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.



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.



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.



"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."



"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.



CHAPTER XVIII.

The Bad Boy Makes Friends with Some Italian Children—Dad Is Chased by Lions from the Coliseum—"Not Any More Rome for Papa," 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.



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.



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.



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.



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.



CHAPTER XIX.

The Bad Boy and His Dad Visit the Pope—They Bow to the King of 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.



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.



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.



"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.



CHAPTER XX.

The Bad Boy Tells About the Land of the Czar and the Trouble They Had to Get There—Dad Does a Stunt and Mixes It Up with the 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.



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.



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.



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.



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.



CHAPTER XXI.

Dad Sees a Russian Revolution and Faints—The Bad Boy Arranges a Wolf Hunt—Dad Threatens to Throw the Boy to the Wolves.

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.



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."



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 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.



CHAPTER XXII.

Dad Wears His Masonic Fez in Constantinople—They Find the Turks Sensitive on the Dog Question—A College Yell for the Sultan 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.



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.



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."



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.



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.



CHAPTER XXIII.

The Bad Boy and His Dad Meet the Cream of the Harem—"Little Egypt" Does a Dancing Stunt—The Sultan Wants to Send Fifty Wives 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.



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 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.



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.



CHAPTER XXIV.

The Bad Boy and His Dad Arrive in Cairo—At the Hotel They Meet Some Egyptian Princesses—Dan Rides a Camel to the Pyramids 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, 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.



My jackass only stepped his feet in the edge, and dad wanted me to swim my jackass out to the camel and let him fall off onto the jack, but I knew dad would sink my jack in a minute, and I wouldn't go in the river. Well, the camels drank about an hour, with dad sitting there meditating, and then the dragomen got them out, and we started off for the pyramids, which were in plain sight like the pictures you have seen, with palm trees along the Nile, and Arabs camping on the bank, and it looked as though everything was going to be all right, when suddenly dad's camel stopped dead still and wouldn't move a foot, and all the rest of the camels stopped, closed their eyes and went to sleep, and the Arabs went to sleep, and dad and the jackass and I were apparently the only animals in Egypt that were awake.

Dad kicked his camel in the ribs, but it wouldn't budge. He asked me if I could't think up some way to start the procession, and I stopped my jackass and thought a minute, and told dad I had it. I had bought some giant fire crackers and roman candles at Cairo, with which I was going to fire a salute on top of the biggest pyramid, to celebrate for old America, and I told dad what I had got, and I thought if I got off my jackass and fired a salute there in the desert it would wake them up.

Dad said, "all right, let 'er go, but do it sort of easy, at first, so not to overdo it," and I got my artillery ready. Say, you can't fire off fireworks easy, you got to touch a match to 'em and dodge and take your chances. Well, I scratched a match and lit the giant fire cracker, and put it under the hind legs of dad's camel, and when it got to fizzing I lit my roman candle, and as the fire cracker exploded like a 16-inch gun, my roman candle began to spout balls of fire, and I aimed one at each camel, and the whole push started on a stampede for the pyramids, the camels groaning, the Arabs praying to Allah, dad yelling to stop 'er, and my jackass led the bunch, and I was left in the desert to pick up the hats.



I guess I will have to tell you' the rest of the tragedy in my next letter.

Yours with plenty of sand,

Hennery.



CHAPTER XXV.

The Bad Boy and His Dad Climb the Pyramids—The Bad Boy Lights a Cannon Cracker in Rameses' Tomb—They Flee from Egypt in Disguise.

Cairo, Egypt.—My Dear Old Geezer: I broke off my last letter in sight of the pyramids, when I was left alone on the desert, my jackass having stampeded with the camels, on account of my fireworks, and I presume you think I was all in, but I got to the pyramids before the stampeded caravan did. I saw a car coming along, and I just got aboard and in ten minutes I was at the base of the big pyramid, and the camel with dad on between the humps, was humping himself half a mile away, trying to get there, and the other camels, with the Arabs, were stretched out like horses in a race, behind, and my jackass was right next to dad's camel, braying and occasionally kicking dad's camel in the slats.

There were about a hundred tourists around the stampede of the camels, and I told them my the base of the big pyramid, all looking towards dad, the great American millionaire, was on the runaway camel in advance, and asked them to form a line across the trail and save dad, but when the camel came nearer I was ashamed of dad. He had his arms around the front hump of the camel, and he was yelling for help to stop his menagerie, and his legs were flying in the air, and every time they came down they kicked a hole in the side of the camel.



Well, sir, I thought dad was a brave man, but he blatted like a calf, and when the camel stopped and went to eating a clump of grass dad opened his eyes, and when he saw that the procession had stopped he rolled off his camel like a bag of wheat, and stuck in the sand and began to say a prayer, but when he saw me standing there, laughing, he stopped praying, and said to me: "I thought you were blown up when that jackass kicked the can of dynamite. You have more lives than a cat. Now, get a hustle on you and we will climb that pyramid, and then quit this blasted country," and dad sat down on a hummock and began to pull himself together, after the most fearful ride he ever had. He said the camel loped, trotted, galloped, single-footed and shied all at the same time, and when one hump was not jamming him in the back the other hump was kicking him in the stomach, and if he had a gun he would shoot the camel, and the Arabs, and bust up the show.

By the time dad got so he could stand up without leaning against a pyramid the Arabs came up and they all talked at once, and drew knives, and it seemed as though they were blaming dad for something. We found an interpreter among the tourists, and he talked with the Arabs, and pointing to the camel dad had ridden, which was stretched out on the sand like he was dead, he told dad the Arabs wanted him to pay for the camel he had ridden to death, and foundered by letting it drink a wagon load of water, and then entered in a race across the desert, and the interpreter said dad better pay, or they would kill him.



Dad settled for the camel for a hundred dollars, and a promise of the skin of the camel, which he was going to take home and have stuffed. Then a man who pretended to be a justice of the peace had dad arrested for driving off of a walk, and he was fined $10 and costs for that, and then all the Arabs stuck him for money for one thing and another, and when he had settled all around and paid extra for not riding back to Cairo on the camel, we got ready to climb up the pyramid. Dad said he wouldn't ride that camel back to Cairo for a million dollars, for he was split up so his legs began where his arms left off, and he was lame from Genesis to Revelations.