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.
Venice, Italy.--My Dear Old Chumireno: Dad couldn't get out of
Switzerland quick enough after he got thawed out the day after we
climbed the glaziers. We found that almost all the tourists in Geneva
were there because they did not want to go home and say they had not
visited Switzerland, so they just jumped from one place to another. The
people who stay there any length of time are like the foreign residents
of Mexico, who are wanted for something they have done at home, that is
against the law. There are more anarchists in Geneva than anything else,
and they look hairy and wild eyed, and they plot to kill kings and drink
beer out of two quart jars.
When we found that more attention was paid to men suspected of crime
in their own countries, and men who were believed to be plotting to
assassinate kings, dad said it would be a good joke if a story should
get out that he was suspected of being connected with a syndicate that
wanted to assassinate some one, so I told a fellow that I got acquainted
with that the fussy old man that tried to ride a glazier without any
saddle or stirrup was wanted for attempting to blow up the president
of the United States by selling him baled hay soaked in a solution of
dynamite and nitro-glycerine.
[Illustration: Dad and the anarchists reveled till morning 188]
Say, they will believe anything in Switzerland. It wasn't two hours
before long-haired people were inviting dad to dinners, and the same
night he was taken to a den where a lot of anarchists were reveling, and
dad reveled till almost morning. When he came back to the hotel he said
his hosts got all the money he had with him, through some game he didn't
understand, but he under stood it was to go into a fund to support
deserving anarchists and dynamiters. He said when they found out he was
a suspected assassin nothing was too good for him. He said they wanted
to know how he expected to kill a president by soaking baled hay in
explosives, and dad said it came to him suddenly to tell them that the
president rode on horseback a good deal, and he thought if a horse was
filled with baled hay, and nitro-glycerine and the president spurred
the horse and the horse jumped in the air and came down kerchunk on an
asphalt pavement, the horse would explode, and when the rider came down
covered with sausage covers and horse meat, he would be dead, or would
want to be. Dad said the anarchists went into executive session and took
up a collection to send a man to Berlin to fill the emperor's saddle
horse with cut feed like dad suggested.
Well, the anarchist story was too much for Switzerland, and the next
morning dad was told by a policeman that he had to get out of the
country quick, and it didn't take us 15 minutes to pack up, and here we
are in Venice.
Well, say, old friend, this is the place where you ought to be, because
nobody works here, that is, nobody but gondoliers. We have been here
several days, and I have not seen a soul doing anything except begging,
or selling things that nobody seems to want. If anybody buys anything
but onions, it is for curiosity, or for souvenirs, and yet the whole
population sits around in the sun and watches the strangers from other
lands price things and go away without buying, and then everybody looks
mad, as though they would like to jab a knife into the stranger. The
plazas and the places near the canal are filled with hucksters and
beggars, and you never saw beggars so mutilated and sore and disgusting.
I never supposed human beings could be so deformed, without taking an ax
to them, and it is so pitiful to see them that you can't help shedding
your money.
[Illustration: Coughed up over $40 the first day, just giving to beggars
191]
As hard hearted as dad is, he coughed up over $40 the first day, just
giving to beggars, and he thought he had got them all bought up, and
that they would let him alone, but the next day when he showed up there
were ten beggars where there was one the day before, and they followed
him everywhere, and all the loafers in the plazas laughed and acted as
if they would catch the cripples when dad got out of sight and rob the
beggars. Dad thinks the way the people live is by dividing with beggars.
A man who has a deformity, or a sore that you can see half a block away,
seems to be considered rich here, like a man in America who owns stock
in great corporations. These beggars pay more taxes than the dukes and
things who live in style.
I suppose dad never studied geography, so he didn't know how Venice was
situated, so he told me to go out and order a hack the first morning we
were here, and we would go and see the town. When I told dad there were
no hacks, no horses and no roads in Venice, he said I was crazy in my
head and wanted me to take some medicine and stay in bed for a few days,
but I convinced him, when we got outdoors, that everything run by water,
and when I showed him the canal and the gondolas, he remembered all
about Venice, and picked out a gondalier that looked like one dad saw
at the world's fair, and we hired him because he talked English. All the
English the gondolier could use were the words “you bet your life,” and
“you're dam right,” but dad took him because it seemed so homelike, and
we have been riding in gondolas every day.
