call bust. Is it not so?"

Dad said he could bet his life it was so. Then the duke handed the roll of bills to dad, and said it was a tribute from the prince of Monaco, and that we were his guests, and when our stay was at an end, automobiles would be furnished for us to go to Nice, where we could cable home for funds, and be happy.

Well, when the duke left us, dad said: "Wouldn't that skin you?" and he gave the Dakota man one of the bills to try on the bartender, and when he found the money was good we ordered an automobile and skipped out for Nice. The chauffeur could not understand English, so we talked over the situation and decided that the only way to be looked upon as genuine automobilists would be to wear goggles and look prosperous and mad at everybody. We took turns looking mad at everybody we pa.s.sed on the road, and got it down so fine that people picked up rocks after we had-pa.s.sed, and threw them at us, and then we knew that we were succeeding in being considered genuine, rich automobile tourists.

After we had succeeded for an hour or two in convincing the people that we were properly heartless and purse proud, dad said the only thing we needed to make the trip a success was to run over somebody. He said nearly all the American automobile tourists in Europe had killed somebody and had been obliged to settle and support a family or two in France or Italy, and they were prouder of it than they would be if they endowed a university, or built a church, and he said he trusted our chauffeur would not be too careful in running through the country, but would at least cripple some one.

Well, just before we got to Nice, and darkness was settling down on the road, the chauffeur blew his horn, there was a scream that would raise hair on Horace Greeley's head, the automobile stopped, and there was a bundle of dusty old clothes, with an old woman done up in them, and we jumped out and lifted her up, and there we were, the woman in a faint, the peasants gathering around us with scythes and rakes and clubs, demanding our lives. The b.l.o.o.d.y-faced woman was taken into a home, the crowd held us, until finally a doctor came, and after examining the woman said she might live, but it would be a tight squeeze. We wanted to go on, but we didn't want to be cut open with a scythe, so finally a man, who said he was the husband of the woman, came out with a gun, dad got down on his knees and tried to say a prayer, the Dakota man held up both hands like it was a stage being held up, and I cried.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Dad got down on his knees and tried to say a prayer 178]

Finally the chauffeur said, in broken English, that the husband would settle for $400, because he could pay the funeral expenses, get another wife for half the money and have some thing left to lay up for Christmas. As the man's gun was pointed at dad, he quit praying and gave up the money and agreed to send $50 a month for 11 years, until the oldest child was of age.

Well, we got away alive, got into Nice, and the chauffeur started back and we cabled home for money to be sent to Geneva, Switzerland. But, say; you have not heard the sequel. A story that has a sequel is always the best, and I hope to die if the police of Nice didn't tell us that we were buncoed by that old woman and that the chauffeur was in the scheme and got part of dad's money. The way they do it is to wait till dark, and then roll the woman in the dust and put some red ink on her face, and she pretends to be run over, and the doctor is hired by the month, and they average $500 a night, playing that game on automobile tourists from America. After the woman is run over every night, and the money is collected, and the victims have been allowed to go on their way, the whole community gathers at the house of the injured woman and they have a celebration and a dance, and probably our chauffeur got back to the house that night in time to enjoy the celebration. I suppose thousands of Americans are paying money for killing people that never got a scratch.

Say, we think in America that we have plenty of ways to rob the tenderfoot, but they give us cards and spades and little casino and beat us every time. Dad wanted to hire a hack and go back and finish that old woman with an ax, because he said he had a corpse coming to him, but the police told him he could be arrested for thinking murder, and that he was a dangerous man, and that they would give him 12 hours to get out of France, and so we bought tickets for Switzerland, though what we came here for I don't know, only dad said it was a republic like America and he wanted to breathe the free air of mountains in the home of the Switzerkase.

Well, anybody can have Switzerland if they want it. I will sell my interest cheap. The first three days we were here everybody wanted us to go out on the lake, said to be the most beautiful lake in the world, and we sailed on it, and rowed on it, and looked down into the clear water where it is said you can see a corpse on the bottom of the lake 100 feet down. We hadn't lost any corpse, except the corpse of that old woman we run over at Nice, but we wanted to get the worth of our money, so we kept looking for days, but the search for a corpse becomes tame after awhile, and we gave it up. All we saw in the bottom of the lake was a cow, but no man can weep properly over the remains of a cow, and dad said they could go to the deuce with their corpses, and we just camped at the hotel till our money came. Say, that lake they talk so much about is no better than lakes all over Wisconsin, and there are no black ba.s.s or muskellunges in it.

The tourists here are just daffy about climbing mountains and glaziers, and they talk about it all the time, and I could see dad's finish.

