Hung by One Pant Leg 265
Dad collapsed when he got to the hotel, and I got a doctor and a nurse, and for two days I had to watch the revolution alone, while dad had fits of remorse 'cause he brought me to such a charnel house, he said.
Well, if you ever go anywhere, traveling for pleasure, do not go to Russia, because it is the saddest place on earth. I have seen no person smile or laugh in all the ten days we have been here, except a Cossack when he run a saber through a little girl, and his laugh was like the coyote on the prairie when he captures a little lamb. The people look either heart-broken or snarly, like the people confined in an insane asylum at home.
The czar, who a week ago was loved by the people, who believed if they went to him, as to their God, and appealed for guidance, is to-day hated by all, and instead of “Nicholas the Good,” since he scampered away to a castle in the country, and crawled under a bed, all the people call him “the Little Jack Rabbit,” and his fate is sealed, as a bomb will blow him into pieces so small they will have to be swept up in a dustpan for burial, maybe before dad and I can get out of Russia.
Going to St. Petersburg for a pleasant outing is a good deal like visiting the Chicago stockyards to watch the bloody men kill the cattle, and the butchers in the stockyards, calloused against any feeling for suffering animals, are like the soldiers here who shoot down their neighbors because they are hired to do so. The murder of those unarmed working men, that Sunday, has changed a helpless, pleading people into anarchists with deadly bombs in their blouses, where they were accustomed to carry black bread to sustain life, and with the menace of Japan in the far east and an outraged people at home, Russia is in a bad way, and if I was the czar or a grand duke, I would find a woodchuck hole and arrange with the woodchuck for a furnished flat.
I didn't think there was going to be anything going on in Russia except bloodshed and bombs, and things to make you sorry that you were here, and I was willing to take chloroform and let them carry me home in a box, with my description on the cover, until the doctor told me that dad was in a condition of nervousness, that he needed something to happen to get his mind off of the awful scenes he had witnessed, and asked me if I couldn't think of something to excite him and wake him up, and then dad said, after he got so he could go out doors: “Hennery, you have always been Johnny on the spot when I needed diversion, and I want you to take your brain apart, and oil the works, and see if you can't conjure up something to get my blood circulating and my pores open for business, and anything you think of goes, and I swear I will not kick if you scare the boots off of me.”
Well, that was right into my hand; and I set my mind to strike at four p. m. I had been out riding once with the Chicago man, in a sledge, with three horses abreast, all runaway horses, and the driver was a Cossack who lashed the horses into a run every smooth place he found in the road, and it was like running to a fire, so I got the Chicago fellow to go with me and we found the Cossack, and he was drunker than usual. There is a kind of liquor here called vodka, which skins wood alcohol and carbolic acid to a finish, and when a man is full of it he is so mad he wants to cut his own throat. This driver had put up sideboards on his neck and had two jags in one, and we hired him by the hour.
I told the Chicago man the circumstances and that I had got to get dad out of his trance, and he said he would help me. When I was out riding the day before I noticed that the road was full of great dane dogs, wolf hounds and stag hounds, which followed their master's sledges out in the country, and the dogs loafed around, hungry, looking for bones, and fighting each other, so I decided to get the dogs to chase our sledge and make dad think we were chased by wolves. I thought that would make dad stand without hitching, and it did.
The Chicago man bought some cannon firecrackers, and I bought a cow's liver, and hitched it to a rope, and hid it in the back seat, and my Chicago friend and I took the back seat, and we got dad in the seat behind the driver, and started about an hour before dark out in the country, through a piece of woods that looked quite wolfy. On the way out the driver let his horses run away a few times, like you have seen in Russian pictures, and dad was beginning to sit up and take notice, and seemed to act like a man who expects every minute to be thrown over a precipice and mixed up with dead horses. Dad touched the driver once on the coat-tail and told him not to hurry so confounded fast, and the driver thought he was complaining because it was too slow, and he gave a Comanche yell and threw the lines into the air, and the horses just skedaddled, and run into a snow bank and tipped over the sledge, and piled us out on top of dad, but dad only said: “This is getting good.”
