It Was a Picture to See Dad Go up Old Baldhead 214
One thing that scared dad was that every little way there was a shrine, where the guides left dad lying on the ground, blocked with a piece of cold lava, so he wouldn't roll down, like you would block a wagon wheel, and they would go to the shrine and kneel and say some prayers.
Dad was afraid they were going to charge the prayers in the bill for pushing him up, but I told dad that these people expected every time they, went up to the top that it would be their last trip, as they knew that some day the volcano would open in a new place and swallow them whole, with all the tourists. Then he gave them a dollar apiece to pray for him, and wanted to go back down the mountain and let Vesuvius run its own fireworks, but the Chicago lady told dad to brace up and she would protect him, and so the guides gave a few more pushes, and we were on top of the volcano, and dad collapsed and had to be brought to with smelling salts and whisky that the woman carried in her pistol pocket.
Gee, but it was worth all the trouble to get up the mountain, to see the sight that opened up. The hole in the mountain filled with boiling stuff was worth the price of admission, and the roaring of the boiling stuff, and the explosions way down cellar, and the flying stones, the smoke going into the air for a mile, like the burning of an oil well, the red-hot lava finding crevices to leak through, and flowing down the side of the mountain in streams like hot maple sirup, made a scene thai caused us to take off our hats and thank the good Lord that the thing hadn't overflowed enough to hurt us. But I could see dad was scared, 'cause when I wanted him to go around the edge of the crater with me, and see the hell-roaring free show from other points of view, and see where the hot ashes years ago rolled down and covered Pompeii and Herculaneum, he balked and said he had seen all he wanted to, and if he could stay alive until the next car went down the mountain, they could all have his interest in Vesuvius, and be darned to them, but he said if I wanted to go around looking for trouble, he would stay there under a big rock, with the Chicago lady, and wait for me to come back. She said she knew dad was all tired out, and needed rest, and she would stay with him, and keep him cheered up; so I left them and went off with one of the dagoes, to slide down hill on some flowing lava, and pick up specimens.
Well, sir, I wish I could get along some way without telling the rest of this sad story, but if I am going to be a historian I have got to tell the whole blame thing.
And She Was Stroking his Hair 217
When I left dad and the Chicago woman she had produced a lunch from somewhere about her person, and a small bottle, and they were eating and drinking, and dad was laughing more natural than I had seen him laugh since we run over the old woman with the automobile at Nice, and she was smiling on dad just as though she was his sweetheart. (As I went around the crater, a couple of blocks away, I looked back and dad had laid his head in her lap, and she was stroking his hair. )
Well, I picked up specimens, burned the soles off my shoes wading in the lava, and took in the volcano from all sides, and after an hour I went back to where dad and the woman were lunching, but the woman was gone, and dad acted as though he had been hit by an express train, his eyes were wild, his collar was gone, his pocketbook was on the ground, empty, his coat was gone, his scarf-pin had disappeared and the $11 watch he bought when he was robbed the other time was missing, and dad's tongue was run out, and he was yelling for water. I thought he had been trying to drink some lava.
He Was Yelling for Water 223
“Dad, what in the world has happened to you?” said I, as I rushed up to him.
“That woman has happened to me, that is all,” said dad, as he took a swallow of water out of a canteen one of the dagoes had.
“Tell me about it, dad,” said I, trying to keep from laughing, when I saw that he was not hurt.
“Say, let this be a lesson to you,” said dad, “and don't you steer another woman to me on this trip. Do you know you hadn't more than got around that big rock when she said she was tired and was going to faint, for the altitude was too high for her, and I tried to soothe her, and she did look pale, and, by gosh, I thought she was going to die on my hands, and I would have to carry her corpse down the mountain. I heard a scuffling on the rocks, and she looked up and saw a man not ten feet away, and she said: 'Me husband!' and then she fainted and grabbed me around the neck, and I couldn't get her loose. She just froze to me like a person drowning, and that husband of hers, who had come up on the last car, hunting for his wife, who had eloped, pulled a long blue gun and told me he would give me five minutes to pray, and then he would kill me and throw my body down in the creater, to sizzle.”
