Settling the Irish Question 115
I guess dad and the king would have settled the Irish question in about fifteen minutes, and signed a treaty, only a servant brought in a two-quart bottle of champagne, and dad and the king hadn't drank a quart apiece before dad started to sing “My Country Tis of Thee, Sweet Land of Libertee,” and the king sang “God Save the King,” and, by thunder, it was the same tune, and tears came into dad's eyes, and the king took out his handkerchief and wiped his nose, and I bellered right out, and the king rose and offered a toast to America and everybody in it, and they swallered it, and dad said there was enough juice left in the bottle for one more round, and he proposed a toast to all the people of Great Britain, including the Irish and the king who loved them, and down she went, and they were standing up. And I told dad it was time to go.
God Save the King 119
Say, it was great, Uncle Ezra, and I wish you could have been there, and there had been another bottle. The only thing that happened to mar the reunion of dad and the king was when we were going out backwards, bowing. There was a little hassock back of me, and I kicked it back of dad, and when dad's heels struck it he went over backwards and struck on his golf pants, and dad said: “El, 'Ennery, I'ave broken my bloomink back, but who cares,” and when the servants picked dad up and took him out in the hall and marched us to the entrance, dad got in the cab, gave the grand hailing sign of distress, started to sing God save something or other, and went to sleep in the cab, and I took him to the hotel.
Yours,
Hennery.
He Went over Backwards 121
The Bad Boy Writes of Ancient and Modern Highwaymen—TheyGet a Taste of High Life in London and Dad Tells the Storyof the Picklemaker's Daughter.
London, England.—My Dear Old Skate: Well, if we are going to see any of the other countries on this side of the water before our return ticket expires, we have got to be getting a move on, and dad says in about a week we will be doing stunts in Paris that will bring about a revolution, and wind up the republic of France, and seat some nine-spot on the throne that Napoleon used to wear out his buckskin pants on.
Dad asked me tother day what I cared most to see in London, and I told him I wanted to visit Newgate prison, and the places made famous by the bold highwaymen of a century or two ago. He thought I was daffy, but when I told him how I had read “Claude Duval” and “Six-teen-String Jack” and all the highway literature, in the haymow, when dad thought I was weeding the garden, he confessed that he used to hunt those yellow covered books out of the manger when I was not reading them, and that he had read them all himself, when I thought he was studying for his campaign speeches, and so he said he would go with me. So we visited Homestead Heath, where Claude Duval used to ride “Black Bess,” and hold up people who traveled at night in post chaises, and we found splendid spots where there had been more highway robbery going on than any place east of Missouri, but I was disgusted when I thought what chumps those old highway robbers were, compared to the American highway robbers and hold up men of the present day.
In Claude Duval's time he had a brace of flintlock pistols, which he had to examine the priming every time a victim showed up, and while he was polite when he robbed a duchess, he used to kill people all right, though if they had had cameras at that time the flash from the priming pan would have taken a flash-light picture of the robber, so he could have been identified when he rode off in the night to a roadside inn and filled up on beer, while he counted the ten shillings he had taken from the silk purse of the victim. Why, one of our American gangs that hold up a train, and get an express safe full of greenbacks, and shoots up a mess of railroad hands and passengers with Winchesters and automatic pistols, and blows up cars with dynamite and gets away and has to have a bookkeeper and a cashier to keep their bank accounts straight, could give those old Claude Duvals and Sixteen-String Jacks cards and spades.
But civilization, dad says, has done much for the highway robbery business, and he says we in America have arrived at absolute perfection. However, I was much interested in looking over the ground where my first heroes lived and died, and did business, and when we went to the prisons where they were confined, and were shown where Tyburn Tree stood, that so many of them were hung on, tears came to my eyes at the thought that I was on the sacred ground where my heroes croaked, and went to their deaths with smiles on their faces, and polite to the last. The guard who showed us around thought that dad and I were relatives of the deceased highwaymen, and when we went away he said to dad: “Call again, Mr. Duval. Always glad to serve any of the descendants of the heroes. What line of robbery are you in, Mr. Duval?” Dad was mad, but he told the guard he was now on the stock exchange, and so we maintained the reputation of the family.