Piled Us out on Top of Dad 269
We righted up, and dad wanted to know where all the pups came from that we had passed. I had been throwing out pieces of meat into the road for a mile or so, and the dogs were having a picnic. It was getting pretty dark by this time, and we started back to town, and I threw out my liver, fastened to the rope, and the Chicago man, who had given the driver a drink of vodka when we tipped over, told him, in Russian, that when the dogs began to follow us, to get hold of the liver, to yell “wolves,” and give the team the rein, for a five-mile run, and yell all the time, because we wanted to give the old gentleman a good time.
Well, uncle, I would have given anything if you could have seen dad, when the dogs began to chase that liver, and bark and fight each other. The driver yelled something in Russian, and pointed back with his whip, the Chicago man said: “My God, we are pursued by a pack of ravenous wolves, and there is no hope for us,” and I began to cry, and implored dad, if he loved me, to save me.
Dad Stood up in the Sledge 267
Pursued by a Pack of Ravenous Wolves 271
Dad stood up in the sledge and looked back, and saw the wolves, and he was scared, but he said the only thing to do was to throw something overboard for them to be chewing on while we got away, but he sat down and pulled a robe over his head and his lips were moving, but I do not know whom he was addressing.
The Chicago man touched off a couple of cannon firecrackers behind the sledge, but that only kept the dogs back for a minute, and dad said probably the best thing to do was to throw me overboard and let them eat me, and I said: “Nay, nay, Pauline,” and then I think dad fainted away, for he never peeped again until the team had run away a lot more, and I cut my liver rope, and when we got into the suburbs of St. Petersburg the dogs had overtaken the liver, and were fighting over it.
The driver had to pull up his horses as we struck the town, and dad must have got a whiff of the driver's vodka, because he come to, and we got to the hotel all right, and I thought dad would simply die in his tracks, but the ride and the excitement did him good, and he wanted to buy a gun and go out wolf hunting the next day, but our tickets were bought and we shall get out of this terrible country to-morrow.
Dad woke me, up in the night and wanted to know if I saw him when he pulled his knife and wanted to get out and fight the pack of wolves single-handed. I am not much of a liar, but I told him I remembered it well, and it demonstrated to me that he was as brave a man as the czar, “the Little Jack Rabbit,” as his people call him.
Well, thanks to my wolf hunt, dad is all right again, and now we shall go to some country where there is peace. I don't know where we will find it, but if such a country exists, your little Henry will catch on, if dad's money holds out.
Yours, covered with Gore.
Hennery.
Dad Wears His Masonic Fez in Constantinople—They Find theTurks Sensitive on the Dog Question—A College Yell for theSultan Sends Him Into a Fit.
Constantinople, Turkey.—My Dear Old “Shriner”—We got out of Russia just in time to keep from being arrested or blown up with a bomb. Dad wanted to go to Moscow, because he saw a picture once of Moscow being destroyed by fire by Napoleon, or somebody, and he wanted to see if they had ever built the town up again, but I felt as though something serious was going to, happen in that country if we didn't look out, and so I persuaded dad to go to Turkey, and the day we started for Constantinople we got the news that the Nihilists had thrown a bomb under the carriage of the Grand Duke Sergius and blew him and the carriage into small pieces not bigger than a slice of summer sausage, and they had to sweep his remains up in a dustpan and bury them in a two-quart fruit jar. Wouldn't that jar you?
When dad heard about that you couldn't have kept him in Russia on a bet, and so we let the authorities have all the money we had, giving some to each man who held us up, until we got out of the country, and then we took the first long breath we had taken since we struck the Godforsaken country of the czar. If the bombs hold out I do not think there will be a quorum left in Russia in a year, either czars, dukes or anything except peasants on the verge of starvation and workingmen who have not the heart to work. I wouldn't take the whole of Russia as a gift, and have to dodge bombs night and day.
Say, old man, you never dreamed that I knew all about you and dad joining the Masons that time, but I watched you and dad giving each other signs and grips, and whispering passwords into each other's ears, in the grocery, nights, after you had locked up. I thought, at the time, that you and dad were planning a burglary, but when you both went to the lodge one night and stayed till near morning, and dad came home with a red Turkish fez and told ma that you and he had joined the shrine, which was the highest degree in Masonry, and you and he were nobles, and all that rot, I was on to you bigger than a house, and you couldn't fool me when you and dad winked at each other and talked about crossing the hot sands of the desert.
