The Bay Boy Writes About Paris--Tells About the Trip Across
the English Channel--Dad Feeds a Dog and Gets Arrested.
Paris, France.--My Dear Uncle Ezra: Dad is in an awful state here, and I
do not know what to do with him. We struck this town all in a heap, and
the people seemed to be paralyzed so they couldn't speak, except to make
motions and make noises that we could not interpret. This is the
first time dad and I have been in a place where nobody understood our
language. Ordinarily we would take pleasure in teaching people to speak
the English language, but in coming across the English channel dad and
I both got something we never got on the water before. Ordinary
seasickness is only an incident, that makes you wish you were dead--just
temporary, but when it wears off you can enjoy your religion and
victuals as well as ever, but the seasickness that the English channel
gives you is a permanent investment, like government bonds that you cut
coupons off of. I 'spect we shall be sick always now, and worse every
other day, like chills and fever.
Say, a boat on the English channel does not roll, or pitch, at
intervals, like a boat on ordinary water, but it does stunts like a
broncho that has been poisoned by eating loco-weeds, and goes into the
air and dives down under, and shakes itself like a black bass with a
hook in its mouth, and rolls over like a trained dog, and sits up on its
hind legs and begs, and then walks on its fore paws, and seems to jump
through hoops, and dig for woodchucks, and all the time the water boils
like 'pollinarius, full of bubbles, and it gives you the hiccups to look
at it, and it flows every way at the same time, and the wind comes from
the fourteen quarters at once, and blows hot if you are too hot and want
a cool breeze, and if you are too cold, and want a warm breeze to keep
you alive, it comes right from the north pole, and you just perish in
your tracks.
Gee, but it is awful. When you get seasick on an ordinary ocean, you
know where to locate the disease, and you know where to go for relief,
and when you have got relieved you know that you are alive, but an
English channel seasickness is as different from any other as an
alcohol jag is different from a champagne drunk. This English channel
seasickness begins on your toes, and you feel as though the toenails
were being pulled out with pincers, and the veins in your legs seem to
explode, your arms wilt like lettuce in front of a cheap grocery, your
head seems to be struck with a pile-driver and telescoped down into your
spine, and your stomach feels as though you had swallowed a telephone
pole with all of the cross arms and wires and glass insulators, and you
wish lightning would strike you. Gosh, but dad was hot when he found
that he was sick that way, and when we got ashore he wanted to kill the
first man he met.
He thinks that it is a crime for a man not to understand the English
language, and when he tells what he wants, and the man he is talking to
shrugs his shoulders and laughs, and brings him something else, he wants
to pull his gun and begin to shoot up the town, and only for me he would
have killed people before this, but now he takes it out in scowling at
people who do not understand him. Dad seems to think that if he cannot
make a man understand what he says, all he has to do is to swear at the
man, but there is no universal language of profanity, so the more dad
swears the more the nervous Frenchman smiles, and acts polite.
I think the French people are the politest folks I ever knew. If a
Frenchman had to kick a person out of doors, he would wear a felt
slipper, and after he had kicked you he would place his hand on his
heart, and bow, and look so sorry, and hurt, that you would want to give
him a tip.
O, but this tipping business is what is breaking dad's heart. I think
if the servants would arrange a syndicate to rob dad of two or three dol
lars a day, by pocket picking, or sneak thieving, he would overlook
it, and say that as long as it was one of the customs of the country
we should have to submit to it, but when he has paid his bill, with
everything charged extra, and the servants line up and look appealingly,
or mad, as the case may be, dad is the hardest man to loosen that ever
was, but if they seem to look the other way, and not, apparently, care
whether they get a cent or not, dad would go and hunt them up, and
divide his roll with them. Dad is not what you would call a “tight wad,”
if you let him shed his money normally, when he feels the loosening
coming on, but you try to work him by bowing and cringing, and his
American spirit gets the better of him, and he looks upon the servant as
pretty low down. I have told him that the tipping habit is just as bad
in America as in France, but he says in America the servant acts as
though he never had such a thought as getting a tip, and when you give
him a quarter or other tip he looks puzzled, as though he did not just
recall what he had done to merit such treatment, but finally puts the
money in his pocket with an air as though he would accept it in trust,
to be given to some deserving person at the first opportunity, and then
he smiles, and gets away, and blows in the tip for something wet and
strong.
I told dad if he would just ignore the servants, as though he did not
understand that they expected a tip, that he would be all right, so when
we got ready to move from the hotel to private rooms dad never gave any
servant a tip. Well, I don't know what the servants did to our baggage,
but they must have marked it with a smallpox sign, or something, for
nobody would touch it for several hours, but finally a baggage man took
it and started for our apartments, and got lost and didn't show up for
two days, and when it was finally landed on the sidewalk nobody would
carry it upstairs, and dad and I had to lug it up two flights, and I
thought dad would have apoplexy.
