Pa Had the Hardest Time of His Life in Paris—Pa Drinks Some Goat
Milk Which Gives Him Ptomaine Poison in His Inside Works—Pa
Attends the Airship Club in the Country—Pa Draws on American
Government for $10,000.
Pa has had the hardest time of his life in Paris, and if I ever pitied a
man it was Pa.
You see that last fly in the airship pretty near caused him to cash in
his chips and go over the long road to the hereafter, cause he got blood
poison from the thorns that run into him where he landed in the top
limbs of the thorn apple tree, and he sprained his arm and one hind leg
while being taken down with a derrick, and then before we left the
country town for Paris he drank some goat’s milk, which gave him
ptomaine poison in his inside works, and a peasant woman who sewed up
his pants where they were torn on the tree pricked him with a needle,
and he swelled up so he was unable to sit in a car seat, and his face
was scratched by the thorns of the tree, and there were blotches all
over him, so when we got to Paris the health officers thought he had
smallpox and sent him to a pest house, and they wouldn’t let me in, but
vaccinated me and turned me loose, and I went to the hotel and told
about where Pa was and all about it, and they put our baggage in a sort
of oven filled with sulphur and disinfected it and stole some of it, and
they made me sleep in a dog kennel, and for weeks I had to keep out of
sight, until Pa was discharged from the hospital, and the friends of Pa
out at the airship club in the country got Pa’s airship that he bought
for a government out of the tree and took it to the club and presented a
bill for two hundred dollars, and I only had seven dollars, so they held
it for ransom.
Gee, but I worried about Pa!
Well, one day Pa showed up at the hotel looking like he had been in a
railroad wreck, and he was so thin his clothes had to be pinned up with
safety pins, and he had spent all his money and was bursted.
The man who hired Pa in Washington to go abroad and buy airships for the
government told Pa to use his own money for a month or two and then draw
on the secretary of the treasury for all he needed, so before Pa went to
the hospital he drew on his government for ten thousand dollars, and
when he came back there was a letter for him from the American consul in
Paris telling him to call at the office, so Pa went there and they
arrested him on the charge of skull dugging. They said he had no right
to draw for any money on the government at Washington. Pa showed his
papers with the big seal on, and the consul laughed in Pa’s face, and Pa
was hot under the collar and wanted to fight, but they showed him that
the papers he had were no good, and that he had been buncoed by some
fakir in Washington, who got five hundred dollars from Pa for securing
him a job as government agent, and all his papers authorized him to do
was to travel at his own expense and to buy all the airships he wanted
to with his own money, and Pa had a fit. All the money he had spent was
a dead loss, and all he had to show for it was a punctured airship,
which he was afraid to ride in.
Pa swore at the government, at the consul and at the man who buncoed
him, and they released him from arrest when he promised that he would
not pose any more as a government agent, and we went back to the hotel.
“Well, this is a fine scrape you have got me in,” says Pa, as we went to
our room. “What in thunder did I have to do about it?” says I, just like
that. “I wasn’t with you when you framed up this job and let a man in
Washington skin you out of your money by giving you a soft snap which
has exploded in your hands. Gee, Pa, what you need is a maid or a valet
or something that will hold on to your wad.” Pa said he didn’t need
anybody to act as a guardian to him, cause he had all the money he
needed in his letter of credit to the American Express Company in Paris,
and he knew how to spend his money freely, but he did hate to be buncoed
and made the laughing stock of two continents.
So Pa and I went down to the express office, and Pa gave the man in
charge a paper, and the grand hailing sign of distress, and he handed
out bags of gold and bales of bills, and Pa hid a lot in his leather
belt and put some in his pockets, and said: “Come on, Henry, and we will
see this town and buy it if we like it.”
Well, we went out after dark and took in the concert halls and things,
and Pa drank wine and I drank nothing but ginger ale, and women who
waited on us sat in Pa’s lap and patted his bald head and tried to feel
in his pockets, but Pa held on to their wrists and told them to keep
away, and he took one across his knee and slapped her across the pajamas
with a silver tray, and I thought Pa was real saucy.
A head waiter whispered to me and wanted to know what ailed the old
sport, and I told him Pa was bitten by a wolf in our circus last year
and we feared he was going to have hydrophobia, and always when these
spells come on the only thing to do was to throw him into a tank of
water, and I should be obliged to them if they would take Pa and duck
him in the fountain in the center of the cafe and save his life.