Well, dad brought his red fez along, 'cause I think he expected he would meet shriners all over the world, that he could borrow money of. When we struck Constantinople and dad saw that every last one of the Turks wore a red fez, he felt as though he had got among shriners, and he got his fez out of his trunk and he wears it all the time.
Dad acts as familiar with the Turks here as though he owned a harem. We go to the low streets, about as wide as a street car, where Turks are selling things, with dad wearing his fez, and he begins to make motions and give grand hailing signs of distress, and the Turks look at him as though he had robbed a bank, and they charge enormous prices for everything, and dad pays with a smile, thinking his brother Masons are fairly giving things away. He looks upon all men who wear the fez as his brothers, and they look at him as though he was crazy in the head.
The only trouble is that dad insists on talking to the women here without an introduction, and a woman in Turkey had rather die than have a Christian dog look at her. Dad was buying some wormy figs of a merchant, who was seated on the floor of his shop, and giving him signs, when a curtain behind the Turk was pulled one side and a woman with beautiful eyes and her face covered with a veil, came out with a cup of coffee for the Turk. Dad shook hands with her, and said: “Your husband and I belong to the same lodge,” and he was going to go inside and visit the family, when the woman drew a small dagger out of the folds of her dress, and the Turk drew one of these scimeters, and it looked for a moment as though I was going to be a half orphan, particularly when dad put his hand on her shoulder and petted it, and smiled one of those masher smiles which he uses at home, and said: “My good woman, you must not get in the habit of jabbing your husband's friends with this crooked cutlery, though to be killed by so handsome a woman would indeed be a sweet death,” but the bluff did not go, and the woman disappeared behind the curtain, and dad had the frantic husband to deal with.
When Dad Put his Hand on Her Shoulder and Petted It 276
I have never seen a human being look as murderous as that Turk did as he drew his thumb across the blade of his knife, drew up his lip and snarled like a dog that has been bereaved of a promising bone by a brother dog that was larger.
The Turk looked through his teeth, and his eyes seemed to act like small arc lights, that were to show him where to cut dad, and dad began to turn pale, and looked scared.
“Give him the grand hailing sign of distress,” said I as dad leaned against a barrel of dried prunes. Dad said he had forgotten the sign, and then I told him the only way out of it, alive, would be to buy something, so dad picked up a little jim-crack worth about ten cents, and gave the Turk a five-dollar gold piece, and while the Turk went in behind the curtain to get the change I told dad now was the time to skip, and you ought to have seen dad make a sprint out the door and around a corner, and up another street, while I followed him, and we got away from the danger of being stabbed, but dad got his foot into it again before we had gone a block.
Nobody in Constantinople ever hurries, or goes off a walk, so when the people saw an old man, with a fez on his head, running amuck, as they say here, followed by a beautiful boy, they began to crawl into their holes, thinking dad was crazy, but when we were passing a sausage store, where about 20 dogs were asleep in the street, and dad kicked half a dozen dogs and yelled, “get out, you hounds,” that settled it, and they knew he was wrong in the head, and they yelled for the police, and we were pulled for fast driving, and taken before a Turkish justice of the peace, followed by the whole crowd.
Get out You Hounds 282
The justice did not wear a fez, but had on a turban, so dad did not give him any signs, but after jabbering a while they sent for an interpreter, who could talk pigeon English, and then dad had a trial, and I acted as his lawyer. I told about how dad had tried to be kind and genial to another man's wife, and how, in his hurry to get away from the murderous husband he fell over a mess of dogs, and that he was a distinguished American, who was in Turkey to negotiate a loan to the sultan.
Say, that fixed them, and they all made salams to dad, and bowed all over themselves, and the justice of the peace prayed to Allah, and the interpreter said we could go, but to be careful about touching a Turkish woman or a dog, particularly a dog, as the Turks were very sensitive on the dog question. So we went out of the courtroom and wandered around the town, and you can bet that dad didn't look at any more women, though they were everywhere with veils that covered their faces so nothing but their eyes could be seen.
