Seeing the Poor Devils Who Had Gone Broke 166
Well, we got a suite of rooms and the first day we looked over the place, and ate free banquets and saw how the people dressed, and just looked prosperous and showed money on the slightest provocation, and got the hang of things. Dad was to go in the big gambling room in the afternoon with his pockets fairly dropsical with money, and the Dakota man was to do the betting, and dad was to hold one of the canvas bags, and when it was full we were to take it to our room, and quit gambling for awhile, to give the bank a chance to raise more money. Dad insisted that his partner should lose a small bet once in awhile, so the bank should not get on to the fact that we had a cinch.
After luncheon we entered the big gambling room, in full-dress suits, and, by gosh! it was like a king's reception. There were hundreds of men and women, dressed for a party, and it did not seem like a gambling hell, except that there were, piles of gold as big as stoves, on all the tables, and the guests were provided with silver rakes, with long handles, to rake in the money. Dad said in a whisper to the Dakota man: “What is the use of taking the trouble to run a gold mine, and get all dirtied up digging dirty nuggets, when you can get nice, clean gold, all coined, ready to spend, by betting right?” And then dad turned to me and he said; “Hennery, don't let the sight of this wealth make you avaricious. Don't be purse-proud when you find that your poor father, after years of struggle against adversity, and the machinations of designing men, has got next to the Pierpont Morgan class and has money to buy railroads. Don't get excited when we begin to bag the money, but just act as though it was a regular thing with us to salt down our gold for winter, the same as we do our pork.”
A count, or a duke, gave us nice seats, and rakes to haul in the money; a countess, with a low-necked dress, winked at dad when he reached into his pistol pocket and brought out a roll of bills and handed them to the Dakota man, who bought $500 worth of red chips, and when the man looked the roulette table over and put about a pint of chips on the red, dad choked up so he was almost black in the face, and began to perspire so I had to wipe my face with a handkerchief; the gambler rolled the wheel and when the ball stopped on the red, and dad did the raking and raked in a quart of chips, and dad shook hands with the Dakota man and said: “Pard, we have got 'em on the run,” and reached for his sack to put in the first installment of acquired wealth, and the low-necked countess smiled a ravishing smile on dad, and dad looked as though he owned a brewery, and the Dakota man twisted his chin whiskers and acted like he was sorry for the Monte Carlo bank, I just got so faint with joy that I almost cried.
To think we had skinned along as economically as possible all our lives, and never made much money, and now, through this Dakota genius, and this Monte Carlo opportunity, we had wealth raking in by the bushel, made me feel great, and I wondered why more people had not found out this faraway place, where people could become rich and prosperous in a day, if they had the nerve. I tell you, old man, it was great, and I was going to cable you to sell out your grocery for what you could get at forced sale and come here with the money, gamble and become a millionaire.
Reach Into Another Pocket and Dig up Another Roll 171
Monte Carlo (the next day).—My Dear Uncle Ezra: I do not know how to write you the sequel to this tragedy. After our Dakota partner, with the Black Hills system of beating a roulette game, had won the first bet, he never guessed the right color again, and dad had no more use for the rake. Every time he bet and lost, he would reach out to dad for more money, and dad would reach into another pocket and dig up another roll, and the countess would laugh and dad had to act as though he enjoyed losing money.
It was about dark when dad had fished up the last hundred dollars and it was gone before dad could wink back to the countess, then the Dakota man looked at dad for more, and dad shook his head and said it was all off, and they looked it each other a minute, and then we all three got up and went out in the park to see the people who had gone broke commit suicide, but there was not a revolver shot and dad and the Dakota man sat down on a seat and I looked at the moon.
He would reach out to Dad for more money, and Dad would reach into another pocket and dig up another roll.
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.
The Bad Boy and His Dad Have an Automobile Ride—They RunOver a Peasant—Climb “Glaziers”—Dad Falls Over aPrecipice, But Is Rescued by the Guides After a Hard Timeof 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.