Glad to Serve Any of the Descendants Of The Heroes 126
Then we hired horses and took a horse back ride through Rotten Row, where everybody in London that has the price, rides a horse, and no carriages are allowed. Dad was an old cavalry man forty years ago, and he is stuck on his shape when he is on a horse, but he came near breaking up the horse back parade the day we went for the ride. The liveryman gave us two bob-tailed nags, a big one for dad and a small one for me, but they didn't have any army saddle for dad, and he had to ride on one of these little English saddles, such as jockeys ride races on, and dad is so big where he sits on a saddle that you couldn't see the saddle, and I guess they gave dad a hurdle jumper, because when we got right amongst the riders, men and women, his horse began to act up, and some one yelled, “Tally-ho,” and that is something about fox hunting, not a coach, and the horse jumped a fence and dad rolled off over the bowsprit and went into a ditch of dirty water.
Dad Rolled off over the Bowsprit 128
The horse went off across a field, and the policeman fished dad out of the ditch, and run him through a clothes wringer or something, and got him dried out, and sent him to the hotel in an express wagon, and I rode my horse back to the liveryman and told him what happened to dad, and they locked me up in a box stall until somebody found the horse, 'cause they thought dad was a horse thief, and they held me for ransom. But dad came around before night and paid my ransom, and we were released. Dad says Rotten Row is rotten, all right enough, and by ginger it is, 'cause he has not got the smell of that ditch off his clothes yet.
Now he has got a new idea, and that is to go to some country where there are bandits, different from the bandits here in London, and be captured and taken to the mountain fastnesses, and held for ransom until our government makes a fuss about it, and sends warships after-us. I tell dad it would be just our luck to have our government fail to try to get us, and the bandits might cut our heads off and stick them on a pole as a warning to people not to travel unless they had a ransom concealed about their clothes. But dad says he is out to see all the sights, and he is going to be ransomed before he gets home, if it takes every dollar our government has got. I think he is going to work the bandit racket when we get to Turkey, but, by ginger, he can leave me at a convent, because I don't want one of those crooked sabers run into me and turned around like a corkscrew. Dad says I can stay in a harem while he goes to the mountains with the bandits, and I don't know as I care, as they say a harem is the most interesting place in Turkey. You know the pictures we have studied in the old grocery, where a whole bunch of beautiful women are practicing using soap in a marble bath.
Well, don't you say anything to ma about it, but dad has got his foot in it clear up to the top button. It isn't anything scandalous, though there is a woman at the bottom of it. You see, we used to know a girl that left home to go out into the world and earn her own living. She elocuted some at private parties and sanitariums, to entertain people that were daffy, and were on the verge of getting permanent bats in their belfry, and after a few years she got on the stage, and made a bunch of money, and went abroad. And then she had married a titled person, and everybody supposed she was a duchess, or a countess, and ma wanted us to inquire about her when we got over here. Ma didn't want us to go and hunt her up to board with her, or anything, but just to get a glimpse of high life, and see if our poor little friend was doing herself proud in her new station in life.
Isn't Money Enough in the Whole Family to Wad a Gun 131
Gee, but dad found her, and she ain't any more of a duchess than I am. Her husband is a younger son of a titled person, but there isn't money enough in the whole family to wad a gun, and our poor girl is working in a shop, or store, selling corsets to support a lazy, drunken husband and a whole mess of children, and while she is seven removes from a duchess, she does not rank with the woman who washes her mother's clothes at home. Gosh, but dad was hot when he found her, and after she told him about her situation in life he gave her a yellow-backed fifty-dollar bill, and came back to the hotel mad, and wanted to pack up and go somewhere else, where he didn't know any titled-persons.
That night a couple of dukes came around to the hotel to sell dad some stock in a diamond mine in South Africa, and they got to talking about how English society held over our crude American society, until dad got an addition to the mad he had when he called on our girl, and when one of the dukes said America was being helped socially by the marriage of American women to titled persons, dad got a hot box, like a stalled freight train.