Pulled a Long Blue Gun 220
“I told him I could pay up enough ahead in three minutes, and he could take all I had if he would loosen up his wife, and bring her to, and take her away, and let me die all alone, and let the buzards eat me, uncooked. He took the bet, pulled her arms away from my throat, took my money and coat, brought her to, and said he was going to throw her into the crater, but I told him she had certainly been good to me, and if he would spare her life, and take her away in the cars, he could have my watch and scarfpin, and he took them, and they went to the cars.
“She looked back at me with the saddest face I ever saw, and said: 'O, sir, it is all a terrible dream, and I will see you in Naples, and explain all,' and now, by Christmas, I want to go back to town and find her, and rescue her from that jealous husband,” and dad got up and we started for the car.
The man and his wife went down on the car ahead of us, and dad wouldn't believe they were regular bunko people, who play that game everyday on some old sucker, but the man that runs the car told me so.
I can be responsible for dad in everything except the women he meets. When it comes to women, your little Hennery don't know the game at all.
Yours,
Hennery.
The Bad Boy Makes Friends with Some Italian Children—Dad IsChased by Lions from the Coliseum—“Not Any More Rome forPapa,” Says Dad.
Rome, Italy.—My Dear Old “Pard:” Well, sir, if you could see me now, you wouldn't know me, because foreign travel has broadened me out so I can talk on any subject, and people of my age look upon me as an authority, and they surround me everywhere I go and urge me to talk. The fact that the boys and girls do not understand a word I say makes no difference. They do not wear many clothes here, and there is no style about them, and when they see me with a whole suit of clothes on, and a hat and shoes and socks, and a scarf-pin on my necktie, they think I must be an Americano that is too rich for any use, or something that ranks with a prince at least, and the boys delight to be with me and do errands for me, and the girls seem to be in love with me.
There is no way you can tell if a girl is in love with you, except that she looks at you with eyes that are as black as coal, and they seem to burn a hole right into your insides, and when they take hold of your hand they hang on and squeeze like alamand-left in a dance at home, and they snug up to you and are as warm and cheerful as a gas stove.
It Brought on a Revolution 227
Say, I sat on a bench in a plaza with a girl about my age, for an hour, while the other girls and boys sat on the ground and looked at us in admiration, and when I put my arm around her and kissed her on her pouting lips, it brought on a revolution. An Italian soldier policeman took me by the neck and threw me across the street, the girl scratched me with her finger nails and bit me, and yelled some grand hailing sign of distress, her brother and a ragged boy that was in love with the girl and was jealous, drew daggers, and the whole crowd yelled murder, and I started for our hotel on a run, and the whole population of Rome seemed to follow me, and I might as well have been a negro accused of crime in the states. I thought they would burn me at the stake, but dad came out of the hotel and threw a handful of small change into the crowd, and it was all off.
After they picked up the coin they beckoned me to come out and play some more, but not any more for little Hennery. I have been in love in all countries where we have traveled, and in all languages, but this Italian love takes the whole bakery, and I do not go around any more without a chaperone. The girls are ragged and wear shawls over their heads, and there are holes in their dresses and their skin isn't white, like American girls', but is what they call olive complexion, like stuffed olives you buy in bottles, stuffed with cayenne pepper, but the girls are just like the cayenne pepper, so warm that you want to throw water on yourself after they have touched you. Gee, but I wouldn't want to live in a climate where girls were a torrid zone, 'cause I should melt, like an icicle that drops in a stove, and makes steam and blows up the whole house.
Well, old man, you talk about churches, but you don't know anything about it. Dad and I went to St. Peter's in Rome, and it is the grandest thing in the world. Say, the Congregational church at home, which we thought so grand, could be put in one little corner of St. Peter's, and would look like 30 cents. St. Peter's covers ground about half a mile square, and when you go inside and look at grown people on the other side of it, they look like flies, and the organ is as big as a block of buildings in Chicago, and when they blow it you think the last day has come, and yet the music-is as sweet as a melodeon, and makes you want to get down on your knees with all the thousands of good Christians of Italy, and confess that you are a fraud that ought to be arrested.
Dad and I have been to all kinds of churches, everywhere, and never turned a hair, but since we got to this town and got some of the prevailing religion into our systems, we feel guilty, and it seems as though everybody could see right into us, and that they knew we were heathen that never knew there was a God. Sure thing, I never supposed there were so many people in the world that worshiped their Maker, as there are here, and I don't wonder that all over the world good people look to Rome for the light. Dad keeps telling me that when we get home we will set an example that will make people pay attention, but he says he does not want to join the church until he has seen all the sights, and then he will swear off for good.