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 passed on the road, and got it down so fine that people picked up rocks after we had-passed, 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 bloody-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.
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 bass 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, passing 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.
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.
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.
Dad Plays He Is an Anarchist—They Give Alms to the Beggarsand the Bad Boy Ducks a Gondolier and His Dad in the GrandCanal.
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 assassinate 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 assassinate 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.
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 assassin 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 nobody works here, that is, nobody but gondoliers. We have been here several days, and I have not seen a soul doing anything except begging, or selling things that nobody 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 canal 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.
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 canal 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 canals are lighted, and the moon shines, 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 fishing 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 shining, and the electric lights made the canal near the Rialto bridge as light as day. The Rialto bridge crosses the Grand canal, 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 threshing machine engine half as well as an iron bridge. Well, the canal 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 nobody 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.
Overboard, One Yell in the English Language, One In Eye-talian 193
Dad retained the paddle, and had his head out of water, but nothing showed above the water, where Garibaldi was except a red patch on his black pants. Dad was yelling for help, and finally the gondolier got his head out of the water, and said something that sounded like grinding a butcher knife on a grindstone, and I yelled, too, and the gondolas began to gather around us, and the two men were rescued. The gondolier had been gondoling all his life and he had never been in the water before, and they thought it would strike in and kill him, so they wrapped him up in blankets and put him aboard his canoe, and he looked at me as though I was to blame. They got a boat hook fastened in dad's pants and landed him in the gondola, and he dripped all the way to our hotel, and he smelled like a fish market.
I asked Garibaldi, on the way to the hotel, if he was counting his beads when he was down under the water with nothing but his pants out of the water, and he said: “You're dam right,” but I don't think he knew the meaning of the words, because he probably wouldn't swear in the presence of death. Dad just sat and shivered all the way to the hotel, but when we got to our room I asked him what his idea was in jumping overboard right there before folks, with his best clothes on, and he said it was all Garibaldi's fault, that just as dad was getting a good grip on the paddle, the gondolier heaved a long sigh, and the onions in his breath paralyzed dad so he fell overboard.
Then You Don't Blame Your Little Boy, Do You 197
“Then you don't blame your little boy, do you?” says I, and dad looked at me as he was hanging his wet shirt on a chair. “Course not; you were asleep in the cabin. But say, if I ever hear that you did tip that gondola, it will go hard with you,” but I just looked innocent, and dad went on drying his shirt by a charcoal brazier and never suspected me. But I am getting the worst of it, for dad and his clothes smell so much like a clam bake that it makes me sick.
Well, old friend, you ought to close up your grocery and come over here and go to Vesuvius and Pompeii with us, where we can dry our clothes by the volcano, and dig in the city that was buried in hot ashes 2,000 years ago. They say you can dig up mummies there that are dead ringers for you, old man.
O, come on, and have fun with us.
Your friend,
Hennery.
The Bad Boy Writes from Naples—Dad Sees Vesuvius and Callsthe Servants to Put Out the Fire—They Have Trouble with a“Dago” in Pompeii.
Naples, Italy.—Dear Old Partner in Crime: Well, sir, we have struck a place that reminds us of home, and your old grocery store. The day we got here dad and I took a walk into the poorer districts, where they throw all the slops and refuse in the streets, and where nobody ever seems to clean up anything and burn it. The odor was something that you cannot describe without a demonstration, and after we had turned pale and started to go away, dad said the smell reminded him of something at home, and finally he remembered your old grocery in the sauerkraut season, early in the morning, before you had aired out the place. Your ears must have burned when we were talking about you.
If you want to get an idea of Naples, at its worst, go down into your cellar and round up all the codfish, onions, kraut, limburger cheese, kerosene, rotten potatoes, and everything that is dead, put it all in a bushel basket, and just before the Health officers come to pull your place, get down on your knees and put your head down in the basket, and let some one sit on your head all the forenoon, and you will have just such a half day as dad and I had in the poor quarter of Naples, and it will not cost you half as much as it did us, unless, after you have enjoyed yourself in your cellar with your head in the basket, you decide to have a run of sickness and hire a doctor who will charge you the price of a trip to Europe.