Says dad, says he: “You Johnnies are a lot of confidence men, who live only to rope in rich American girls, so you can marry them and have their dads lift the mortgages on your ancestral estates, and put on tin roofs in place of the mortgages, 'cause a mortgage will not shed rain, and you get their money and spend it on other women.” One of the dukes turned red like a lobster, and I think he is a lobster, anyway, and he was going to make dad stop talking, but the duke didn't know dad, and he continued. Says dad, says he: “I know a rich old man in the States, who made ten million dollars on pickles, or breakfast food, and he had a daughter that was so homely they couldn't keep a clock going in the house.
“She came over here and got exposed to a duke, and she had never been vaccinated, and the first her father knew she caught the duke, and came; home, and he followed her. Say, he didn't know enough to pound sand, and the old man got several doctors for her, but they couldn't break up the duke fever, and finally the old pickle citizen asked him how much the mortgage was, and how much they could live on, and he bought her the duke, and sent them off, and the duke covered his castle with building paper, so it would hold water, and they set up housekeeping with a hundred servants. Then the duke wanted a racing stable, after the baby came, and the old pickle man went over to see the baby, and it looked so much like the old man that he invested in a racing stable, and the servants bowed low to the old man and called him 'Your 'ighness,' and that settled the old pickle person, and he fell into the trap of building a townhouse in London.
“Then he went home and made some more pickles, and the daughter cabled him to come right over, as they had been invited to entertain the king and a lot of other face cards in the pack. And the old man thought it would be great to get in the king row himself, so he shoveled a lot of big bills into some packing trunks and went over to fix up for the king. The castle had to be redecorated for about six miles, up one corridor and down the other, but Old Pickles stood the raise, because he thought it would be worth the money to be on terms of intimacy with a king.
“Then when it was all ready, and the old man was going to stand at the front door and welcome the king, they made him go to his room, back about a half a mile in the rear of the castle, and for two weeks old Pickles had his meals brought to his room, and when it was over, and his sentence had expired, he was let out, and all he saw of the grand entertainment to the crowned heads was a ravine full of empty wine bottles, a case of jimjams for a son-in-law, a case of nervous prostration for a daughter, and hydrophobia for himself. My old pickle friend has got, at this date, three million good pickle dollars invested in your d—d island, and all he has to show for it is a sick daughter, neglected by a featherhead of a husband, who will only speak to old pickles when he wants more money, and a grandchild that may die teething at any time. You are a nice lot of ducks to talk to me about your English society being better than our American civilization. You get,” and dad drove the dukes out.
Dad Drove the Dukes out 135
I think they are going to have dad arrested for treason. But don't tell ma, 'cause she may think treason serious.
Yours,
Hennery.
The Bay Boy Writes About Paris—Tells About the Trip Acrossthe English Channel—Dad Feeds a Dog and Gets Arrested.
Paris, France.—My Dear Uncle Ezra: Dad is in an awful state here, and I do not know what to do with him. We struck this town all in a heap, and the people seemed to be paralyzed so they couldn't speak, except to make motions and make noises that we could not interpret. This is the first time dad and I have been in a place where nobody understood our language. Ordinarily we would take pleasure in teaching people to speak the English language, but in coming across the English channel dad and I both got something we never got on the water before. Ordinary seasickness is only an incident, that makes you wish you were dead—just temporary, but when it wears off you can enjoy your religion and victuals as well as ever, but the seasickness that the English channel gives you is a permanent investment, like government bonds that you cut coupons off of. I 'spect we shall be sick always now, and worse every other day, like chills and fever.
Say, a boat on the English channel does not roll, or pitch, at intervals, like a boat on ordinary water, but it does stunts like a broncho that has been poisoned by eating loco-weeds, and goes into the air and dives down under, and shakes itself like a black bass with a hook in its mouth, and rolls over like a trained dog, and sits up on its hind legs and begs, and then walks on its fore paws, and seems to jump through hoops, and dig for woodchucks, and all the time the water boils like 'pollinarius, full of bubbles, and it gives you the hiccups to look at it, and it flows every way at the same time, and the wind comes from the fourteen quarters at once, and blows hot if you are too hot and want a cool breeze, and if you are too cold, and want a warm breeze to keep you alive, it comes right from the north pole, and you just perish in your tracks.