He said to me yesterday: “Now, Hennery, I have been to all the pious places with you, the pope's residence, the catacombs and St. Peter's, where they preach from 40 different places and make you feel like giving up your sins, and I have looked at carvings and decorations and marble and jewels and seen the folly of my ways of life, and I am ripe for a change, but before I give up the world and all of its wickedness, I want blood. I want to go to the other extreme, and see the wild beasts at the Coliseum tear human beings limb from limb, and drink their blood, and see gladiators gladiate, and chop down their antagonists, and put one foot on their prostrate necks, like they do in the theaters, and then I am ready to leave this town and be good.”
Well, sir, I have been in lots of tight places before, but this one beat the band. Here was my dad, who did not know that the Roman, gladiator business had been off the boards for over 2,000 years, that the eating of human prisoners by wild beasts in the presence of the Roman populace was played out, and that the Coliseum was a ruin and did not exist as a place of amusement. He thought everything that he had read about the horrors of a Roman holiday was running to-day, as a side show, and he wanted to see it, and I had encouraged him in his ideas, because he was nervous, and I didn't want to undeceive him. He had come to Rome to see things he couldn't find at home, and it was up to me to deliver the goods.
Gee, but it made me sweat, 'cause I knew if dad did not get a show for his money he would lay it up against me, so I told him we would go to the Coliseum that night and see the hungry lions and tigers eat some of the leading citizens, just as they did when Caesar run the show. Then I found an American from Chicago at the hotel, who sells soap in Rome, and told him what dad expected of me in the way of amusement, and he said the only way was to take dad out to the Coliseum, and in the dark roll a barrel of broken glass down the tiers of seats and make him believe there was an earthquake that had destroyed the Coliseum, and that the lions and tigers were all loose, looking for people to eat, and scare dad and make a run back to town.
What Dad Expected of Me in the Way Of Amusement 230
I didn't want to play such a scandalous trick on dad, but the Chicago man said that was the only way out of it, and he could get a barrel of broken glass for a dollar, and hire four ruffians that could roar like lions for a few dollars, and it would give dad good exercise, and may be save him from a run of Roman fever, 'cause there was nothing like a good sweat to knock the fever out of a fellow's system. The thing struck me as not only a good experience for dad, but a life saver, so I whacked up the money, and the Chicago soap man did the rest.
After dark we went out to the ruin of the Coliseum, where a great many tourists go to look at the ruins by moonlight, and dad was as anxious and bloodthirsty as a young surgeon cutting up his first “stiff.” When we got to the right place, and I told dad we were a little early, because the nobility were not in their seats, the villains began to roar three dollars' worth like hungry lions, and dad turned a little pale and said that sounded like the real thing.
I told him we better not get too near, because we were not accustomed to seeing live men chewed up by beasts, and dad said he didn't care how near we got, as long as they chewed and tore to pieces the natives; so we started to work up a little nearer, when there was a noise such as I never heard before, as the hogshead of broken glass began to roll down the tiers of stone seats, and I fell over on the ground, and pushed dad, and he went over in the sand and struck his pants on a cactus, and yelled that he was stabbed with a dirk.
Went over in the Sand and Struck his Pants on a Cactus 233
I got up and fell down again, and just then the Chicago soap man came up on a gallop, followed by the villains playing lion and tiger, and dad asked the Chicago man what seemed to be the matter, and he said: “Matter enough; there has been an earthquake, and the Coliseum has fallen down, killing more than 10,-000 Romans, and the animals' cages are busted and the animals are loose, looking for fresh meat, and we better get right back to Rome, too quick, or we will be eaten alive. Come on if you are with me. Do you hear the lions after us?” said he, as the hired villains roared.
He Took the Lead for Good Old Rome 235
Well, you'd a died to see dad get up out of that prickly cactus and take the lead for good old Rome. I didn't know he was such a sprinter, but we trailed along behind, roaring like lions and snarling like tigers and yip-yapping like hyenas and barking like timber wolves, and we couldn't see dad for the dust, on that moonlight night.
We slowed up and let dad run ahead, and he got to the hotel first, and we paid off the villains, and finally we went in the hotel and found dad in the bar-room puffing and drinking a high-ball. “Pretty near hell, wasn't it,” said dad, to the soap man. “Did the lions catch anybody?” “O, a few of the lower classes,” said the soap man, “but none of the nobility. The nobility were in the boxes and that part of the Coliseum never falls during an earthquake,” and the soap man joined dad in a high-ball.