Well, sir, Naples is a dandy, in its clean part. The bay of Naples is a dead ringer for Milwaukee bay, in shape and beauty, but Milwaukee lacks Vesuvius and Pompeii, for suburbs, and she lacks the customary highwaymen to hold you up. Every man, woman and child we have met makes a living out of the tourists, and nobody that I have seen works at any other business.
Wanted to Turn in a Fire Alarm 201
We woke up the first morning and dad looked out the window and saw Vesuvius belching forth flame and lava and stone fences, and wanted to turn in a fire alarm, but I told him that that fire had been raging ever since the Christian era, and was not one of these incendiary barn burnings, but he opened the window and yelled fire, and the porters and chambermaids came running to our room, with buckets of water, and wanted to know where the fire was. Dad pointed out of the window towards Vesuvius and said: “Some hired girl has been starting a fire with kerosene, in that shanty on the knoll out there, and the whole ranch will burn if you don't turn out the fire department, you gosh blasted lazy devils. Get a move on and help carry out the furniture.”
Well, they calmed dad, and then I had to go to work and post dad up on the geography he had forgotten, and finally he remembered seeing a picture of a volcano or burning mountain in his geography 50 years ago, but he told me he never believed there was a volcano in the world, but that he always thought they put those pictures in geographies to make them sell. How a man can attain the prominence and position in the business world that dad has, and not know any more than he does, is what beats me.
Of course, you know, having kept a grocery since the war, and having had opportunities to study history, by the pictures on the soap boxes and insurance calendars, that Nero, the Roman tyrant, after Rome was burned, while he fiddled for a dance in a barn, got so accustomed to fire and brimstone that he retired to Naples and touched off Vesuvius, just so he could look at it. But Vesuvius, about 2,000 years ago, got to burning way down in its bowels, and the fire got beyond control, and I suppose now the fire is away down in the center of the earth, and you know when you get down in the earth below the crust, on which we live and raise potatoes, everything is melted, like iron in a foundry, and Vesuvius is the spigot through which the fluid comes to the surface. You see, don't you?
Just imagine that this earth is a barrel of beer, which you can understand better than anything else, and it is being shaken up by being hauled around on wagons and cars, and is straining to get out, then a bartender drives a spigot into the bung, turns the thumb piece, and the pent-up beer comes out foaming and squirting, and there you are.
Instead of beer, Vesuvius is loaded with lava, that runs like molasses, and when it is cold it is indigestible as a cold buckwheat cake, and you can make it up into jewelry, that looks like maple sugar and smells like a fire in a garbage crematory. Besides the lava there are stones as big as a house that are thrown up by the sea-sickness of the earth, as it heaves and pants, and then the ashes that come out of the crater at times would make you think that what they need there is to have a chimney sweep go down and brush out the flues.
Threw a Pail of Ashes over the Fence 204
To get an idea of what a nuisance the ashes from the crater are to the cities on the plain below, you remember the time you were out in your back yard splitting boxes for kindling wood and my chum and I threw a pail of ashes over the fence, and accidentally it went all over you, about four inches thick. That time you got mad and threw cucumbers at us, when we ran down the alley. Keep that in your mind and you can understand the destruction of Pompeii, when Vesuvius, thousands of years ago, coughed up hot ashes and covered the town 40 feet deep with hot stuff, and killed every living thing, and petrified and preserved the whole business, and made a prairie on top of a town, and everybody eventually forgot that there had ever been a town there, for about 2,000 years. If my chum and I had not run out of ashes we would have buried you so deep in your back yard that you would have been petrified with your hatchet, and when they excavated the premises a thousand years later they would have found your remains and put you in a museum.
Well, a couple of hundred years ago a peasant was sinking a well down in the ashes, and he struck a petrified barroom, with a bartender standing behind the bar in the act of serving some whisky 2,000 years old, and the peasant located a claim there, and the authorities took possession of the prairie and have been digging the town out ever since, looking for more of that 2,000-year-old whisky.