Gee, but it is awful. When you get seasick on an ordinary ocean, you know where to locate the disease, and you know where to go for relief, and when you have got relieved you know that you are alive, but an English channel seasickness is as different from any other as an alcohol jag is different from a champagne drunk. This English channel seasickness begins on your toes, and you feel as though the toenails were being pulled out with pincers, and the veins in your legs seem to explode, your arms wilt like lettuce in front of a cheap grocery, your head seems to be struck with a pile-driver and telescoped down into your spine, and your stomach feels as though you had swallowed a telephone pole with all of the cross arms and wires and glass insulators, and you wish lightning would strike you. Gosh, but dad was hot when he found that he was sick that way, and when we got ashore he wanted to kill the first man he met.
He thinks that it is a crime for a man not to understand the English language, and when he tells what he wants, and the man he is talking to shrugs his shoulders and laughs, and brings him something else, he wants to pull his gun and begin to shoot up the town, and only for me he would have killed people before this, but now he takes it out in scowling at people who do not understand him. Dad seems to think that if he cannot make a man understand what he says, all he has to do is to swear at the man, but there is no universal language of profanity, so the more dad swears the more the nervous Frenchman smiles, and acts polite.
I think the French people are the politest folks I ever knew. If a Frenchman had to kick a person out of doors, he would wear a felt slipper, and after he had kicked you he would place his hand on his heart, and bow, and look so sorry, and hurt, that you would want to give him a tip.
O, but this tipping business is what is breaking dad's heart. I think if the servants would arrange a syndicate to rob dad of two or three dol lars a day, by pocket picking, or sneak thieving, he would overlook it, and say that as long as it was one of the customs of the country we should have to submit to it, but when he has paid his bill, with everything charged extra, and the servants line up and look appealingly, or mad, as the case may be, dad is the hardest man to loosen that ever was, but if they seem to look the other way, and not, apparently, care whether they get a cent or not, dad would go and hunt them up, and divide his roll with them. Dad is not what you would call a “tight wad,” if you let him shed his money normally, when he feels the loosening coming on, but you try to work him by bowing and cringing, and his American spirit gets the better of him, and he looks upon the servant as pretty low down. I have told him that the tipping habit is just as bad in America as in France, but he says in America the servant acts as though he never had such a thought as getting a tip, and when you give him a quarter or other tip he looks puzzled, as though he did not just recall what he had done to merit such treatment, but finally puts the money in his pocket with an air as though he would accept it in trust, to be given to some deserving person at the first opportunity, and then he smiles, and gets away, and blows in the tip for something wet and strong.
I told dad if he would just ignore the servants, as though he did not understand that they expected a tip, that he would be all right, so when we got ready to move from the hotel to private rooms dad never gave any servant a tip. Well, I don't know what the servants did to our baggage, but they must have marked it with a smallpox sign, or something, for nobody would touch it for several hours, but finally a baggage man took it and started for our apartments, and got lost and didn't show up for two days, and when it was finally landed on the sidewalk nobody would carry it upstairs, and dad and I had to lug it up two flights, and I thought dad would have apoplexy.
Coughs up a Tip Every Time 143
We found a guide who could talk New Orleans English and he said it would cost three dollars to square it with the servants at the hotel, and have the boycott removed from our baggage, and dad paid it, and now he coughs up a tip every time he sees a servant look at him. He pays when he goes in a restaurant and when he comes out, and says he is cured of trying to reform the customs of anybody else's country.
We have engaged a guide to stay with us day and night. The guide took us out for a bat last night, and dad had the time of his life. Dad has drank a good deal of spiritous and malt liquors in his time, but I don't think he ever indulged much in champagne at three or four dollars a bottle at home. Maybe he has been saving himself up till he got over here, where champagne is cheap and it takes several quarts to make you see angels. The guide took us to one of these bullyvards, where there are tables out on the sidewalk, and you can eat and drink and look at the dukes and counts and dutchesses and things promenading up and down, flirting like sin, and we sat down to a table and ordered things to eat and drink, and dad looked like Uncle Sam, and felt his oats.