Gee, but you never saw such eyes as these Turkish women have. They are big and black, and they go right through you, and clinch on the other side. Dad says the facilities for getting into trouble are better in Constantinople than any place we have been, as the men look like bandits and the women look like executioners. Dad thanked me for helping him out of that scrape by claiming he was the agent of a financial syndicate that wanted to lend money to the sultan. If I had said dad was a collecting agency, to make the sultan pay up, they would have sentenced him to be boiled in oil.
Well, we thought we had been in trouble before, but we are in it now worse than ever. We heard at the hotel that at 11 o'clock in the morning the sultan would pass by in a carriage, with an escort, on the way to a mosque, to pray to Allah, and everybody could see the sultan, so we got a place on a balcony, and at the appointed time the procession came in sight. It was imposing, but solemn, and the people on both sides of the street acted like they do in America when the funeral of a great man is passing. No man spoke, and all looked as though they expected, if they moved, to be arrested and have a stone tied to their feet and thrown into the Bosphorus, the way they kill one of the sultan's wives when she flirts with a stranger.
We watched the soldiers, and finally the carriage of the sultan came, and in it was a dried up man, with liver complaint, with a nose like an eagle, and eyes like shoe buttons. He looked as though death would be a relief, and yet he seemed afraid of it, and there was no sound of welcome, such as there would be if Roosevelt was riding down Michigan avenue at Chicago, on the way to the stockyards to pray to Armour, instead of to Allah.
You could have heard a pin drop. I said: “Dad, this is too solemn, even for a sultan. Let's give him the university yell, and show that mummy that he has got two friends in Constantinople, anyway.” “Here she goes,” says dad, and we leaned over the railing, just as the sultan's carriage was right in front of us and not ten feet away, and in that oppressive silence dad and I opened up, “U-Rah-Rah-Wis-Con-Sin, zip-boom-Ah!” and then we started to sing, “There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town To-Night.”
There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town To-night 279
Well, if any man in the crowd had touched off a bomb, there could have been no greater consternation. The sultan turned pale, as pale as so yellow a man could, and became faint, and fell over into the arms of a general who sat beside him, the Bazi Bazouks on horseback began to ride up and down the street, the crowd scattered, the sultan's carriage was turned around and rushed back to the palace, with the ruler of Turkey having a fit, and about a hundred soldiers came up on the veranda, where dad and I had broke up the procession, and they lit on dad like buzzards on a dead horse, and took possession of the hotel, and began to search our baggage.
Another Took Me by the Ear 285
One Turk choked dad until his tongue hung out of his mouth, and another took me by the ear and stretched it out so it was long as a mule's ear, and they took us to a bastile and dad says it is all up with us now, because they will drown us like a mess of kittens in a bag, and all because we woke them up with a football yell in the wrong place.
Well, we might as well wind up our career here as anywhere. Good-by, old man. You will see our obituary in the papers.
Your repentant,
Hennery.
The Bad Boy and His Dad Meet the Cream of the Harem—“LittleEgypt” Does a Dancing Stunt—The Sultan Wants to Send FiftyWives to the President.
Constantinople, Turkey.—My Dear Grocer-pasha: When I wrote you last I thought you would be in mourning for dad and I before this, as there seemed nothing for the Turks to do but to kill us after we had stampeded the sultan and all his soldiers by giving them a university yell, but after we had been confined in a sort of jail over night, dad and I had a heart to heart talk, and my diplomacy saved us for the time being. I told dad that what we wanted to do was to tell the Turks that dad represented the American people, and had a communication to make to the sultan personally, which would make him rich and happy.
Well, say, they bit like a bass, and the next day they took us before the sultan at the palace. Dad dug up a package of blank gold mining stock in a mine that he was going to promote, though the mine was only a small hole in the ground, and the stock had been offered for one cent a share, the par value being a hundred dollars, so a man who got a share for a cent would, when the mine got to paying, get a hundred dollars for every cent he invested.
Dad filled out one of the stock certificates for 1,000,000 shares, which would represent a capital equal to all the debts of Turkey, and we went before the sultan, and we couldn't have been treated better if we had owned a brewery. Dad told his story to the sultan through an interpreter, while I looked around at the gorgeous surroundings and tried to think of something to do to wake them up.