After dad got through puffing and had wiped about two quarts of perspiration off his head and neck, and the soap man had told him what a great thing it was to perspire in Rome, on account of the Roman fever, that catches a man at night and kills him before morning, dad turned to me and said: “Hennery, you go pack up and we get out of this in the morning, for I feel as though I had been chewed by one of those hyenas. Not any more Rome for papa,” and the high-ball party broke up, and we went to bed to get sleep enough to leave town.
Do you know, the next morning those hired villains made the soap man and I pay ten dollars extra on account of straining their lungs roaring like lions? But we paid for their lungs all right, rather than have them present a bill to dad.
Well, good-by, old man. We are getting all the fun there is going.
Your only,
Hennery.
The Bad Boy and His Dad Visit the Pope—They Bow to the Kingof Italy and His Nine Spots—Dad Finds That “The Catacombs”Is Not a Comic Opera.
Rome, Italy.—Dear Old Friend: You remember, don't you when you were a boy, playing “tag, you're it,” and “button, button, who's got the button?” that one of the trying situations was to be judged to “go to Rome,” which meant that you were to kiss every girl in the room.
Had to Kiss Anybody They Brought To Me 238
I never got enough “going to Rome” when I attended church sociables and parties, but always got blindfolded, and had to kiss anybody they brought to me, which was usually a boy or a colored cook, so I teased dad to take me to Rome, and when he got over his being rattled and robbed and burned by lava at Vesuvius, he said he didn't care where he went, and, besides, I told him about the Roman Coliseum, where they turned hungry tigers and lions and hyenas loose among the gladiators, and the people could see the beasts eat them alive, and dad said that was something like it, as the way he had been robbed and misued in Italy, he would enjoy seeing a good share of the population chewed by lions, if the lions could stand it. I didn't tell dad that the wild animal show had not been running for a couple of thousand years, 'cause I thought he would find it out when we got here.
Say, old man, I guess I can help you to locate Rome. You remember the time I spoke a piece at the school exhibition, when I put my hand inside my flannel shirt, like an orator, and said: “And this is Rome, that sat on her seven hills, and from her throne of beauty ruled the whole world.” Well, this is it, where I am now, but the seven hills have been graded down, and Rome don't rule the whole world a little bit; but she has got religion awful.
The pope lives here, and he is the boss of more religious people than anybody, and though you may belong to any other kind of church, and when you are home you don't care a continental for any religion except your own, or your wife's religion, and you act like an infidel, and scoff at good people, when you get to Rome and see the churches thicker than saloons in Milwaukee, and everybody attending church and looking pious, you catch the fever, and try to forget bad things you have done, and if you get a chance to see the pope, you may go to his palace just 'cause you want to see everything that is going on, and you think you don't care whether school keeps or not, and you feel independent, as though this religion was something for weak people to indulge in, and finally you come face to face with the pope, and see his beautiful face, and his grand eyes, and his every movement is full of pious meaning, you “penuk” right there, and want to kneel down and let him bless you, by gosh.
Say, I never saw dad weaken like he did when the pope came in. We got tickets to go to his reception, but dad said he had rather go to the catacombs, or the lion show at the Coliseum. He said he didn't want to encourage popes, because he didn't believe they amounted to any more than presiding elders at home. He said he had always been a Baptist, and they didn't have any popes in his church, and he didn't believe in 'em, but some other Americans were going to see the pope, and dad consented to go, under protest, it being understood that he didn't care two whoops, anyway.
Well, sir, we went, and it was the grandest thing you ever saw. There were guards by the thousand, beautiful gardens that would make Central Park look like a hay marsh, hundreds of people in church vestments, and an air of sanctity that we never dreamed; jewels that are never seen outside the pope's residence, and we lined up to see the holy father pass.
Gee, but dad trembled like a dog tied out in the snow, and the perspiration stood out on his face, and he looked sorry for himself. Then came the procession, all nobles and great people, and then there was a party of pious men carrying the most beautiful man we ever saw on a platform above us, and it was the pope, and he smiled at me, and the tears came to my eyes, and I couldn't swallow something which I s'pose was my sins, and then he looked at dad, and held up one hand, and dad was pale, and there was no funny business about dad any more, and then they set the platform down and the pope sat in a chair, and those who wanted to went up to him, and he blessed them.