A Tone of Voice That Meant Trouble 138
When he had drank a few thimblefuls of absinthe, and some champagne, and eat a plateful of frogs, he was just ripe for trouble. A woman and a man at an adjoining table had one of these white dogs that is sheared like a hedge fence, with spots of long hair left on in places, and dad coaxed the dog over to our table and began to feed him frogs' legs, and the woman began to talk French out loud, and look cross at dad, and the count that was with her came over to our table and looked at dad in a tone of voice that meant trouble, and said something sassy, and the guide said the man wanted to fight a duel because dad had contaminated the woman's dog, and dad got mad and offered to wipe out the whole place, and he got up with a champagne bottle and looked defiance at the count, and the waiters began to scatter, when the woman came up to dad and begged him not to hurt the count, and as she spoke broken English dad could understand her, and she looked so beautiful, and her eyes were filled with tears, and dad relented and said: “Don't cry, dear, I won't hurt the little runt.” She was so glad dad was not going to kill the count that she threw herself into his arms and thanked dear America for producing such a grand citizen, such a brave man as dad, who could forego the pleasure of killing a poor, weak man who had insulted him, particularly as dad's wild Indian ancestry made it hard for him to refrain from blood.
I Won't Hurt the Little Runt 145
Well, dad's face was a study, as he braced up and held that 150 pounds of white meat in his arms, with all the people looking on, and he seemed proud and heroic, and he stroked her hair and told her not to worry, and finally she hied herself away from dad and the count took her away, and they went up the bullyvard, and after all was quiet again dad said: “Hennery, let this be a lesson to you. When you are tempted to commit a rash act and avenge an insult in blood, stop and think of the sorrow and shame that will come to you if you draw your gun too quick, and have a widow on your hands as the result. Suppose I had killed that shrimp, the face of his widow would have haunted me always, and I would have wanted to die. Don't ever kill anybody, my boy, if you can settle a dispute by shaking the dice.”
Well, dad ordered some more wine, and as he drank it, he allowed the populace to admire him and say things about the great American millionaire, who spent money like water and was too brave to fight. Then dad called for his check to pay his bill, and when he felt in his pocket for his roll of bills, he hadn't a nickel and the woman, when she was in his arms, weeding with one hand, had gone through dad's pockets with the other. Dad felt for his watch, to see what time it was, and his watch was gone, and the waiter was waiting for the money and dad tried to explain that he had been buncoed, and the head waiter came and begun to act sassy, and then they called a policeman to stay by us till the money was produced, and everybody at the other tables laughed, and dad turned blue, and I thought he would have a fit. Finally, the guide began to talk, and the result was that a policeman went home with us, and dad found money enough to pay the bill, but he talked language that caused the landlady to ask us to find a new place.
Tried to Explain That he Had Been Buncoed 148
The next morning the guide showed up with an officer who had a warrant for dad for hugging a woman in a public cafe, and it seemed as though we were in for it, but the guide said he could settle the whole business by paying the officer $20, and dad paid it and I think the guide and the officer divided the money. Say, this is the greatest town we have struck yet for excitement, and I guess dad will not have a chance to think of his sickness.
This morning we went into a big department store, and, by gosh! we found the count that dad was going to fight was a floor-walker, and the countess was behind a counter selling soap. When dad saw the count leering at him, he put his hand on his pistol pocket and yelled a regular cowboy yell, and the count rushed down into the basement, the soap countess fainted, and the police took dad to the police station, and all day the guide and I have been trying to get him out on bail. If we get dad out of this we are going to put a muzzle on him. Well, if anyone asks you if I am having much of a time abroad, you can tell them the particulars.
P. S.—We got dad out for $20 and costs, and he says he will blow Paris up before night. We are going up to the top of the Eiffel tower this afternoon, to count our money, as dad dasscnt take out his pocketbook anywhere on the ground for fear of being robbed.
Yours full of frogs.
Hennery.
The Bad Boy's Second Letter from Paris—Dad Poses as aMormon Bishop and Has to Be Rescued—They Climb the EiffelTower and the Old Man Gets Converted.
Paris, France.—Old Pardner in Crime: I got your letter, telling me about the political campaign that is raging at home, and when I read it to dad he wanted to go right out and fill up on campaign whisky and yell for his presidential candidate, but he couldn't find any whisky, so he has not tried to carry any precincts of Paris for our standard-bearer.