Dad said he came right fresh from the American people, and was authorized by his mining company to present the sultan with untold millions, for pure love of the Turkish people, whom they had seen riding and leading camels at the Chicago world's fair, and dad produced the stock certificate for 1,000,000 shares of stock in the Golden Horn Gold Mining and Smelting company, and took out a handful of $20 gold pieces and showed them to the crowd as specimens of gold that came from our mine.
He said our people did not expect anything in return, but just desired the good will of the Turkish empire. He said that President Roosevelt desired him to present his warmest regards to the sultan, and to invite him to visit America, and if he would consent to do so, an American war vessel would be furnished for him and the white house would be turned over to him for his harem, and dad said the president wanted him particularly to impress upon the sultan that if he came he must bring his folks, all his wives that would be apt to size up for beauty with our American women.
He Must Bring his Folks, and All His Wives 289
Well, you ought to have seen that sickly looking sultan brace up when dad handed him the millions of mining stock, and he grabbed the paper like an old clothes buyer would grab a dress suit that a wife had sold for 60 cents, belonging to her husband. He also wanted to see the gold that dad had shown as coming from the mine, and when dad showed him the yellow boys he took them as souvenirs and put them in his girdle, and then I thought dad would faint, but he kept his nerve like a poker player betting on a bobtail flush.
The sultan asked so many questions about America that I was afraid dad would get all balled up, but he kept his nerve, and lied as though he was on the witness stand trying to save his life. Dad told the sultan he was authorized by the American people to inquire into the industries of Turkey, and what he particularly desired was an insight into the harems, as a national institution, because many American people were gradually adopting the customs of the orient, and he desired to report to congress as to whether we should adopt the customs of Turkey with her dried prunes and dates with worms in, and her attar of roses made of pig's lard; her fez, to cure baldness, and her outlandish pants and peaked red Morocco shoes, and her harems.
The sultan said he would like to show us a little bunch of the cream of the harem, who would do a stunt in the way of dancing, to celebrate the good feeling of the American people, and the visit of the distinguished statesman and gold miner to his realm, and dad said the sultan couldn't turn his stomach with no cream of the harem, only they must keep their hands off him, and the sultan promised he should be as safe as a “unique,” whatever that is.
Dad and I had hired knee breeches and things of a masquerade ball store, and we didn't look half bad when the crowd of shieks and things formed a crescent around the sultan, who sat in a sort of barber's chair with an awning over it, and they sounded a hewgag or something, and about a dozen pretty fine looking females, dressed like the ballet in a vaudeville show, came in and began to dance before the sultan.
Dad stood it first rate until a girl got on the carpet barefooted and began one of those willowy sort of dances that nearly broke up the Chicago fair, when people left the buildings filled with the work of the world's artists, in all lines of progress, and went to the Midway in a body to see “Little Egypt,” but when this dancer waltzed up to dad and wiggled in a foreign language, dad sashayed up to her and I couldn't hold him back.
He Was Just Getting Warmed up 293
He was just getting warmed up to “balance to partners,” when a frown came over the sultan's face and he looked cross at dad, and then the hewgag sounded, and the girls scattered out of a side door and dad wanted to follow, but I held him by the coat, and it was over. I think those girls were the only ones in the whole harem that were good looking.
Dad breathed hard a little from his exercise, and said he was ready to inspect the stock, and the sultan detailed a tall negro, with a face dried up like a mummy, and we started out through the harem, dad pulling the long hair on the side of his head over his bald spot, and throwing his shoulders back and drawing in his stomach to make him look young.
Well, say, there is nothing about a harem, much different from keeping house at home, except that there is more of it. The idea people get of harems is that the women are all young and beautiful, and that they sit around a swimming tank and play guitars and keep the flies off the man who owns the place, while he smokes the vile Turkish tobacco burning in a jardiniere, through a section of rubber hose, and goes to sleep like a Chinaman smoking opium, and that they drink rare wines and dance with bangles on their legs and ropes of pearls on their necks and arms.