When I told dad about what they were finding at the ruins of Pompeii, and how you were liable to find gold and diamonds and petrified women, he wanted to go and dig in the ashes, as he said it would be more exciting than raking over the dumping grounds in Chicago for tin cans and lumps of coal, and so we hired a hack and went to the buried town, but dad insisted on carrying an umbrella, so if Vesuvius belched any more ashes he could protect himself. Gee, but from what I have seen at that old ruin, a man would need an umbrella made of corrugated iron to keep from being buried.
Dad Insisted on Carrying an Umbrella 207
Well, when we got to Pompeii dad was for going right where they were digging, but I got him to look over the streets and houses that had been uncovered first, and he was paralyzed to think that a town could be covered with ashes all these thousands of years, and then be uncovered and find a town that would compare, in many respects, with cities of the present day, with residences complete with sculpture, paintings and cut marble that would skin Chicago to a finish.
We went through residences that looked as rich as the Vanderbilt houses in New York, baths that you could take a plunge and a swim in, if they had the water, paintings that would take a premium at any horse show to-day, pavements that would shame the pavements of London and Paris, and petrified women that you couldn't tell from a low-necked party in Washington, except that the ashes had eaten the clothes off. I guess most of the people in Pompeii got away when the ashes began to rain down, for they must have seen that it wasn't going to be a light shower, but a deluge, 'cause they never have found many corpses. They must have run to Naples, and maybe they are running yet, and you may see some of them at your grocery, and if you do see anybody covered with ashes, looking for a job, give them some crackers and cheese and charge it to dad, for they must be hungry by this time.
Say, do you know that some of those refugees from Pompeii went off in such a hurry that they left bread baking in the ovens, and meat cooking in the pots? It seems the most wonderful thing to me of anything I ever saw. We went all through the streets and houses and saw ballrooms that beat anything in San Francisco, and when we went into a building occupied by the officers in charge of the excavations, and dad saw a telephone and an electric light, he thought those things had been dug up, too, and he claimed that the men who were receiving millions of dollars in royalties on telephones and electric lights were frauds who were infringing on Pompeii patents 2,000 years old, and he wouldn't believe me when I told him that telephones and electric lights were not dug up; he said then he wouldn't believe anything was dug up, but that the whole thing was a put-up job to rob tourists. But when we got to a locality where the dagoes were digging the ashes away from a house and were uncovering a parlor, where rich things were being discovered, he saw that it was all right.
I suppose I never ought to have played such a thing on dad, but I told him that anybody who saw a thing first when it came out of the ashes could grab it and keep it, and just as I told him a workman threw out a shovel full of ashes, just as you would throw out dirt digging for angle worms, and there was a little silver urn with a lot of coins in it, and you could not hold dad. He grabbed for it, the workman grabbed for it, and they went down together in the ashes, and the man rolled dad over and he was a sight, but the workman got the silver urn, and dad wanted to fight.
The Man Rolled Dad over and he Was a Sight 210
Finally a man with a uniform on came along and was going to arrest dad, but they finally compromised by the man offering to sell the silver urn and the gold coins to dad for a hundred dollars, if he would promise not to open it up until he got out of Italy, and dad paid the money and wrapped the urn up in a Chicago paper, and we took our hack and went back to Naples on a gallop.
Dad could hardly wait till we got to the hotel before opening up his prize, but he held out until we got to our room, when he unwrapped the urn to count his ancient gold coins. Well, you'd a-died to see dad's face when he opened that can. It was an old tomato can that had been wrought out with a hammer so it looked like hammered silver, and when he emptied the gold coins out on the table there was a lot of brass tags that looked like dog license tags, and baggage checks and brass buttons. I had to throw water on dad to bring him to, and then he swore he would kill the dago that sold him the treasure from the ruins of Pompeii. It was a great blow to dad, and he has bought a dirk knife to kill the dago. To-morrow we take in Vesuvius, and when we come down from the crater we go to Pompeii and kill the dago in his tracks. Dad may cause Vesuvius to belch again with hot ashes, and cover the ruins of Pompeii, but if he can't turn on the ashes, the knife will do the business.