They told him that no American that ever visited Switzerland would be recognized when he got home if he had not climbed the glaziers, so dad arranged for a trip up into the sky. We went 100 miles or so on the cars, pa.s.sing along valleys where all the cows wear tea bells, and it sounds like chimes in the distance. It is beautiful in Switzerland, but the cheese is something awful. A piece of native Swiss cheese would break up a family.

At night we arrived at a station where we hired guides and clothes, and things, and the next morning we started. Dad wanted me to stay at the station a couple of days, while he was gone, and play with the goats, but I told him if there were any places in the mountains or glaziers any more dangerous than Paris or Monte Carlo, I wanted to visit them, so he let me go. Well, we were rigged up for discovering the north pole, and had alpenstocks to push ourselves up with, and the guides had ropes to pull us up when we got to places where we couldn't climb. I could get along all right, but they had dad on a rope most of the time pulling him until his tongue run out and his face turned blue. But dad was game, and don't you forget it.

Before noon we got on top of a glazier, which is the ice of a frozen river, that moves all the time, sliding towards the sea.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Dad slipped down a crevice about 100 feet 181]

There was nothing but a hard winter, in summer, to the experience, and we would have gone back the same night, only dad slipped down a crevice about 100 feet with the rope on him, and the two guides couldn't pull him up, and we had to send a lunch down to him on the rope and one of the guides had to go back to the village for help to get dad up. Well, sir, I think dad was nearer dead than he ever was before, but they sent down a bottle of brandy, and when he drank some of it the snow began to melt and he was warm enough to use bad language.

He yelled to me that this was the limit and wanted to know how long they were going to keep him there. I yelled to him that one of the guides had gone for help to pull him out, and he said for them to order a yoke of oxen. I told him that probably he would have to remain there until spring opened and that I was going back to America and leave him there, and he better pray.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Have to remain there until spring opened 183]

I don't know whether dad prayed, down there in the bowels of the mountains, but he didn't pray when help came, and they finally hauled him up. His breath was gone, but he gave those guides some language that would set them to thinking if they could have understood him, and finally we started down the mountain. They kept the rope on dad and every little while he would slip and slide 100 feet or so down the mountain on his pants, and the snow would go up his trousers legs clear to his collar, and the exercise made him so hot that the steam came out of his clothes, and he looked like a locomotive wrecked in a snow bank blowing off steam.

It became dark and I expected we would be killed, but before midnight we got to the station and changed our clothes and paid off the guides and took a train back. Dad said to me, as we got on the cars: "Now, Hennery, I have done this glazier stunt, just to show you that a brave man, whatever his age, is equal to anything they can propose in Europe, but by ginger, this settles it, and now I want to go where things come easier. I am now going to Turkey and see how the Turks worry along. Are you with me?" "You bet your life," says I.

Yours truly,

Hennery.

CHAPTER XV.

Dad Plays He Is an Anarchist--They Give Alms to the Beggars and the Bad Boy Ducks a Gondolier and His Dad in the Grand Ca.n.a.l.

Venice, Italy.--My Dear Old Chumireno: Dad couldn't get out of Switzerland quick enough after he got thawed out the day after we climbed the glaziers. We found that almost all the tourists in Geneva were there because they did not want to go home and say they had not visited Switzerland, so they just jumped from one place to another. The people who stay there any length of time are like the foreign residents of Mexico, who are wanted for something they have done at home, that is against the law. There are more anarchists in Geneva than anything else, and they look hairy and wild eyed, and they plot to kill kings and drink beer out of two quart jars.

When we found that more attention was paid to men suspected of crime in their own countries, and men who were believed to be plotting to a.s.sa.s.sinate kings, dad said it would be a good joke if a story should get out that he was suspected of being connected with a syndicate that wanted to a.s.sa.s.sinate some one, so I told a fellow that I got acquainted with that the fussy old man that tried to ride a glazier without any saddle or stirrup was wanted for attempting to blow up the president of the United States by selling him baled hay soaked in a solution of dynamite and nitro-glycerine.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Dad and the anarchists reveled till morning 188]

Say, they will believe anything in Switzerland. It wasn't two hours before long-haired people were inviting dad to dinners, and the same night he was taken to a den where a lot of anarchists were reveling, and dad reveled till almost morning. When he came back to the hotel he said his hosts got all the money he had with him, through some game he didn't understand, but he under stood it was to go into a fund to support deserving anarchists and dynamiters. He said when they found out he was a suspected a.s.sa.s.sin nothing was too good for him. He said they wanted to know how he expected to kill a president by soaking baled hay in explosives, and dad said it came to him suddenly to tell them that the president rode on horseback a good deal, and he thought if a horse was filled with baled hay, and nitro-glycerine and the president spurred the horse and the horse jumped in the air and came down kerchunk on an asphalt pavement, the horse would explode, and when the rider came down covered with sausage covers and horse meat, he would be dead, or would want to be. Dad said the anarchists went into executive session and took up a collection to send a man to Berlin to fill the emperor's saddle horse with cut feed like dad suggested.