[Illustration: Coughs up a tip every time 143]
We found a guide who could talk New Orleans English and he said it would
cost three dollars to square it with the servants at the hotel, and have
the boycott removed from our baggage, and dad paid it, and now he coughs
up a tip every time he sees a servant look at him. He pays when he goes
in a restaurant and when he comes out, and says he is cured of trying to
reform the customs of anybody else's country.
We have engaged a guide to stay with us day and night. The guide took
us out for a bat last night, and dad had the time of his life. Dad has
drank a good deal of spiritous and malt liquors in his time, but I don't
think he ever indulged much in champagne at three or four dollars a
bottle at home. Maybe he has been saving himself up till he got over
here, where champagne is cheap and it takes several quarts to make you
see angels. The guide took us to one of these bullyvards, where there
are tables out on the sidewalk, and you can eat and drink and look at
the dukes and counts and dutchesses and things promenading up and down,
flirting like sin, and we sat down to a table and ordered things to eat
and drink, and dad looked like Uncle Sam, and felt his oats.
[Illustration: A tone of voice that meant trouble 138]
When he had drank a few thimblefuls of absinthe, and some champagne, and
eat a plateful of frogs, he was just ripe for trouble. A woman and a man
at an adjoining table had one of these white dogs that is sheared like
a hedge fence, with spots of long hair left on in places, and dad coaxed
the dog over to our table and began to feed him frogs' legs, and the
woman began to talk French out loud, and look cross at dad, and the
count that was with her came over to our table and looked at dad in
a tone of voice that meant trouble, and said something sassy, and the
guide said the man wanted to fight a duel because dad had contaminated
the woman's dog, and dad got mad and offered to wipe out the whole
place, and he got up with a champagne bottle and looked defiance at the
count, and the waiters began to scatter, when the woman came up to dad
and begged him not to hurt the count, and as she spoke broken English
dad could understand her, and she looked so beautiful, and her eyes were
filled with tears, and dad relented and said: “Don't cry, dear, I won't
hurt the little runt.” She was so glad dad was not going to kill the
count that she threw herself into his arms and thanked dear America
for producing such a grand citizen, such a brave man as dad, who could
forego the pleasure of killing a poor, weak man who had insulted him,
particularly as dad's wild Indian ancestry made it hard for him to
refrain from blood.
[Illustration: I won't hurt the little runt 145]
Well, dad's face was a study, as he braced up and held that 150 pounds
of white meat in his arms, with all the people looking on, and he seemed
proud and heroic, and he stroked her hair and told her not to worry, and
finally she hied herself away from dad and the count took her away,
and they went up the bullyvard, and after all was quiet again dad said:
“Hennery, let this be a lesson to you. When you are tempted to commit a
rash act and avenge an insult in blood, stop and think of the sorrow and
shame that will come to you if you draw your gun too quick, and have a
widow on your hands as the result. Suppose I had killed that shrimp, the
face of his widow would have haunted me always, and I would have wanted
to die. Don't ever kill anybody, my boy, if you can settle a dispute by
shaking the dice.”
Well, dad ordered some more wine, and as he drank it, he allowed
the populace to admire him and say things about the great American
millionaire, who spent money like water and was too brave to fight. Then
dad called for his check to pay his bill, and when he felt in his pocket
for his roll of bills, he hadn't a nickel and the woman, when she was in
his arms, weeding with one hand, had gone through dad's pockets with the
other. Dad felt for his watch, to see what time it was, and his watch
was gone, and the waiter was waiting for the money and dad tried to
explain that he had been buncoed, and the head waiter came and begun to
act sassy, and then they called a policeman to stay by us till the money
was produced, and everybody at the other tables laughed, and dad turned
blue, and I thought he would have a fit. Finally, the guide began to
talk, and the result was that a policeman went home with us, and dad
found money enough to pay the bill, but he talked language that caused
the landlady to ask us to find a new place.
[Illustration: Tried to explain that he had been buncoed 148]
The next morning the guide showed up with an officer who had a warrant
for dad for hugging a woman in a public cafe, and it seemed as though we
were in for it, but the guide said he could settle the whole business
by paying the officer $20, and dad paid it and I think the guide and the
officer divided the money. Say, this is the greatest town we have struck
yet for excitement, and I guess dad will not have a chance to think of
his sickness.
This morning we went into a big department store, and, by gosh! we
found the count that dad was going to fight was a floor-walker, and
the countess was behind a counter selling soap. When dad saw the count
leering at him, he put his hand on his pistol pocket and yelled a
regular cowboy yell, and the count rushed down into the basement, the
soap countess fainted, and the police took dad to the police station,
and all day the guide and I have been trying to get him out on bail.
If we get dad out of this we are going to put a muzzle on him. Well, if
anyone asks you if I am having much of a time abroad, you can tell them
the particulars.
P. S.--We got dad out for $20 and costs, and he says he will blow Paris
up before night. We are going up to the top of the Eiffel tower this
afternoon, to count our money, as dad dasscnt take out his pocketbook
anywhere on the ground for fear of being robbed.
Yours full of frogs.
Hennery.