For Awhile Dad Dassent Go up 241
Say, for awhile dad dassent go up, 'cause he thought the pope could see right through him, and would know he was a Baptist, but the rest of the Americans were going up, and dad didn't want to be eccentric, so he and I went up. The pope put out his hand to dad, and instead of shaking it, as he would the hand of any other man on earth, and asking how his folks were, dad bent over and kissed the pope's hand, and the pope blessed him. Dad looked like a new man, a good man, and when the pope put his hand on my head, and blessed me, my heart came up in my throat, 'cause I thought he must know of all the mean things I had ever done, but I can feel his soft, beautiful hand on my head now, and from this out I would fight any boy twice my size that ever said a word against the pope and his religion. When we got outside dad says to me: “Hennery, don't you ever let me hear of your doing a thing that would make the good man sorry if he was to hear about it.” And we went to our hotel and stayed all the afternoon, and all night, and just thought of that pope's angelic face, and when one of the Americans came to our room and wanted dad to play cinch, he was indignant, and said: “I would as soon think of robbing a child's bank,” and we went to bed, and if dad wasn't a converted man I never saw one.
Well, sir, trouble, and sorrow, and religion, don't last very long on dad. The next morning we talked things over, and I quoted all the Roman stuff I could think of to dad, such as “In that elder day, to be a Roman was greater than a king,” but before I could think twice there was a commotion in the streets and a porter came and made us take off our hats, because the king was riding by, and we looked at the king, and dad was hot. He said that fellow was nothing but a railroad hand, disguised in a uniform, and, by ginger, if we had seen that king out west working on a railroad, with canvas clothes on, he would not have looked like a king, on a bet. There was nothing but his good clothes that stood between the king and a dago digging sewers in Chicago.
After the king and his ninespots had passed, dad said: “When you are in Rome, you must do as the Romans do,” and he said he wanted to get that heavy feeling off his shoulders, which he got at the religious procession, and wanted me to suggest something devilish that we could do, and I told him we better go and see the “Catacombs.” He wanted to know if it was anything like “a trip to Chinatown,” or the “Black Crook,” and I told him it was worse. Then he asked me if there was much low neck and long stockings in the “Catacombs,” and I told him there was a plenty, and he said he was just ripe to see that kind of a show, and so we took a carriage for the “Catacombs,” and dad could hardly keep still till we got there.
I suppose I ought to be killed for fooling dad, but he craved for excitement, and he got it. The “Catacombs” are where Roman citizens have been buried for thousands of years, in graves hewn out of solid rock, and they are petrified, and after they have laid in the graves for a few hundred years, the mummified bodies are taken out and stood up in corners, if the bodies will hang together, and if not the bones are piled up around for scenery.
We had to take torches to go in, and we wandered through corridors, gazing at the remains, until dad asked one of the men with us what it all meant, and the man said it was the greatest show on earth. Dad began to think he was nutty, and when I laughed, and said: “That is great,” and clapped my hands, and said: “Encore,” dad stopped and said: “Hennery, this is no leg show, this is a morgue,” but to cheer him up I told him his head must be wrong, and I pointed to about a hundred dried corpses, a thousand years old, in a corner, with grinning skulls all around, and told him that was the ballet, and told him to look at the leading dancer, and asked him if she wasn't a beaut, from Butte, Mont., and that killed dad. He leaned against me, and said his eyes must have gone back on him, because everything looked dead to him. I told him he would get over it after awhile, and to stay where he was while I went and spoke to one of the ballet that was beckoning to me, and I left him there, dazed, and went around a corner and hid.
People were coming along with torches all the time, looking at the catacombs and reading the inscriptions cut in the rock, and after awhile I went back to where I left dad, and he was gone, but after awhile I found him standing up with the stiffs. He was glad to see me, and wanted to know if I thought he was' dead. I told him I was sure he was alive, though he had a deathly look on his face.
