The Bad Boy and His Chum Call on the Old Groceryman After Being Away at
School--The Bad Boy's Dad in a Bad Way
CHAPTER II.
The Bad Boy and His Dad Ready for Their Travels--The Bad Boy Labels the
Old Man's Suit Case--How the Cowboys Made Him Dance Once
CHAPTER III.
The Bad Boy Writes About the Fun They Had Going to Washington--He
and His Dad Call on President Roosevelt--The Bad Boy Meets One of the
Children and They Disagree
CHAPTER IV.
The Bad Boy and His Dad Visit Mount Vernon--Dad Weeps at the Grave of
the Father of Our Country
CHAPTER V.
The Bad Boy and His Dad Have Dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria--The Bad Boy
Orders Dinner--The Old Man Gets Stuck--Tries to Rescue a Countess in
Distress
CHAPTER VI.
The Bad Boy Writes the Old Groceryman About Ocean Voyages--His Dad Has
an Argument Over a Steamer Chair.
CHAPTER VII.
The Bad Boy and His Dad Eat Fog--Call on Astor--A Dynamite Outrage
CHAPTER VIII.
The Bad Boy Writes About the Craze for Gin in the White-chapel
District--He Gives His Dad a Scare in the Tower of London
CHAPTER IX.
The Bad Boy and His Dad Call on King Edward and Almost Settle the Irish
Question
CHAPTER X.
The Bad Boy Writes of Ancient and Modern Highwaymen--¦ They Get a Taste
of High Life in London and Dad Tells the Story of the Picklemaker's
Daughter
CHAPTER XI.
The Bad Boy Writes About Paris--Tells About the Trip Across the English
Channel--Dad Feeds a Dog and Gets Arrested
CHAPTER XII.
The Bad Boy's Second Letter from Paris--Dad Poses as a Mormon Bishop
and Has to Be Rescued--They Climb the Eiffel Tower and the Old Man Gets
Converted
CHAPTER XIII.
The Bad Boy's Dad and a Man from Dakota Frame Up a Scheme to Break the
Bank, But They Go Broke--The Party in Trouble
CHAPTER XIV.
The Bad Boy and His Dad Have an Automobile Ride--They Run Over a
Peasant--Climb “Glaziers”--Dad Falls Over a Precipice, But Is Rescued by
the Guides After a Hard Time of It
CHAPTER XV.
Dad Plays He Is an Anarchist--They Give Alms to the Beggars and the Bad
Boy Ducks a Gondolier and His Dad in the Grand Canal
CHAPTER XVI.
The Bad Boy Writes from Naples--Dad Sees Vesuvius and Calls the Servants
to Put Out the Fire--They Have Trouble with a “Dago” in Pompeii
CHAPTER XVII.
The Bad Boy and His Dad Climb Vesuvius--A Chicago Lady Joins the Party
and Causes Trouble
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
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
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
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
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
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
CHAPTER XXIV.
The Bad Boy and His Dad Arrive in Cairo--At the Hotel They Meet Some
Egyptian Princesses--Dad Rides a Camel to the Pyramids and Meets with
Difficulties
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
CHAPTER XXVI.
The Bad Boy Writes About Gibraltar--The Irish-English Army--How He Would
Take the Fortress--Dad Wants to Buy the “Rock”
CHAPTER XXVII.
The Bad Boy Writes of Spain--They call On the King and the Bad Boy Is At
It Once More--They See a Bull Fight and Dad Does a Turn
CHAPTER XXVIII.
The Bad Boy and His Dad at Berlin--They Call On Emperor William and His
Family and the Bad Boy Plays a Joke on Them All
CHAPTER XXIX.
The Bad Boy Writes from Brussels--He and Dad See the Field of Waterloo
and Call on King Leopold, and Dad and the King Go in for a Swim--The Bad
Boy, a Dog and Some Goats Do the Rest
CHAPTER XXX.
The Bad Boy's Delayed Letter About Holland and Cuba--Dad and the Boy Go
for a Drive in a Dog-Cart--They Have a Great Time--Land in Cuba and See
the Island We Fought For
PECK'S BAD BOY ABROAD.
CHAPTER I.
The Bad Boy and His Chum Call on the Old Grocery-man After
Being Away at School--The Bad Boy's Dad in a Bad Way.
