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.
Geneva, Switzerland.--My Dear Old Man: By ginger, but I would like to be
home now. I have had enough of foreign travel; I don't see what is the
use of traveling, to see people of foreign countries, when you can go to
any large city in America, and find more people belonging to any
foreign country than you can find by going to that country, and they
know a confounded sight more. Take the Russians in New York, the
Norwegians of Minnesota, the Italians of Chicago, and the Germans of
Milwaukee, and they can talk English, and you can find out all about
their own countries by talking with them, but you go to their countries
and the natives don't know that there is such a language as the United
States language, and they laugh at you when you ask questions. I am sick
of the whole business, and would give all I ever expect to be worth, to
be home right now, with my skates sharp.
I would like to open the door of your old grocery, and take one long
breath and die right there on the doorstep, rather than to live in
luxury in any foreign country. Do you know, I sometimes go into a
grocery store abroad, and smell around, in order to get my thoughts on
dear old America, but nothing abroad smells as the same thing does in
our country. If I could get one more smell of that keg of sauerkraut
back of your counter, when it is ripe enough to pick, I think I would
break right down and cry for joy. Of course I have smelled sauerkraut
over here, but it all seems new and tame compared to yours. It may be
the kraut here is not aged enough to be good, but yours is aged enough
to vote and sticks to your clothes. Gee, but I just ache to get into
your grocery and eat things, and smell smells, and then lay down on the
counter with the cat with my head on a pile of wrapping paper and go to
sleep and wake up in America, an American citizen, that no king or queen
can tell to “hush up” and take off my hat when I want my hat on.
You may wonder how we got out of Monte Carlo, when we had lost every
cent we had gambling. Well, we wondered about it all night, and had our
breakfast sent up to our room, and had it charged, expecting that when
the bill came in we would have to jump into the ocean, as we had no gun
to kill ourselves with. Just after breakfast a duke, or something, came
to our room, and dad said it was all off, and he called upon the Dakota
man to make a speech on politics, while dad and I skipped out. We
thought the duke, who was the manager of the hotel, would not understand
the speech, and would think we were great people, who had got stranded.
[Illustration: Started in on a democratic speech 175]
The Dakota man started in on a democratic speech that he used to deliver
in the campaign of '96, and in half an hour the duke held up his hands,
and the Dakota man let up on the speech. Then the duke took out a roll
of bills and said: “Ze shentlemen is what you call bust. Is it not so?”
Dad said he could bet his life it was so. Then the duke handed the roll
of bills to dad, and said it was a tribute from the prince of
Monaco, and that we were his guests, and when our stay was at an end,
automobiles would be furnished for us to go to Nice, where we could
cable home for funds, and be happy.
Well, when the duke left us, dad said: “Wouldn't that skin you?” and he
gave the Dakota man one of the bills to try on the bartender, and when
he found the money was good we ordered an automobile and skipped out for
Nice. The chauffeur could not understand English, so we talked over the
situation and decided that the only way to be looked upon as genuine
automobilists would be to wear goggles and look prosperous and mad at
everybody. We took turns looking mad at everybody we passed on the road,
and got it down so fine that people picked up rocks after we had-passed,
and threw them at us, and then we knew that we were succeeding in being
considered genuine, rich automobile tourists.
After we had succeeded for an hour or two in convincing the people that
we were properly heartless and purse proud, dad said the only thing
we needed to make the trip a success was to run over somebody. He
said nearly all the American automobile tourists in Europe had killed
somebody and had been obliged to settle and support a family or two in
France or Italy, and they were prouder of it than they would be if they
endowed a university, or built a church, and he said he trusted our
chauffeur would not be too careful in running through the country, but
would at least cripple some one.
Well, just before we got to Nice, and darkness was settling down on the
road, the chauffeur blew his horn, there was a scream that would raise
hair on Horace Greeley's head, the automobile stopped, and there was a
bundle of dusty old clothes, with an old woman done up in them, and we
jumped out and lifted her up, and there we were, the woman in a faint,
the peasants gathering around us with scythes and rakes and clubs,
demanding our lives. The bloody-faced woman was taken into a home, the
crowd held us, until finally a doctor came, and after examining the
woman said she might live, but it would be a tight squeeze. We wanted
to go on, but we didn't want to be cut open with a scythe, so finally a
man, who said he was the husband of the woman, came out with a gun, dad
got down on his knees and tried to say a prayer, the Dakota man held up
both hands like it was a stage being held up, and I cried.
[Illustration: Dad got down on his knees and tried to say a prayer 178]
Finally the chauffeur said, in broken English, that the husband would
settle for $400, because he could pay the funeral expenses, get
another wife for half the money and have some thing left to lay up for
Christmas. As the man's gun was pointed at dad, he quit praying and
gave up the money and agreed to send $50 a month for 11 years, until the
oldest child was of age.