He Would Break Me up Into Bones, and Throw Me Into a Pile 246
“Well, sir,” says dad, “I thought it was all over with me, after you left, for a man came along and moved me around, and took hold under my arms and jumped me along here by these stiffs, and told me if I didn't stay where I belonged he would break me up into bones, and throw me into a pile, and I thought I would have to do as the Romans do and stay here, and before the man left me he reached into my pocket and took my money, and said I couldn't spend any money in there where I was going to stay for a million years, and, by gosh, I was so petrified I couldn't stop him from robbing me. Say, Hennery, they will rob you anywhere, even in the grave, and if this Catacomb show is over, and the curtain has gone down, I want to get out of here, and go to the Coliseum or the Roman amphitheater, where the wild beasts eat people alive.” And so we left the Catacombs and went back to town, and dad began to show life again. Say, you tell the folks at home that dad is gaining every day, and his vacation is doing him good. He has promised to kill me for taking him to the Catacomb show, but dad never harbors revenge for long, and I guess your little nephew will pull through. I wish I had my skates, cause dad wants to go to Russia.
Yours,
Hennery.
The Bad Boy Tells About the Land of the Czar and the TroubleThey Had to Get There—Dad Does a Stunt and Mixes It Up withthe People and Soldiers.
St. Petersburg, Russia.—My Dear Groceryow-ski: Well, sir, I 'spose you will be surprised to hear from me in Russia, but there was no use talking when Dad said he was going to St. Petersburg if it was the last act of his life. He got talking with a Japaneser in Rome and the Jap said the war in the far east would last until every Russian was killed, unless America interfered to put a stop to it, and as Roosevelt didn't appear to have sand enough to offer his services to the czar, what it needed was for some representative American citizen who was brave and had nerve to go to St. Petersburg and see the czarovitch and give him the benefit of a good American talk. The Jap said the American who brought about peace, by a few well chosen remarks, would be the greatest man of the century, and would live to be bowed down to by kings and emperors and all the world would doff hats to him.
At first dad was a little leary about going on such a mission without credentials from Washington, but as luck would have it, he met an exiled Russian at a restaurant, who told dad that he reminded him of Gen. Grant, because dad had a wart on the side of his nose, and he told dad that Russia would keep on fighting until every Japanese was killed unless some distinguished American should be raised up who deemed it his duty to go to St. Petersburg and see the Little Father, and in the interest of humanity advise the czar to call a halt before he had exterminated the whole yellow race. Dad asked the Russian if he thought the czar would grant an audience to an American of eminence in his own country, and the Russian told dad that Nicholas just doted on Americans, and that there was hardly ever an American ballet dancer that went to Russia but what the czar sent for her to come and see him and dance before the grand dukes, and he always gave them jewels and cans of caviar as souvenirs of their visit.
The Russian Told Dad That Nicholas Just Doted On Americans 250
Dad thought it over all night, and the next morning we started for Russia and I wish we had joined an expedition to discover the North Pole instead of coming here. Say, it is harder to get into Russia than it would be to get out of a penitentiary at home. At the frontier we were met by guards on horseback and on foot, policemen, detectives and other grafters, who took our passports and money, and one fellow made me exchange my socks with him. Then they imprisoned us in a stable with some cows until they could hold a coroner's inquest on our passports and divide our money. We slept with the cows the first night in Russia, and I do not want to sleep again with animals that chew cuds all night, and get up half a dozen times to hump up their backs and stretch and bellow. We never slept a wink, and could look out through the cracks in the stable and see the guards shaking dice for our money.
See the Guards Shaking Dice for Our Money 253
Finally they looked at the great seal on our passports and saw it was an American document, and they began to turn pale, as pale as a Russian can get without using soap, and when I said, “Washington, embassador, minister plenipotentiary, Roosevelt, Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight, E Pluribus Unum, whoopla, San Juan Hill,” and pointed to dad, who was just coming out of the stable, looking like Washington at Valley Forge, the guards and other robbers bowed to dad, gave him a bag full of Russian money in place of that which they had taken away, and let us take a freight train for St. Petersburg, and they must have told the train men who we were, because everybody on the cars took off their hats to us, and divided their lunch with us.
Dad could not understand the change in the attitude of the people towards us until I told him that they took him for a distinguished American statesman, and that as long as we were in Russia he must try to look like George Washington and act like Theodore Roosevelt, so every little while dad would stand up in the aisle of the car and pose like George Washington and when anybody gave him a sandwich or a cigarette he would show his teeth and say, “Deelighted,” and all the way to St. Petersburg dad carried out his part of the programme and we were not robbed once on the trip, but dad tried to smoke one of the cigarettes that was given him by a Cossack, and he died in my arms, pretty near.