There is something queer about the liquor here. There is no regular campaign beverage. At home you can select a drink that is appropriate for any stage of a campaign. When the nominations are first made you are not excited and beer and cheese sandwiches seem to fit the case A little later, when the orators begin to come out into the open and shake their hair, you take cocktails and your eyes begin to resemble those of a caged rat, and you are ready to quarrel with an opponent. The next stage in the campaign is the whisky stage, and when you have got plenty of it the campaign may be said to be open, and you wear black eyes and lose your teeth, and you swear strange oaths and smell of kerosene, and only sleep in the morning. Then election comes and if your side wins you drink all kinds of things at once for a week, shout hoarsely and then go to the Keeley cure, but if your party loses you stay home and take a course of treatment for nervous prostration and say you will never mix up in another campaign.
Here in France it is different. The people have nervous prostration to start on, start a campaign on champagne, wind up on absinthe, and after the votes are counted go to an insane asylum. I do not know what first got dad to drink absinthe and I don't know what it is, but it looks like soap suds, tastes like seed cookies and smells like vermifuge. But it gets there just the same and the result of drinking it is about the same as the result of drinking anything in France—it makes you want to hug somebody.
At home when a man gets full of whisky, he wants to hug the man he drinks with and weep on his collar, and then hit him on the head with a bottle; but here every kind of drink puts the drinker in condition to want to hug. Dad says he never knew he had a brain until he learned to drink absinthe, but now he can close his eyes and see things worse than any mince pie nightmare, and when we go out among people he never sees a man at all, but when a woman passes along, dad's eyes begin to take turns winking at them and it is all I can do to keep him from proposing marriage to every woman he sees.
Badge on Dad's Breast, With the Word 'bishop' 153
I thought I would break him of this woman foolishness, so I told everybody dad was a Mormon bishop, and had a grand palace at Salt Lake City, and owned millions of gold mines and tabernacles and wanted to marry a thousand women and take them to Utah and place them at the head of homes of their own, and he would just call once or twice a week and leave bags of gold for his wives to spend. A newspaper reporter, that could talk English, wrote a piece for a paper about dad wanting to marry a whole lot and he said life in Utah was better than a Turkish harem, cause the wives of a Mormon bishop did not have to be locked up and watched by unix, but could flirt and blow in money and go out to dances and have just as much fun as though they lived in Newport, and had got divorces from millionaires, and he said any woman who wanted to marry a Mormon bishop could meet dad on the bullyvard near a certain monument, on a certain day. I was on to it, with the reporter, and we hired a carriage and went to the bullyvard, just at the time the newspaper said and I put a big red badge on dad's breast, with the word “Bishop” on it, and dad had been drinking absinthe and he thought the badge was a kind of sign of nobility. Well, you'd adide to see the bunch of women that were there to meet dad. “What's the matter here?” said dad, as he saw the crowd of women, looking like they were there in answer to an advertisement for nurses. I told dad to stand up in the carriage, like Dowie does in Chicago, and hold out his hands and say: “Bless you, my children,” and when dad got up to bless them, the reporter and I got out of the carriage, and the reporter, which could talk French, said for all the women who wanted to be Mormon wives to get into the carriage with the bishop and be sealed for life.
Well, sir, you'd a thought it was a remnant sale! More than a dozen got into the carriage with dad, and about 400 couldn't get in, but when the scared driver started up the horses, they all followed the carriage, and then the mounted police surrounded the whole bunch and moved them off towards the police station, and dad under the wagonload of females, each one trying to get the nearest to him, so as to be his favorite wife.
It got noised around that a foreign potent-ate had been arrested with his whole harem for conduct unbecoming to a potent-ate, and so when we got to the jail dad had to be rescued from his wives, and they were driven into a side street by the police, and dad was locked up to save his life. The reporter and I went to the jail to get him out, but we had to buy a new suit of clothes for him, as everything was torn off him in the Mormon rush.
