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.
Naples, Italy.--Dear Old Partner in Crime: Well, sir, we have struck a
place that reminds us of home, and your old grocery store. The day we
got here dad and I took a walk into the poorer districts, where they
throw all the slops and refuse in the streets, and where nobody ever
seems to clean up anything and burn it. The odor was something that you
cannot describe without a demonstration, and after we had turned pale
and started to go away, dad said the smell reminded him of something
at home, and finally he remembered your old grocery in the sauerkraut
season, early in the morning, before you had aired out the place. Your
ears must have burned when we were talking about you.
If you want to get an idea of Naples, at its worst, go down into your
cellar and round up all the codfish, onions, kraut, limburger cheese,
kerosene, rotten potatoes, and everything that is dead, put it all in
a bushel basket, and just before the Health officers come to pull your
place, get down on your knees and put your head down in the basket, and
let some one sit on your head all the forenoon, and you will have just
such a half day as dad and I had in the poor quarter of Naples, and
it will not cost you half as much as it did us, unless, after you have
enjoyed yourself in your cellar with your head in the basket, you decide
to have a run of sickness and hire a doctor who will charge you the
price of a trip to Europe.
Well, sir, Naples is a dandy, in its clean part. The bay of Naples is a
dead ringer for Milwaukee bay, in shape and beauty, but Milwaukee
lacks Vesuvius and Pompeii, for suburbs, and she lacks the customary
highwaymen to hold you up. Every man, woman and child we have met makes
a living out of the tourists, and nobody that I have seen works at any
other business.
[Illustration: Wanted to turn in a fire alarm 201]
We woke up the first morning and dad looked out the window and saw
Vesuvius belching forth flame and lava and stone fences, and wanted to
turn in a fire alarm, but I told him that that fire had been raging
ever since the Christian era, and was not one of these incendiary barn
burnings, but he opened the window and yelled fire, and the porters and
chambermaids came running to our room, with buckets of water, and
wanted to know where the fire was. Dad pointed out of the window towards
Vesuvius and said: “Some hired girl has been starting a fire with
kerosene, in that shanty on the knoll out there, and the whole ranch
will burn if you don't turn out the fire department, you gosh blasted
lazy devils. Get a move on and help carry out the furniture.”
Well, they calmed dad, and then I had to go to work and post dad up
on the geography he had forgotten, and finally he remembered seeing a
picture of a volcano or burning mountain in his geography 50 years ago,
but he told me he never believed there was a volcano in the world, but
that he always thought they put those pictures in geographies to make
them sell. How a man can attain the prominence and position in the
business world that dad has, and not know any more than he does, is what
beats me.
Of course, you know, having kept a grocery since the war, and having had
opportunities to study history, by the pictures on the soap boxes and
insurance calendars, that Nero, the Roman tyrant, after Rome was burned,
while he fiddled for a dance in a barn, got so accustomed to fire and
brimstone that he retired to Naples and touched off Vesuvius, just so
he could look at it. But Vesuvius, about 2,000 years ago, got to burning
way down in its bowels, and the fire got beyond control, and I suppose
now the fire is away down in the center of the earth, and you know when
you get down in the earth below the crust, on which we live and raise
potatoes, everything is melted, like iron in a foundry, and Vesuvius is
the spigot through which the fluid comes to the surface. You see, don't
you?
Just imagine that this earth is a barrel of beer, which you can
understand better than anything else, and it is being shaken up by being
hauled around on wagons and cars, and is straining to get out, then a
bartender drives a spigot into the bung, turns the thumb piece, and the
pent-up beer comes out foaming and squirting, and there you are.
Instead of beer, Vesuvius is loaded with lava, that runs like molasses,
and when it is cold it is indigestible as a cold buckwheat cake, and you
can make it up into jewelry, that looks like maple sugar and smells like
a fire in a garbage crematory. Besides the lava there are stones as big
as a house that are thrown up by the sea-sickness of the earth, as it
heaves and pants, and then the ashes that come out of the crater at
times would make you think that what they need there is to have a
chimney sweep go down and brush out the flues.
[Illustration: Threw a pail of ashes over the fence 204]
To get an idea of what a nuisance the ashes from the crater are to the
cities on the plain below, you remember the time you were out in your
back yard splitting boxes for kindling wood and my chum and I threw a
pail of ashes over the fence, and accidentally it went all over you,
about four inches thick. That time you got mad and threw cucumbers
at us, when we ran down the alley. Keep that in your mind and you can
understand the destruction of Pompeii, when Vesuvius, thousands of years
ago, coughed up hot ashes and covered the town 40 feet deep with hot
stuff, and killed every living thing, and petrified and preserved the
whole business, and made a prairie on top of a town, and everybody
eventually forgot that there had ever been a town there, for about 2,000
years. If my chum and I had not run out of ashes we would have buried
you so deep in your back yard that you would have been petrified with
your hatchet, and when they excavated the premises a thousand years
later they would have found your remains and put you in a museum.