Well, we got away alive, got into Nice, and the chauffeur started back
and we cabled home for money to be sent to Geneva, Switzerland. But,
say; you have not heard the sequel. A story that has a sequel is always
the best, and I hope to die if the police of Nice didn't tell us that we
were buncoed by that old woman and that the chauffeur was in the scheme
and got part of dad's money. The way they do it is to wait till dark,
and then roll the woman in the dust and put some red ink on her face,
and she pretends to be run over, and the doctor is hired by the month,
and they average $500 a night, playing that game on automobile tourists
from America. After the woman is run over every night, and the money
is collected, and the victims have been allowed to go on their way, the
whole community gathers at the house of the injured woman and they have
a celebration and a dance, and probably our chauffeur got back to the
house that night in time to enjoy the celebration. I suppose thousands
of Americans are paying money for killing people that never got a
scratch.
Say, we think in America that we have plenty of ways to rob the
tenderfoot, but they give us cards and spades and little casino and beat
us every time. Dad wanted to hire a hack and go back and finish that old
woman with an ax, because he said he had a corpse coming to him, but the
police told him he could be arrested for thinking murder, and that he
was a dangerous man, and that they would give him 12 hours to get out
of France, and so we bought tickets for Switzerland, though what we came
here for I don't know, only dad said it was a republic like America
and he wanted to breathe the free air of mountains in the home of the
Switzerkase.
Well, anybody can have Switzerland if they want it. I will sell my
interest cheap. The first three days we were here everybody wanted us to
go out on the lake, said to be the most beautiful lake in the world, and
we sailed on it, and rowed on it, and looked down into the clear water
where it is said you can see a corpse on the bottom of the lake 100 feet
down. We hadn't lost any corpse, except the corpse of that old woman
we run over at Nice, but we wanted to get the worth of our money, so we
kept looking for days, but the search for a corpse becomes tame after
awhile, and we gave it up. All we saw in the bottom of the lake was a
cow, but no man can weep properly over the remains of a cow, and dad
said they could go to the deuce with their corpses, and we just camped
at the hotel till our money came. Say, that lake they talk so much about
is no better than lakes all over Wisconsin, and there are no black bass
or muskellunges in it.
The tourists here are just daffy about climbing mountains and glaziers,
and they talk about it all the time, and I could see dad's finish.
They told him that no American that ever visited Switzerland would be
recognized when he got home if he had not climbed the glaziers, so dad
arranged for a trip up into the sky. We went 100 miles or so on the
cars, passing along valleys where all the cows wear tea bells, and it
sounds like chimes in the distance. It is beautiful in Switzerland,
but the cheese is something awful. A piece of native Swiss cheese would
break up a family.
At night we arrived at a station where we hired guides and clothes, and
things, and the next morning we started. Dad wanted me to stay at the
station a couple of days, while he was gone, and play with the goats,
but I told him if there were any places in the mountains or glaziers any
more dangerous than Paris or Monte Carlo, I wanted to visit them, so he
let me go. Well, we were rigged up for discovering the north pole, and
had alpenstocks to push ourselves up with, and the guides had ropes to
pull us up when we got to places where we couldn't climb. I could get
along all right, but they had dad on a rope most of the time pulling him
until his tongue run out and his face turned blue. But dad was game, and
don't you forget it.
Before noon we got on top of a glazier, which is the ice of a frozen
river, that moves all the time, sliding towards the sea.
[Illustration: Dad slipped down a crevice about 100 feet 181]
There was nothing but a hard winter, in summer, to the experience, and
we would have gone back the same night, only dad slipped down a crevice
about 100 feet with the rope on him, and the two guides couldn't pull
him up, and we had to send a lunch down to him on the rope and one of
the guides had to go back to the village for help to get dad up. Well,
sir, I think dad was nearer dead than he ever was before, but they sent
down a bottle of brandy, and when he drank some of it the snow began to
melt and he was warm enough to use bad language.
He yelled to me that this was the limit and wanted to know how long
they were going to keep him there. I yelled to him that one of the
guides had gone for help to pull him out, and he said for them to order
a yoke of oxen. I told him that probably he would have to remain there
until spring opened and that I was going back to America and leave him
there, and he better pray.
[Illustration: Have to remain there until spring opened 183]
I don't know whether dad prayed, down there in the bowels of the
mountains, but he didn't pray when help came, and they finally hauled
him up. His breath was gone, but he gave those guides some language
that would set them to thinking if they could have understood him, and
finally we started down the mountain. They kept the rope on dad and
every little while he would slip and slide 100 feet or so down the
mountain on his pants, and the snow would go up his trousers legs clear
to his collar, and the exercise made him so hot that the steam came out
of his clothes, and he looked like a locomotive wrecked in a snow bank
blowing off steam.
It became dark and I expected we would be killed, but before midnight we
got to the station and changed our clothes and paid off the guides and
took a train back. Dad said to me, as we got on the cars: “Now, Hennery,
I have done this glazier stunt, just to show you that a brave man,
whatever his age, is equal to anything they can propose in Europe,
but by ginger, this settles it, and now I want to go where things come
easier. I am now going to Turkey and see how the Turks worry along. Are
you with me?” “You bet your life,” says I.
Yours truly,
Hennery.