Dad Was a Sight when We Found Him in Jail 155
Dad was a sight when we found him in jail, and he thought his bones were broken, and he wanted to know what was the cause of his sudden popularity with the fair sex, and I told him it all came from his looking so confounded distinguished, and his flirting with women. He said he would swear he never looked at one of those women in a tone of voice that would deceive a Sunday school teacher, and he felt as though he was being misunderstood in France. We told him the only way to get out of jail was to say he was a crowned head from Oshkosh, traveling incog, and when he began to stand on his dignity and demand that a messenger be sent for the president of France, to apologize for the treatment he had received, the jailer and police begged his pardon and we dressed him up in his new clothes and got him out, and we went to the Eiffel tower to get some fresh air.
I suppose you have seen pictures of the Eiffel tower, on the advertisements of breakfast food in your grocery, but you can form no idea of the height and magnificence of the tower by studying advertisements. You may think that the pictures you see of world events on your cans of baked beans and maple syrup and soap, give you the benefit of foreign travel, but it does not. You have got to see the real thing or you are not fit to even talk about what you think you have seen. You remember that Ferris wheel at the Chicago world's fair, and how we thought it was the greatest thing ever made of steel, so high that it made us dizzy to look to the top of it, and when we went up on the wheel we thought we could see the world, from Alaska to South Africa, and we marveled at the work of man and prayed that we be permitted to get down off that wheel alive, and not be spilled down through the rarified Chicago atmosphere and flattened on the pavement so thin we would have to be scraped up off the pavement with a case knife, like a buckwheat cake that sticks to the griddle.
You remember, old man, how you cried when our sentence to ride in the Ferris wheel expired, and the jailer of the wheel opened the cell and let us out, and you said no one would ever get you to ride again on anything that you couldn't jump out of if it balked, or you got wheels in your head and chunks of things came up to your Adam's apple and choked you. Well, cross my heart, if that Ferris wheel, that looked so big to us, would make a main spring for the Eiffel tower. The tower is higher than a kite, and when you get near it and try to look up to the top, you think it is a joke, and that really no one actually goes up to the top of it. You see some flies up around the top of it, and when the guide tells you the flies crawling around there are men and women, you think the guide has been drinking.
Flies Crawling Around There Are Men and Women 157
But dad and I and the guide paid our money, got into an elevator and began to go up. After the thing had been going up awhile dad said he wouldn't go up more than a mile or so at first, and asked the man to let him off at the 3,000-foot level, but the elevator man said dad had got to take all the degrees and dad said: “Let her went,” and after an hour or so we got to the top.
Gee! but I thought dad would fall dead right there, when he looked off at Paris and the world beyond. The flies we had seen at the top before starting had changed to human beings, all looking pale and scared, and the human beings on the ground had changed into flies and bugs, for all you could see of a man on the ground was his feet with a flattened plug hat someway fastened on the ankles, and a woman looked like a spoonful of raspberry jam dropped on the pavement, or a splash of current jelly moving on the ground in a mysterious way. I do not know as the Eiffel tower was intended to act as a Keeley cure, but of the 50 people who went up with us, half of them were so full their back teeth were floating, including dad and the guide, but when we got to the top and they got a view of the awful height to which we had come, it seemed as though every man got sober at once, and their tongues seemed to cleave to the roof of their mouths. All they could do was to look off at the city and the view in the distance, and choke up, and look sorry about something.
I couldn't help thinking of what sort of a pulp a man would be if he fell off the top of the tower and struck a fat woman on the pavement, cause it seemed to me you couldn't tell which was fat woman and which was man. I never saw such a change in a man as there was in dad, after he got his second wind and got his voice working. He looked like a man who had made up his mind to lead a different life and begin right there.
He Took out a Five-dollar Bill 159
There was a Salvation Army man and woman in the crowd and dad went up to them. He took out a five-dollar bill and put it in the tambourine of the lassie, and said to the man and woman: “Now, look a here, I want to join your church, and if you have got the facilities for giving me the degrees, you can sign me as a Christian right now. I have been a bad man, and never thought I needed the benefits of religious training, but since I got up here, so near Heaven, in an elevator which I will bet $10 will break and kill us all before we get down to Paris, I want you to prepare me for the hereafter quick.”