On the water you can get away from the beggars. This is an ideal
existence. You just get in the gondola, under a canopy, and the
gondolier does the work, and you glide along between build ings and
wonder who lives there, and when they wake up, as all day long the
blinds are closed, and everybody seems to be dead. But at night, when
the canals are lighted, and the moon shines, the people put on their
dress clothes and sit on verandas, or eat and drink, and talk Eyetalian,
and ride in gondolas, and play guitars, and smoke cigarettes, and talk
love. It is so warm you can wear your summer pants, and the water smells
of clams that died long ago. It is just as though Chicago was flooded
by the bursting of the sewers, and people had to go around State street,
and all the cross streets, and Michigan avenue, in fishing boats, with
three feet of water on top of the pavements. Imagine the people of
Chicago taking gondolas and riding along the streets, landing at the
stores and hotels, just as they do now from carriages.
We had been riding in gondolas for two days, getting around in the mud
when the tide was out, and going to sleep and waiting for the tide to
come in, when it seemed to me that dad needed some excitement, and last
night I gave it to him.
We were out in our gondola, and the moon was shining, and the electric
lights made the canal near the Rialto bridge as light as day. The Rialto
bridge crosses the Grand canal, and has been the meeting place for
lovers for thousands of years. It is a grand structure, of carved
marble, but it wouldn't hold up a threshing machine engine half as
well as an iron bridge. Well, the canal was filled with thousands of
gondolas, loaded with the flower of Venetian society, and the music just
made you want to fall in love. Dad said if he didn't fall in love, or
something, before morning, he would quit the place. I made up my mind he
should fall into something, so I began by telling dad it seemed strange
to me that nobody but Eyetalians could run a gondola. Dad said he could
run a gondola as well as any foreigner, and I told him he couldn't run
a gondola for shucks, and he said he would show me, so he got out of the
hen house where we were seated, and went back on to the pointed end
of the gondola, and grabbed the pole or paddle from the gondolier, and
said: “Now, Garibaldi, you go inside the pup tent with Hennery, and let
me punt this ark around awhile.”
Garibaldi thought dad was crazy, but he gave up the pole, and just then,
when they were both on the extreme point of the gondola, and she was
wabbling some, I peeked out through the curtains and thought the fruit
was about ripe enough to pick, so I threw myself over to one side of
the gondola, and, by gosh, if dad and Garibaldi didn't both go overboard
with a splash, and one yell in the English language, and one in
Eye-talian, and I rushed out of the cabin and such a sight you never
saw.
[Illustration: Overboard, one yell in the English language, one in
Eye-talian 193]
Dad retained the paddle, and had his head out of water, but nothing
showed above the water, where Garibaldi was except a red patch on his
black pants. Dad was yelling for help, and finally the gondolier got his
head out of the water, and said something that sounded like grinding a
butcher knife on a grindstone, and I yelled, too, and the gondolas began
to gather around us, and the two men were rescued. The gondolier had
been gondoling all his life and he had never been in the water before,
and they thought it would strike in and kill him, so they wrapped him up
in blankets and put him aboard his canoe, and he looked at me as though
I was to blame. They got a boat hook fastened in dad's pants and landed
him in the gondola, and he dripped all the way to our hotel, and he
smelled like a fish market.
I asked Garibaldi, on the way to the hotel, if he was counting his beads
when he was down under the water with nothing but his pants out of the
water, and he said: “You're dam right,” but I don't think he knew the
meaning of the words, because he probably wouldn't swear in the presence
of death. Dad just sat and shivered all the way to the hotel, but when
we got to our room I asked him what his idea was in jumping overboard
right there before folks, with his best clothes on, and he said it was
all Garibaldi's fault, that just as dad was getting a good grip on the
paddle, the gondolier heaved a long sigh, and the onions in his breath
paralyzed dad so he fell overboard.
[Illustration: Then you don't blame your little boy, do you 197]
“Then you don't blame your little boy, do you?” says I, and dad looked
at me as he was hanging his wet shirt on a chair. “Course not; you
were asleep in the cabin. But say, if I ever hear that you did tip that
gondola, it will go hard with you,” but I just looked innocent, and dad
went on drying his shirt by a charcoal brazier and never suspected me.
But I am getting the worst of it, for dad and his clothes smell so much
like a clam bake that it makes me sick.
Well, old friend, you ought to close up your grocery and come over here
and go to Vesuvius and Pompeii with us, where we can dry our clothes
by the volcano, and dig in the city that was buried in hot ashes 2,000
years ago. They say you can dig up mummies there that are dead ringers
for you, old man.
O, come on, and have fun with us.
Your friend,
Hennery.