They make cigarettes out of baled hay that has been used for beddings and covered with paper that has been used to poison flies. I never smelled anything so bad since they fumigated our house by the board of health after the hired girl had smallpox.
Well, we got to St. Petersburg in an awful time, and went to a hotel, suspected by the police, and marked as undesirable guests by the Cossacks, and winked at by the walking delegates and strikers, who thought we were non-union men looking for their jobs.
The next day the religious ceremony of “blessing the Neva” took place, where all the population gets out on the bank of the river, with overshoes on, and fur coats, and looks down on the river, covered with ice four feet thick, and the river is blessed. In our country the people would damn a river that had ice four feet thick, but in Russia they bless anything that will stand it. We got a good place on the bank of the river, with about a million people who had sheepskin coats on, and who steamed like a sheep ranch, and were enjoying the performance, looking occasionally at the Winter palace, where the czar was peeking out of a window, wondering from which direction a bomb would come to blow him up, when a battery of artillery across the river started to fire a salute, and then the devil was to pay. It seems that the gentlemen who handled the guns, and who were supposed to fire blank cartridges into the air, put in loaded cartridges, filled with grape shot, and took aim at the Winter palace, and cut loose at Mr. Czar.
Well, you would have been paralyzed to see the change that came over that crowd, blessing the river one minute and damning the czar and the grand dukes the next. The shot went into the Winter palace and tore the furniture and ripped up the ceiling of the room the czar was in, and in a moment all was chaos, as though every Russian knew the czar was to be assassinated at that particular moment, and all rushed toward the Winter palace as though they expected pieces of the Little Father would be thrown out the window for them to play football with. For a people who are supposed to be lawful and law-abiding, and who love their rulers, it seemed strange to see them all so tickled when they thought he was blown higher than a kite by his own soldiers.
Dad and I started with the crowd for the Winter palace, and then we had a taste of monarchial government. The crowd was rushing over us and dad got mad and pulled off his coat and said he could whip any confounded foreigner that rubbed against him with a sheepskin coat on, and he was just on the point of smiting a fellow with whiskers that looked like scrambled bristles off a black hog when a regiment of Cossacks came down on the crowd, riding horses like a wild west show, and with whips in their hands, with a dozen lashes to each whip, and they began to lash the crowd and ride over them, while the people covered their faces with their arms, and run away, afraid of the whips, which cut and wound and kill, as each lash has little lead bullets fastened to them and a stroke of the whip is like being shot with buck shot or kicked with a frozen boot.
A Cossack Rode Right up to Him and Lashed Him over The Back 258
Well, sir, dad was going to show the Cossacks that he was pretty near an American citizen and didn't propose to be whipped like a school boy by a teacher that looked like a valentine, so he tried to look like George Washington defying the British, but it didn't work, for a Cossack rode right up to him and lashed him over the back (and about 15 buck shot in his whip took dad right where the pants are tight when you bend over to pick up something) and the Cossack laughed when dad straightened up and started to run. I never saw such a change in a man as there was in dad. He started for our hotel, and as good a sprinter as I am I couldn't keep up with him, but I kept him in sight. Before we got to the hotel a sledge came along, not an “old sledge,” such as you play with cards, high-low-Jack-game, but a sort of a sleigh, with three horses abreast, and I yelled to dad to take a hitch on the sledge, and he grabbed on with his feet on the runners, and a man in the sledge with a uniform on, who seemed to be a grand duke, 'cause everybody was chasing him and yelling to head him off, hit dad in the nose with the butt of a revolver, and dad fell off in the snow and the crowd that was chasing the grand duke picked dad up and carried him on their shoulders because they thought he had tried to assassinate the duke, and we were escorted to our hotel by the strikers.
Hit Dad in the Nose With The Butt of a Revolver 255
We didn't know what they were, but you can tell the laboring men here because they wear blouses and look hungry, and when they left us the landlord notified the police that suspicious characters were at the hotel, and came there escorted by the mob, and the police surrounded the house and dad went to our room and used witch hazel on himself where the Cossack hit him with the loaded whip. He says Russia will pay pretty dear for that stroke of the whip by the Cossack, and I think dad is going to join the revolution that is going to be pulled off next Sunday.