Some of the other fellows laughed at dad, and the Salvation Army people looked as though dad was drunk, but he continued: “You can laugh and be jammed, but I'll never leave this place until I am a pious man, and you Salvation Army people have got to enlist me in your army, for I am scared plum to death. Go ahead and convert me, while we wait.” The Salvation Army captain put his hand on dad's head, the girl held out the tambourine for another contribution, and dad felt a sweet peace come over him, and we went down in the elevator and took a hack to the hotel, and dad's lips worked as though in pain.
H.
The Bad Boy's Dad and a Man from Dakota Frame Up a Scheme toBreak the Bank, But They Go Broke—The Party in Trouble.
Monte Carlo.—Dear Uncle: I blush to write the name, Monte Carlo, at the head of a letter to anyone that is a Christian, or who believes in honesty and decency, and earning a living by the sweat of one's brow, for this place is the limit. If I should write anybody a letter from South Clark street, Chicago, the recipient would know I had gone wrong, and was located in the midst of a bad element, and the inference would be that I was the worst fakir, robber, hold-up man or assassin in the bunch.
The inference you must draw from the heading of this letter is that dad and I have taken all the degree of badness and are now winding up our career by taking the last degree, before passing in our chips and committing suicide. Do you know what this place is, old man? Monaco is a principality, about six miles square, ruled by a prince, and the whole business of the country, for it is a “country” the same as though it had a king, is gambling. They have all the different kinds of gambling, from chuck-a-luck at two bits to roulette at a million dollars a minute. What started dad to come to Monte Carlo is more than I know, unless it was a new American he has got acquainted with, a fellow from North Dakota, that dad met at a sort of dance that he did not take me to. It seems there is a place in Paris where they go to see men and women dance—one of those dances where they kick so high that their feet hit the gas fixtures.
Well, all I know about it is that one Wednesday night dad said he felt as though it was his duty to go to prayer meeting, so he could say when he got home that in all the frivolities of a trip abroad, even in wicked Paris, he never neglected his church duties. I never was stuck on going to prayer meeting, so dad let me stay at the hotel and play pool with the cash register boy in the barroom, and dad took a hymn book and went out, looking pious as I ever saw him.
Dance, Like They Had Seen the People Dance at The Show 164
My, what a difference there was in dad in the morning. I woke up about daylight, and dad came into the room with a strange man, with spinach on his chin, and they began to dance, like they had seen the people dance at the show where they had passed the evening. They were undressed, except their underclothes, which wore these combination suits, so when a man gets into them he is sealed up like a bologna, and he has to have help when he wants to get out to take a bath, and he has to have an outsider button him in with a button hook. Gee, I would rather be a sausage and done with it! Well, dad and this man from Dakota kicked high until dad caught by the ankle on a gas bracket, and the strange man got me up out of bed to help unloosen dad and get him down before he was black in the face. Finally we got dad down and then the two old codgers began to discuss a proposition to go to Monte Carlo to break the bank.
A System of Gambling 162
The Dakota man agreed that Americans had no right to be spending their own money doing Europe, when their genius was equal to the task of acquiring the money of the less intelligent foreigners. He said they could go to Monte Carlo and by a system of gambling which he had used successfully in the Black Hills they could carry away all the money they could pile into sacks. The man said he would guarantee to break the bank if dad would put his money against the Dakota man's experience as a gambler, and they would divide the proceeds equally. Dad bit like a bass. He said he had always had an element of adventure in his make-up, and had always liked to take chances, and from what he had heard of the fabulous sums won and lost at Monte Carlo he could see that if a syndicate could be formed that would win most of the time, he could see that there was more money in it than in any manufacturing enterprise, and he was willing to finance the scheme.
The Dakota man fairly hugged dad, and he told dad in confidence that they two could divide up money enough to make them richer than they ever dreamed of, and all the morning they discussed the plan, and made a list of things they would need to get away with the money. They provided themselves with canvas sacks to carry away the gold, and dad drew all his money out of the bank, and that evening we took a train for Monte Carlo. All the way here dad and his new friend chuckled over the sensation they would make among the gamblers, and I became real interested in the scheme. There was to be some fun besides the winning of the money, because they talked of going out in the park and on the terraces when they were tired of winning money, and seeing the poor devils who had gone broke commit suicide, as that is said to be one of the features of the place.