The bad boy had been away to school, but the illness of his father had
called him home, and for some weeks he had been looking about the old
town. He had found few of his old friends. His father had recovered
somewhat from his illness, and one day he met his old chum, a boy of his
own age. The bad boy and the chum got busy at once, talking over the
old times that tried the souls of the neighbors and finally the bad boy
asked about the old groceryman, and found that the old man still held
out at the old stand, with the same old stock of groceries, and they
decided to call upon him, and surprise him. So after it began to be
dark they entered the store, and found the old groceryman sitting on a
cracker box by the stove, stroking the back of an old maltese cat that
had a yellow streak on the back, where it had been singed by crawling
under the red-hot stove. As the boys entered the store the cat raised
its back, its tail became as large as a rolling pin, and the cat began
to spit, while the old groceryman held up both hands and said:
[Illustration: Don't shoot, Please 019]
“Don't shoot, please, but one of you go behind the counter and take
what there is in the cash drawer, while the other one can reach into my
pistol pocket and release my pocketbook. This is the fifth time I have
been held up this year, and I have got so if I am not held up about so
often I can't sleep nights.”
“O, put down your hands and straighten out that cat's back,” said the
bad boy, as he slapped the old groceryman on the back so hard his spine
cracked like a frozen sidewalk. “Don't you know us, you old geezer? We
are the only and original Peck's Bad Boy and his Chum, come to life, and
ready for business,” and the two boys danced a jig on the floor, covered
an inch thick with the spilled sugar of years ago, the molasses that had
strayed from barrel, and the general refuse of the dirty place, which
had become as hard as asphalt.
“O, dear, it is worse than I thought,” said the old groceryman as he
laughed a hysterical laugh through the long whiskers, and he hugged the
boys as though he had a liking for them, notwithstanding the suffering
they had caused him. “By gosh, I thought you were nothing but common
robbers, who just wanted my money. You are old friends, and can have the
whole place,” and he poured some milk into a basin for the cat, but the
animal only looked at the two boys as though she knew them, and watched
them to see what was coming next.
The bad boy looked around the old grocery, which had not changed a
particle during the time he had been away, the same old box of petrified
prunes, the dried apples that could not be cut with a hatchet, the
canned stuff on the shelves had become so old that the labels had curled
up and fallen off, so it must have been a guess with the old groceryman
whether he was selling a can of peas or tomatoes, and the old fellow
standing there as though the world had gone off and left him, as his
customers had.
“Well, wouldn't this skin you,” said the bad boy, as he took up a
dried prune and tried to crack it with a hatchet on a two-pound weight,
turning to his chum who was stroking the singed hair of the old cat the
wrong way. “Say, old man, you ought to get a hustle on you. Why don't
you clean out this shebang, and put in a new stock, of goods, and have
clerks with white aprons on, and a girl bookkeeper, and goods that
people will buy and eat and not get sick? There is a grocery down street
that is as clean as a whistle, and I notice all your old customers go
there. Why don't you keep up with the times?”
“O, I ain't running a dude place,” said the old man, as he took a piece
of soft coal and put it in the old round stove, and wiped the black off
his hands on his trousers. “I am trying to get rid of my customers. I
have got money enough to live on, and I just stay here waiting for the
old cat to die. I have only got six customers left, and one of them has
got pneumonia, and is going to die, then there will be only five. When
they are all gone I shall sit here by the stove until the end comes.
There is nothing doing now to keep me awake, since you boys quit getting
me mad. Say, boys, do you know, I haven't been real mad since you quit
coming here. The only fun I have had is swearing at my customers when
they stick up their noses at my groceries. It's the funniest thing, when
I tell an old customer that if they don't like my goods they can go plum
to thunder, they get mad and go somewhere else to trade. Times must be
changing. Years ago, the more I abused customers the more they liked it,
and I just charged the goods to them with a pencil on a piece of brown
wrapping paper. I had four cracker boxes full of brown wrapping paper
with things charged on the paper against customers, but when anybody
wanted to pay their account it made my head ache to find it, and so one
day I balanced my books by using the brown wrapping paper to kindle the
fire. If you ever want to get even with the world, easy, just pour a
little kerosene on your accounts, and put them in the stove. I have
never been so free from worry as I have since I balanced my books
in the stove. Well, I suppose you have come home on account of your
dad's sickness,” said the old groceryman, turning to the bad boy,
who had written a sign, 'The Morgue,' and pinned it on the window. “I
understand your dad had an operation performed on him in a hospital.