Well, a couple of hundred years ago a peasant was sinking a well down in
the ashes, and he struck a petrified barroom, with a bartender standing
behind the bar in the act of serving some whisky 2,000 years old, and
the peasant located a claim there, and the authorities took possession
of the prairie and have been digging the town out ever since, looking
for more of that 2,000-year-old whisky.
When I told dad about what they were finding at the ruins of Pompeii,
and how you were liable to find gold and diamonds and petrified women,
he wanted to go and dig in the ashes, as he said it would be more
exciting than raking over the dumping grounds in Chicago for tin cans
and lumps of coal, and so we hired a hack and went to the buried town,
but dad insisted on carrying an umbrella, so if Vesuvius belched any
more ashes he could protect himself. Gee, but from what I have seen at
that old ruin, a man would need an umbrella made of corrugated iron to
keep from being buried.
[Illustration: Dad insisted on carrying an umbrella 207]
Well, when we got to Pompeii dad was for going right where they were
digging, but I got him to look over the streets and houses that had
been uncovered first, and he was paralyzed to think that a town could be
covered with ashes all these thousands of years, and then be uncovered
and find a town that would compare, in many respects, with cities of the
present day, with residences complete with sculpture, paintings and cut
marble that would skin Chicago to a finish.
We went through residences that looked as rich as the Vanderbilt houses
in New York, baths that you could take a plunge and a swim in, if they
had the water, paintings that would take a premium at any horse show
to-day, pavements that would shame the pavements of London and Paris,
and petrified women that you couldn't tell from a low-necked party in
Washington, except that the ashes had eaten the clothes off. I guess
most of the people in Pompeii got away when the ashes began to rain
down, for they must have seen that it wasn't going to be a light shower,
but a deluge, 'cause they never have found many corpses. They must have
run to Naples, and maybe they are running yet, and you may see some
of them at your grocery, and if you do see anybody covered with ashes,
looking for a job, give them some crackers and cheese and charge it to
dad, for they must be hungry by this time.
Say, do you know that some of those refugees from Pompeii went off in
such a hurry that they left bread baking in the ovens, and meat cooking
in the pots? It seems the most wonderful thing to me of anything I ever
saw. We went all through the streets and houses and saw ballrooms
that beat anything in San Francisco, and when we went into a building
occupied by the officers in charge of the excavations, and dad saw a
telephone and an electric light, he thought those things had been dug
up, too, and he claimed that the men who were receiving millions of
dollars in royalties on telephones and electric lights were frauds who
were infringing on Pompeii patents 2,000 years old, and he wouldn't
believe me when I told him that telephones and electric lights were not
dug up; he said then he wouldn't believe anything was dug up, but that
the whole thing was a put-up job to rob tourists. But when we got to a
locality where the dagoes were digging the ashes away from a house and
were uncovering a parlor, where rich things were being discovered, he
saw that it was all right.
I suppose I never ought to have played such a thing on dad, but I told
him that anybody who saw a thing first when it came out of the ashes
could grab it and keep it, and just as I told him a workman threw out a
shovel full of ashes, just as you would throw out dirt digging for angle
worms, and there was a little silver urn with a lot of coins in it, and
you could not hold dad. He grabbed for it, the workman grabbed for it,
and they went down together in the ashes, and the man rolled dad over
and he was a sight, but the workman got the silver urn, and dad wanted
to fight.
[Illustration: The man rolled dad over and he was a sight 210]
Finally a man with a uniform on came along and was going to arrest dad,
but they finally compromised by the man offering to sell the silver urn
and the gold coins to dad for a hundred dollars, if he would promise
not to open it up until he got out of Italy, and dad paid the money and
wrapped the urn up in a Chicago paper, and we took our hack and went
back to Naples on a gallop.
Dad could hardly wait till we got to the hotel before opening up his
prize, but he held out until we got to our room, when he unwrapped the
urn to count his ancient gold coins. Well, you'd a-died to see dad's
face when he opened that can. It was an old tomato can that had been
wrought out with a hammer so it looked like hammered silver, and when
he emptied the gold coins out on the table there was a lot of brass tags
that looked like dog license tags, and baggage checks and brass buttons.
I had to throw water on dad to bring him to, and then he swore he would
kill the dago that sold him the treasure from the ruins of Pompeii.
It was a great blow to dad, and he has bought a dirk knife to kill the
dago. To-morrow we take in Vesuvius, and when we come down from the
crater we go to Pompeii and kill the dago in his tracks. Dad may cause
Vesuvius to belch again with hot ashes, and cover the ruins of Pompeii,
but if he can't turn on the ashes, the knife will do the business.
Yours,
Hennery.