They are going to get about a million men to take a petition to the czar, workingmen and anarchists, and dad says he is going as an American anarchist who is smarting from injustice, and I guess no native is smarting more than dad is, 'cause he has to stand up to eat and lie on his stummick to sleep. There is going to be a hades of a time here in St. Petersburg this next week, and dad and I are going to be in it clear up to our necks.
Dad has given up trying to see the czar about stopping the war and says the czar and the whole bunch can go plum (to the devil) and he will die with the mob and follow a priest who is stirring the people to revolt.
Gee, I hope dad will not get killed here and be buried in a trench with a thousand Russians, smelling as they do.
I met a young man from Chicago, who is here selling reapers for the harvester trust, and he says if you are once suspected of having sympathy with the working people who are on a strike you might just as well say your prayers and take rough on rats, 'cause the Cossacks will get you, and he would advise me and dad to get out of here pretty quick, but when I told dad about it he put one hand on his heart and the other on his pants and said “Arnica, arnica, arnica!” and the police that were on guard near his room thought he meant anarchy, and they sent four detectives to stay in dad's room.
The people here, the Chicago young man told me, think the Cossacks are human hyenas, that they have had their hearts removed by a surgical operation when young, and a piece of gizzard put in in place of the heart, and that they are natural murderers, the sight of blood acting on them the same as champagne on a human being, and that but for the Cossacks Russia would have a population of loving subjects that would make it safe for the Little Father to go anywhere in Russia unattended, but with Cossacks ready to whip and murder and laugh at suffering, the people are becoming like men bitten by rabid dogs, and they froth at the mouth and have spasms and carry bombs up their sleeves, ready to blow up the members of the royal family, and there you are.
If you do not hear from me after next Sunday you can put dad's obituary and mine in the local papers and say we died of an overdose of Cossack. If we get through this revolution alive you will hear from me, but this is the last revolution I am going to attend.
Yours,
Hennery.
Dad Sees a Russian Revolution and Faints—The Bad BoyArranges a Wolf Hunt—Dad Threatens to Throw the Boy to theWolves.
St. Petersburg, Russia.—My Dear Grocery-witz: Well, sir, dad and I have got too much of Russia the quickest of any two tourists you ever heard of. That skirmish we saw, the day the Russians blessed the Neva, and shot blank cartridges filled with old iron at the czar, was not a marker to the trouble the next Sunday, when the working people marched to the Winter Palace, to present a petition to the “Little Father.”
We thought a revolution was like a play, and that it would be worth going miles to see. Dad was in South America once when there was a revolution, where more than a dozen greasers, with guns that wouldn't shoot, put on a dozen different kinds of uniforms, and yelled: “Down with the government,” and frothed at the mouth, and drank buttermilk and yelled Spanish swear words, and acted brave, until a native soldier with white pajamas came out with a gun and shot one of the revolutionists in the thumb, when the revolution was suppressed and the next day the revolutionists were pounding stone, with cannon balls chained to their legs; and dad thought a revolution in Russia would be something like that, and that we could get on a front porch and watch it as it went by, and joke with the revolution, and throw confetti, like it was a carnival, but that Sunday that the Russian revolution was begun, we had enough blood to last us all our lives.
We got a place sitting on an iron picket fence, and we saw the people coming up the street towards the Winter Palace, dressed mostly in blouses, and looking as innocent as a crowd of sewer diggers at home going up to the city hall to ask for a raise in wages of two shillings a day. Nobody had a gun, and no one would have known how to use a gun, and all looked like poor people going to prayers. There were troops everywhere, and every soldier acted as though he was afraid something would happen to spoil their chance of killing anybody. The snow on the streets was clean and as white as the wings of a peace dove, and dad said the show was no better than a parade of laboring men at home on Labor day.
Suddenly some officer yelled to the parade to stop, and the priest at the head of the procession, who was carrying a cross, slowed up a little, like the drum major of a band when the populace at home begins to throw eggs, but they kept on, and then the shooting began, and in a minute men, women and children were rolling in the snow, bleeding and dying, the marchers were too stunned to run, and the deadly guns kept on spitting fire, and the street was full of dead and dying, and then the Cossacks rode over the dead and sabered and knouted the living, and as the snow was patched with red blood, dad fainted away and fell off the picket fence, and hung by one pant leg, which caught on a picket, and crowds rushed in every direction, and it was an hour before I could get a drosky to haul dad to the hotel.