Pa was making up with the girl he had paddled with the silver tray,
buying champagne for her and drinking some of it himself out of her
slipper, when the head waiter called half a dozen Frenchmen who were
doing police duty and told them to duck Pa in the fountain, and they
grabbed him by the collar and the pants and made him walk turkey towards
the fountain, and he held on to the girl, and the Frenchmen threw Pa and
the girl into the brink with a flock of ducks, and they went under
water, and Pa came up first yelling murder, and then the girl came up
hanging to Pa’s neck, and she gave a French yell of agony, and Pa gave
the grand hailing sign of distress and yelled to know if there was not
an American present that would protect an American citizen from the
hands of a Paris mob. The crowd gathered around the circular fountain
basin, and one drunken fellow jumped in the water and was going to hold
Pa’s head under water while the girl found his money, when Pa yelled
“Hey, Rube,” the way they do in a circus when there is a fight, and by
ginger it wasn’t a second before half a dozen old circus men that used
to belong to the circus when Pa was manager in the States made a rush
for the fountain, knocked the Frenchmen gally west and pulled Pa out of
the water and let him drain off, and they said, “Hello, old man, how did
you happen to let them drown you?” and Pa saw who the boys were and he
hugged them and invited them to all take something and then go to his
hotel.
When Pa paid the check for the drinks they charged in two ducks they
said Pa killed in the tank by falling on them. But Pa paid it and was so
tickled to meet the old circus boys that he gave the girl he went in
swimming with a twenty franc note, and after staying until along towards
morning we all got into and on top of a hack and went to the hotel and
sat up till daylight talking things over.
We found the Circus boys were on the way to Germany to go with the
Hagenbach outfit to South Africa to capture Wild Animals for circuses,
and when Pa told the boss, who was one of Hagenbach’s managers, about
his airship and what a dandy thing it would be to sail around where the
lions and tigers live in the Jungle, and lasso them from up in the air,
out of danger, he engaged Pa and me to go along, and I guess we will
know all about Africa pretty soon.
The next day we went out to the club where Pa keeps his airship, with
the boss of Hagenbach’s outfit and a cowboy that used to be with Pa’s
circus, to practice lassoing things. They got out the machine and Pa
steered it, and the boss and I were passengers, and the cowboy was on
the railing in front with his lariat rope, and we sailed along about
fifty feet high over the farms, until we saw a big goat. The cowboy
motioned for Pa to steer towards the goat, and when we got near enough
the cowboy threw the rope over the goat’s horns and tightened it up, and
Mr. Goat came right along with us, bleating and fighting. We led the
goat about half a mile over some fences, and finally came down to the
ground to examine our catch, and we landed all right, and Hagenbach’s
boss said it was the greatest scheme that ever was for catching wild
animals, and he doubled Pa’s salary and said we would pack up the next
day and go to the Hagenbach farm in Germany and take a steamer for South
Africa in a week.
They were talking it over and the cowboy had released the goat, when
that animal made a charge with his head on our party. He struck Pa below
the belt, butted the boss in the trousers until he laid down and begged
for mercy, stabbed the cowboy with his horns and then made a hop, skip
and jump for the gas bag, burst a hole in it, and when the gas began to
escape the goat’s horns got caught in the gas bag and the goat died from
the effects of the gas, and we were all glad until about fifty peasant
women came across the fields with agricultural implements and were going
to kill us all.
Pa said, “Well, what do you know about that,” but the women were fierce
and wanted our blood. The boss could talk French, and he offered to give
them the goat to settle it, but they said it was their goat any way, and
they wanted blood or damages.
Pa said it was easier to give damages than blood, and just as they were
going to cut up the gas bag the boss settled with them for about twenty
dollars, and hired them to haul the airship to the nearest station, and
we shipped it to Berlin and got ready to follow the next day.
Pa says we will have a high old time in Africa. He says he wants to ride
up to a lion’s den in his airship and dare the fiercest lion to come out
and fight, and that he wouldn’t like any better fun than to ride over a
royal bengal tiger in the jungle and reach down and grab his tail and
make him synawl like a tom cat on a fence in the alley.
He talks about riding down a herd of elephants and picking out the
biggest ones and roping them; and the way Pa is going to scare
rhinoceroses and hippopotamuses and make them bleat like calves is a
wonder.
I think Pa is the bravest man I ever saw, when he tells it, but I
noticed when we had that goat by the horns and he was caught in a barbed
wire fence, so the airship had to slow down until he came loose, Pa
turned as pale as a sheet, and when the goat bucked him in the stomach
Pa’s lips moved as though in praying. Well, anyway, this trip to Africa
to catch wild animals is going to show what kind of sand there is in all
of us.
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