What did the doctors take out of him?”
“Dad had an operation all right,” said the bad boy, “but he is not as
much interested in what they took out of him, as what he thinks they
left in. They said they removed his appendix, and I guess they did, for
dad showed me the bill the doctors rendered. The bill was big enough so
they might have taken out a whole lot more. If I had been home I would
never have let him be cut into, but ma insisted that he must have an
operation. She said all the men on our street, and all that moved in our
set, had had operations, and she was ashamed to go out in society and
be forced to admit that dad never had an operation, She told dad that
he could afford it better than half the people that had operations, and
that a scar criss-cross on the stomach was a badge of honor. He never
got a scar in the army, and she simply would not be able to look people
in the face unless dad was operated on. Dad always was subject to
stomach ache, but until appendicitis became fashionable he had always
taken a mess of pills, and come out all right, but ma diagnosed the case
the last time he was doubled up like a jack-knife, and dad was hustled
off to the hospital, and they didn't do a thing to him.
“He told me about it since I came home, and now he lays the whole thing
to ma, and I have to stand between them. He is going to get even with
ma, though. The first time she complains of anything going on inside
of her works, he is going to send her right to a hospital and have the
doctors do their worst. Dad said to me, says he:
“'Hennery, if you ever feel anything like a caucus being held inside
you, don't you ever go to a hospital, but just swallow a stick of
dynamite and light the fuse, then there won't be anything left inside to
bother you afterwards. When I got to the hospital they stripped me for
a prize fight, put me on a table made of glass, and rolled me into the
operating room, gave me chloroform and when they thought I was all in,
they took an axe and chopped me. I could feel every blow, and it is a
wonder they left enough of your old dad for you to hug when you came
home.'
“Say, it is kind of pitiful to hear dad talk about the things they left
in him.”
“What things does he think they left in him,” asked the old groceryman,
as he looked frightened, and felt of his stomach, as though he
mistrusted there might be something wrong with him, too.
“O, dad has been reading in the papers about doctors that perform
operations leaving sponges, forceps, and things inside of patients, when
they close up the place, and since dad has got pretty fussy since his
operation he thinks they left something in him. Some days he thinks they
left a roll of cotton batting, or a pillow, or a bale of hay, but when
there is a sharp pain inside he thinks they left a carving knife, but
for a week he has settled down to the belief that the doctors left a
monkey wrench in him, and he is just daffy on that subject. Says he can
feel it turning around, as though it was miscrewing machinery, and
he wants to consult a new doctor every day as to what he can take to
dissolve a monkey wrench, so it will pass off through the blood and
pores of the skin. He has taken it into his head that nothing will save
his life except to travel all over the country, and the world. I am to
go with him to look after him.”
[Illustration: Doctors left a monkey wrench in him 025]
“By ginger, it's great! Just think of it. Traveling all over the world
and nothing to do but nurse my old dad who thinks he is filled with
hardware and carpenter's tools. Gee! but I wish you could go,” said
the bad boy, as he put him arm around his chum. “Maybe we wouldn't
make these foreigners sit up and take an interest in something besides
Royalty and Riots.”
“Well,” said the groceryman, “they will have my sympathy with you alone
over there.”
“But before you start on the road with your monkey-wrench show, you come
in here and let me put up a package of those prunes to take along. They
will keep in any climate, and there is nothing better for iron in the
blood, such as your dad has, than prunes. Call again, bub, and we will
arrange for you to write to your chum from all the places you go with
your dad, and he can come in here and read the letters to me and the
cat.”
“All right, old Father Time,” said the bad boy, as he drew a mug of
cider out of the vinegar barrel, and took a swallow. “But what you want
to do is to get a road scraper and drive a team through this grocery,
and clean the floor,” and the boys went out just ahead of the old man's
arctic overshoes, as he kicked at them, and then he went back and sat
down by the stove and stroked the cat, which had got its back down
level again, after its old enemies had gone down the street, throwing
snowballs at the driver of a hearse.
[Illustration: Went out just ahead of the old man's arctic overshoes
027]
“It is a solemn occupation to drive a hearse,” said the bad boy.
“Not so solemn as riding inside,” said the chum.