Well, the anarchist story was too much for Switzerland, and the next morning dad was told by a policeman that he had to get out of the country quick, and it didn't take us 15 minutes to pack up, and here we are in Venice.

Well, say, old friend, this is the place where you ought to be, because n.o.body works here, that is, n.o.body but gondoliers. We have been here several days, and I have not seen a soul doing anything except begging, or selling things that n.o.body seems to want. If anybody buys anything but onions, it is for curiosity, or for souvenirs, and yet the whole population sits around in the sun and watches the strangers from other lands price things and go away without buying, and then everybody looks mad, as though they would like to jab a knife into the stranger. The plazas and the places near the ca.n.a.l are filled with hucksters and beggars, and you never saw beggars so mutilated and sore and disgusting.

I never supposed human beings could be so deformed, without taking an ax to them, and it is so pitiful to see them that you can't help shedding your money.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Coughed up over $40 the first day, just giving to beggars 191]

As hard hearted as dad is, he coughed up over $40 the first day, just giving to beggars, and he thought he had got them all bought up, and that they would let him alone, but the next day when he showed up there were ten beggars where there was one the day before, and they followed him everywhere, and all the loafers in the plazas laughed and acted as if they would catch the cripples when dad got out of sight and rob the beggars. Dad thinks the way the people live is by dividing with beggars.

A man who has a deformity, or a sore that you can see half a block away, seems to be considered rich here, like a man in America who owns stock in great corporations. These beggars pay more taxes than the dukes and things who live in style.

I suppose dad never studied geography, so he didn't know how Venice was situated, so he told me to go out and order a hack the first morning we were here, and we would go and see the town. When I told dad there were no hacks, no horses and no roads in Venice, he said I was crazy in my head and wanted me to take some medicine and stay in bed for a few days, but I convinced him, when we got outdoors, that everything run by water, and when I showed him the ca.n.a.l and the gondolas, he remembered all about Venice, and picked out a gondalier that looked like one dad saw at the world's fair, and we hired him because he talked English. All the English the gondolier could use were the words "you bet your life," and "you're dam right," but dad took him because it seemed so homelike, and we have been riding in gondolas every day.

On the water you can get away from the beggars. This is an ideal existence. You just get in the gondola, under a canopy, and the gondolier does the work, and you glide along between build ings and wonder who lives there, and when they wake up, as all day long the blinds are closed, and everybody seems to be dead. But at night, when the ca.n.a.ls are lighted, and the moon s.h.i.+nes, the people put on their dress clothes and sit on verandas, or eat and drink, and talk Eyetalian, and ride in gondolas, and play guitars, and smoke cigarettes, and talk love. It is so warm you can wear your summer pants, and the water smells of clams that died long ago. It is just as though Chicago was flooded by the bursting of the sewers, and people had to go around State street, and all the cross streets, and Michigan avenue, in fis.h.i.+ng boats, with three feet of water on top of the pavements. Imagine the people of Chicago taking gondolas and riding along the streets, landing at the stores and hotels, just as they do now from carriages.

We had been riding in gondolas for two days, getting around in the mud when the tide was out, and going to sleep and waiting for the tide to come in, when it seemed to me that dad needed some excitement, and last night I gave it to him.

We were out in our gondola, and the moon was s.h.i.+ning, and the electric lights made the ca.n.a.l near the Rialto bridge as light as day. The Rialto bridge crosses the Grand ca.n.a.l, and has been the meeting place for lovers for thousands of years. It is a grand structure, of carved marble, but it wouldn't hold up a thres.h.i.+ng machine engine half as well as an iron bridge. Well, the ca.n.a.l was filled with thousands of gondolas, loaded with the flower of Venetian society, and the music just made you want to fall in love. Dad said if he didn't fall in love, or something, before morning, he would quit the place. I made up my mind he should fall into something, so I began by telling dad it seemed strange to me that n.o.body but Eyetalians could run a gondola. Dad said he could run a gondola as well as any foreigner, and I told him he couldn't run a gondola for shucks, and he said he would show me, so he got out of the hen house where we were seated, and went back on to the pointed end of the gondola, and grabbed the pole or paddle from the gondolier, and said: "Now, Garibaldi, you go inside the pup tent with Hennery, and let me punt this ark around awhile."

Garibaldi thought dad was crazy, but he gave up the pole, and just then, when they were both on the extreme point of the gondola, and she was wabbling some, I peeked out through the curtains and thought the fruit was about ripe enough to pick, so I threw myself over to one side of the gondola, and, by gosh, if dad and Garibaldi didn't both go overboard with a splash, and one yell in the English language, and one in Eye-talian, and I rushed out of the cabin and such a sight you never saw.