I have seen alleged imitations of a Turkish harem on the stage, with American girls doing the acting, and it would make you feel as though you would invest in a harem when you got old enough, but, gee, when you see a regular harem, run by an up-to-date Turk, you think of the Mormon apostle who has 40 wives of all ages, from 70 down to a 16-year-old hired girl, with a hair-lip and warts on her thumbs. This harem was like a big stock barn in the states, with a big room to exercise the colts, and box stalls for the different wives and their families to live in and do their own cooking and washing.
Instead of sitting by a bath playing a harp, the poor old wives stand by a washtub and play tunes on the washboard, and scrub, and take care of children. I thought the custom of spanking children was an American institution, but it is as old as the ages, for I saw a Turkish mother grab up a child that had lifted a kitten by the tail, and take it across her knee and give it a few with a red hand covered with soapsuds, and the young Turk yelled bloody murder, just like an American kid, and then sat down on its knees, so the spanking wouldn't hurt, and called its mother names in a language I couldn't understand, but I knew what the child said, by instinct. Dad started to interfere, because he is a member of the humane society, but the unique that was showing us around saved dad's life by pushing him along, before the woman got a chance to brain him with the washboard.
The women mostly had on these baggy Turkish trousers, like the Zouaves wear, and a jacket, and a cloth around their heads, and they acted as though if the next meal came along all right they would be in luck. We saw a few women pretty white, and they were Circassian slaves, with big eyes and hoops in their ears, and a little different clothes on, but there were none that dad would buy at an auction, or at a bargain sale, if they were marked down to 99 cents.
We passed one woman running an American sewing machine, and dad said he'd bet she was an American, and he went up to her and said: “Hello, sis!” She stopped the machine, looked up at dad with a sort of Bowery expression, and said: “Gwan, Chauncey Depew, you old peach, or I'll have you pinched,” and the unique took dad by the arm and pulled him along real spry, but he hung back and looked over his shoulder at the woman, but she went on sewing, and dad said to me: “Well, wouldn't that frost you?” And we went on making the inspection.
I don't think I ever saw so many children, outside of an orphan asylum, all about the same size and all looking exactly alike. They all had the same beady black eyes that look as though they were afraid of getting caught in a trap, like muskrats, and their noses had the same inquiring appearance, as though the owner was speculating as to how much money the visitors had in their pockets, and whether it was fastened in. Race suicide is impossible in Turkey, but a race of bandits is growing up that will let no foreigners with a pocketbook escape.
It took us an hour to go through the harem, and it was more like going through the quarters of the working women of a home laundry in the tenement district of a large city, than a comic opera, as we had been led to expect by what we had read of harems. When we went into the harem I think dad was going to insist on having the women dance for him, while he sat on a throne and threw kisses at the most beautiful women in all the world, but before we had got around all the box stalls I think if any of them had started to dance dad would have stampeded in a body.
We finally got back to the great marble room, where the sultan was sleeping in a stuffed chair, surrounded by his staff, and one of them woke him up, and he asked dad what he thought of the home life of a crowned head, and dad said it beat anything he had ever seen, and he should recommend to his government that the harem system be adopted in America, and actually the sultan seemed pleased. He said as an evidence of his love for America he wanted to present to the president, through dad, 50 of his wives, and if dad would indicate where he wanted them delivered, they would be there, Johnny on the spot, or words to that effect.
At first I thought dad would faint away, but I whispered to him that it would be discourteous to decline a present, after giving the sultan a gold mine, and that may be the old man would be so mad, if he declined the wives, that he would tie stones to our legs and sink us in the Bosphor-ous, so dad rallied and said, on behalf of his government, he would accept the kindly and thoughtful gift of his highness, and that he would cable for a war vessel to take the wives to his own America, and he would notify the sultan when to round them up and load them on the vessel.
Well, sir, I do not know what possessed me to make a scene, before we got out of the presence of the sultan, but it all came to me sudden, like an inspiration comes to a poet. I had been eating some fruit that I bought in a paper bag, and when I had eaten the last of it, I wondered what I would do with the bag, and then I thought what fun it would be to blow the bag up, and suddenly burst it, when all was still. So I blowed up the bag, so it was as hard as a bladder, and tied a string around the neck, and waited. I did not think how afraid everybody in these old countries is of bombs, or I never would have done it, honestly.