Yours,
Hennery.
The Bad Boy and His Dad Climb Vesuvius—A Chicago Lady Joinsthe Party and Causes Trouble.
Naples, Italy.—Siegnor ze Grocerino: I guess that will make you stand without hitching for a little while. Say, I am getting so full of dead languages, and foreign palaver, that I shall have to have an operation on my tongue when I get home before I can speel the United States language again so you can make head or tail of it. You see, I don't stay long enough in a country to acquire its language, but I get a few words into my system, so now my English is so mixed with French words, Italian garlic and German throat trouble that I cannot understand myself unless I look in a glass and watch the motions of my lips. Dad has not picked up a word of any foreign language, and says he should consider himself a traitor to his country if he tried to talk anything but English. He did get so he could order a glass of beer by holding up his finger and saying “ein,” but he found later that just holding up his finger without saying “ein” would bring the beer all the same so he cut out the language entirely and works his finger until it needs a rest.
When I used to study my geography at the little red schoolhouse, and look at the picture of the volcano Vesuvius, and read about how it would throw up red-hot lava, and ashes, and rocks as big as a house, and wipe out cities, it looked so terrible to me that I was glad when we got through with the volcano lesson, and got to Greenland's icy mountains, where there was no danger except being frozen to death, or made sick by eating blubber sliced off of whales.
Then I never expected to be right on the very top of that volcano, throwing stones down in the lava, and sailing chips down the streams of hot stuff, just as I sailed chips on ice water at home-when the streets were flooded by spring rains. Say, there is no more danger on Vesuvius than there is in a toboggan slide, or shooting the chutes at home. I thought we would have to hire dagoes to carry us up to the top, and be robbed and held up, and may be murdered, but it is just as easy as going up in the elevator of a skyscraper, and no more terrifying than sitting on a 50-cent seat in a baseball park at home and witnessing the “Destruction of Pompeii” by a fireworks display
The crater looks sort of creepy, like a big cauldron kettle boiling soap on a farm, only it is bigger, and down in the earth's bowels you can well believe there is trouble, and if you believe in a hell, you can get it, illustrated proper, but the rivulets of lava that flow out of the wrinkles around the mouth of the crater are no more appalling than making fudges over a gas stove. When the lava cools you would swear it was fudges, only you can't eat the lava and get indigestion as you can eating fudges.
It was hard work to get dad to go up on the volcano, because he said he knew he would fall into it, and get his clothes burned, and he said he couldn't climb clear to the top, on account of his breath being short, but when I told him he could ride up on a trolley car, and have the volcano brought right to him, he weakened, and one morning we left Naples early and before two hours had passed we were on a little cogwheel railroad going up, and dad was looking down on the scenery, expecting every minute the cogs would slip and we would cut loose and go down all in a heap and be plastered all over the vineyards and big trees and be killed.
I don't know what makes dad so nervous, but he wanted a woman from Chicago, who was on the car with us, to hold his hand all the way up, but she said she was no nurse in a home for the aged, and she said she would cuff dad if he didn't let go of her. I told her she better not get dad mad if she knew what was good for her, for he was a regular Bluebeard, and wouldn't take no slack from no Chicago female, 'cause he had buried nine wives already. So she held his hand, and I guess she thinks she will be my stepmother, but I bet she don't.
Well, after we got almost to the top the car stopped, and we had to walk the rest of the way, several hundred feet, and we had to have a pusher and a putter for dad, a dago to go ahead and pull him up, and another to put his shoulder against dad's pants and shove. Gee, but it was a picture to see dad “go up old baldhead,” with the dagoes perspiring and swearing at dad for being so heavy, and the Chicago woman laughing, and me pushing her up.