The sultan was signing some papers, and looking out of the corners of his eyes to see if anybody was present who was suspicious, and dad was getting ready to make a salam, and back out of the presence of the ruler of Turkey, when I got behind some of the officials who were watching the sultan, and I laid my paper bag on the marble floor, and it was as still as death, and all you could hear was the scratching of the pen, when I jumped up in the air as though I had a fit, and yelled “Allah,” and came down with my whole weight on the paper bag, and of all the stampedes you ever saw, that was the worst.
Stampede 299
You know what a noise it makes to bust a paper bag. Well, this was the toughest old bag I ever busted, and it sounded like a cannon fired down cellar somewhere, and the air was full of dust, and before I could get up the sultan had tipped over the table and run yelling into another room, praying to “Allah,” and all the staff had lit out for tall timber, and there was nobody left but dad and the unique and myself, and the unique took dad by the arm and started for the door, and we were fired out.
As I went out of the room I looked around, and there was a Turk's head sticking out of every door to see how many had been killed by the bomb, and as we got out doors, dad said “Now we have to get out of Turkey before night, or we die. Me for Egypt, boy, if we can catch a boat before we are drawn and quartered.” So here goes for Cairo, Egypt.
Yours only,
Hennery.
The Bad Boy and His Dad Arrive in Cairo—At the Hotel TheyMeet Some Egyptian Princesses—Dan Rides a Camel to thePyramids and Meets with Difficulties.
Cairo, Egypt.—My Dear Old Irish Vegetable: Gee, but you ought to see dad and I right now at a hotel, waiting for a chance at a room, when a bride and groom get ready to vacate it, and go somewhere else. This hotel is full of married people who look scared whenever there is a new arrival, and I came pretty near creating a panic by going into the parlor of the hotel, where a dozen couples were sitting around making goo-goo eyes at each other, and getting behind a screen and, in a disguised voice, shouting, “I know all! Prepare to defend yourself!”
The women turned pale and some said, “At last! At last!” while others got faint in the head, and some fell on the bosoms of their husbands and said: “Don't shoot!” You see, most of these wives had husbands somewhere else that might be looking for them. I have warned dad not to be seen conversing with a woman, or he may be shot by a husband who is on her trail, or by the husband she has with her.
Well, sir, of all the trips we have had anywhere, the trip from Constantinople here was the limit. For two or three days we were on dinky steamboats with Arabs, Turks, negroes and all nationalities camping on deck, full of fleas, and with cholera germs on them big enough to pick like blueberries, and all of the passengers were dirty and eat things that would make a dog in America go mad. The dog biscuit that are fed to American dogs would pass as a delicate confection on the menu of any steamboat we struck, and I had rather lie down in a barn yard with a wet dog for a pillow and a cast-off blanket from a smallpox hospital for a bed, than to occupy the bridal chamber of any steamboat we struck.
And then the ride across the desert by rail to reach Cairo was the worst in the world. Passengers in rags, going to Mecca, or some other place of worship, eating cheese a thousand years old made from old goat's milk, and dug from the Pyramids too late to save it, was what surrounded us, and the sand storm blew through the cars laden with germs of the plague, and stuck to us so tight you couldn't get it off with sandpaper, and when we got here all we have had to do is to bathe the dirt off in layers.
It Takes Nine Baths to Get Down To American Epidermis 304
It takes nine baths to get down to American epidermis, and the last bath has a jackplane to go with it, and a thing they scale fish with. But we are all right now, with rooms in the hotel, and rested, and when we go home we are going to be salted down and given chloroform and shipped as mummies. Dad insists that he will never cross a desert or an ocean again, and I don't know what is to become of us. Anyway, we are going to enjoy ourselves until we are killed off.
The first two days we just looked about Cairo, and saw the congress of nations, for there is nothing just like this town anywhere. There are people from all quarters of the globe, the most outlandish and the most up-to-date. This place is an asylum for fakirs and robbers, a place where defaulters, bribers, murderers, swindlers and elopers are safe, as there seems to be no extradition treaty that cannot be overcome by paying money to the officials. I found that out the first day, and told dad we should have no standing in the society of Egypt unless the people thought he had committed some gigantic crime and fled his country.
Dad wanted to know how it would strike me if it was noised about the hotel that he had robbed a national bank, but I, told him there would be nothing uncommon or noticeable about robbing a bank, as half the tourists were bank defaulters, so he would have to be accused of something startling, so we decided that dad should be charged with being the principal thing in the Standard Oil Company, and that he had underground pipe lines running under several states, gathering oil away from the people who owned it, and that at the present time he was worth a billion dollars, and his income was $9,000,000 every little while, and, by ginger, you ought to see the people bow down to him. Say, common bank robbers and defaulters just fell over themselves to get acquainted with dad, and to carry out the joke, I put some kerosene oil on dad's handkerchief, and that clinched it, for everybody loves the smell of a perfume that represents a billion dollars.
All the women wanted to dance with dad in the hotel dance, and because they thought I must be heir to all the oil billions, they wanted to hold me on their laps, and stroke my hair, as though I was it. I guess we are going to have everything our own way here, and if dad does not get eloped with by some Egyptian princess, I shall be mistaken. The Egyptians are pretty near being negroes, and wear bangles in their ears, and earrings on their arms. You take it in the dark, and let a princess put her arms around you, and sort of squeeze you, and you can't tell but what she is white, only there is an odor about them like “Araby the blessed,” but in the light they are only negroes, a little bleached, with red paint on their cheeks. If I was going to marry an Egyptian woman, I would take her to Norway, or up towards the north pole, where it is night all day, and you wouldn't realize that you were married to a colored woman. To be around among these Egyptians is a good deal like having a pass behind the scenes at the play of Ben Hur in New York, only here the dark and dangerous women are the real thing, instead of being white girls with black paint on.
We have just got back from the pyramids, and dad is being treated for spinal meningitis, on account of riding a camel. I never tried harder to get dad to go anywhere on the cars than I did to get him to go to the pyramids by rail, as a millionaire should, but he said he was going to break a camel to the saddle, and then buy him and take him home for a side show. So we went down to the camel garage and hired a camel for dad, and four camels for the arabs and things he wanted for an escort, and a jackass for me. There were automobiles and carriages, and trolleys, and everything that we could have hired, and been comfortable for the ten-mile ride, but dad was mashed on the camel, and he got it.
Well, sir, it was not one of these world's fair camels that lay down for you to get on, and then got up on the installment plan, and chuck you forward and aft, but a proud Egyptian camel that stands up straight and makes you climb up on a stepladder.
Dad got along up the camel's ribs, when the-stepladder fell, and he grabbed hold of the hair on the two humps, and the humps were loose and they lopped over on the side, and it must have hurt the camel's feelings to have his humps pulled down, so he reached around his head and took a mouthful out of the seat of dad's pants, and dad yelled to the camel to let go, and the Arabs amputated the camel from dad's trousers, and pushed dad up on top with a bamboo pole with a crotch in it, and when dad got settled between the humps he said, “Let 'er go,” and we started.
Dad could have had a camel with a platform on top, and an awning, but he insisted on taking his camel raw, and he sat there between those humps, his trousers worked up towards his knees, showing his red socks and blue drawers, and his face got pale from sea sickness, and the red, white and blue colors made me think of a fourth of July at home. We went out of town like a wild west show, and dad seemed happy, except that every time an automobile went whizzing along, dad's camel got the jumps and waltzed sideways out into the sandy desert, and chewed at dad's socks, so part of the time dad had to draw up his legs and sit on one hump and put his shoes on the other hump. The Arabs on the other camels would ride up alongside and steer dad's camel back into the road, by sticking sharp sticks into the camel, and the animal would yawn and groan and make up faces at me on my jackass, and finally dad wanted to change works with me and ride my jackass, but I told him we had left the stepladder back at Cairo, so dad hung to his mountainous steed, but the dust blew so you couldn't see, and it was getting monotonous when the queerest thing happened.
You have heard that camels can fill up with water and go for a week without asking for any more. Well, I guess the week was up, and it was time to load the camels with water, for as we came to the Nile every last camel made a rush for the river, and they went in like a yoke of oxen on a stampede, and waded in clear up to the humps, and began to drink, and dad yelled for a life preserver and pulled his feet up on top and sat there like a frog on a pond lily leaf.