The Bad Boy and His Dad Climb Vesuvius--A Chicago Lady Joins
the Party and Causes Trouble.
Naples, Italy.--Siegnor ze Grocerino: I guess that will make you stand
without hitching for a little while. Say, I am getting so full of dead
languages, and foreign palaver, that I shall have to have an operation
on my tongue when I get home before I can speel the United States
language again so you can make head or tail of it. You see, I don't stay
long enough in a country to acquire its language, but I get a few words
into my system, so now my English is so mixed with French words, Italian
garlic and German throat trouble that I cannot understand myself unless
I look in a glass and watch the motions of my lips. Dad has not picked
up a word of any foreign language, and says he should consider himself a
traitor to his country if he tried to talk anything but English. He
did get so he could order a glass of beer by holding up his finger and
saying “ein,” but he found later that just holding up his finger
without saying “ein” would bring the beer all the same so he cut out the
language entirely and works his finger until it needs a rest.
When I used to study my geography at the little red schoolhouse, and
look at the picture of the volcano Vesuvius, and read about how it would
throw up red-hot lava, and ashes, and rocks as big as a house, and wipe
out cities, it looked so terrible to me that I was glad when we got
through with the volcano lesson, and got to Greenland's icy mountains,
where there was no danger except being frozen to death, or made sick by
eating blubber sliced off of whales.
Then I never expected to be right on the very top of that volcano,
throwing stones down in the lava, and sailing chips down the streams of
hot stuff, just as I sailed chips on ice water at home-when the streets
were flooded by spring rains. Say, there is no more danger on Vesuvius
than there is in a toboggan slide, or shooting the chutes at home. I
thought we would have to hire dagoes to carry us up to the top, and be
robbed and held up, and may be murdered, but it is just as easy as going
up in the elevator of a skyscraper, and no more terrifying than
sitting on a 50-cent seat in a baseball park at home and witnessing the
“Destruction of Pompeii” by a fireworks display
The crater looks sort of creepy, like a big cauldron kettle boiling soap
on a farm, only it is bigger, and down in the earth's bowels you can
well believe there is trouble, and if you believe in a hell, you can get
it, illustrated proper, but the rivulets of lava that flow out of the
wrinkles around the mouth of the crater are no more appalling than
making fudges over a gas stove. When the lava cools you would swear it
was fudges, only you can't eat the lava and get indigestion as you can
eating fudges.
It was hard work to get dad to go up on the volcano, because he said he
knew he would fall into it, and get his clothes burned, and he said he
couldn't climb clear to the top, on account of his breath being short,
but when I told him he could ride up on a trolley car, and have the
volcano brought right to him, he weakened, and one morning we left
Naples early and before two hours had passed we were on a little
cogwheel railroad going up, and dad was looking down on the scenery,
expecting every minute the cogs would slip and we would cut loose and go
down all in a heap and be plastered all over the vineyards and big trees
and be killed.
I don't know what makes dad so nervous, but he wanted a woman from
Chicago, who was on the car with us, to hold his hand all the way up,
but she said she was no nurse in a home for the aged, and she said she
would cuff dad if he didn't let go of her. I told her she better not
get dad mad if she knew what was good for her, for he was a regular
Bluebeard, and wouldn't take no slack from no Chicago female, 'cause
he had buried nine wives already. So she held his hand, and I guess she
thinks she will be my stepmother, but I bet she don't.
Well, after we got almost to the top the car stopped, and we had to walk
the rest of the way, several hundred feet, and we had to have a pusher
and a putter for dad, a dago to go ahead and pull him up, and another
to put his shoulder against dad's pants and shove. Gee, but it was a
picture to see dad “go up old baldhead,” with the dagoes perspiring and
swearing at dad for being so heavy, and the Chicago woman laughing, and
me pushing her up.
[Illustration: It was a picture to see dad go up old baldhead 214]
One thing that scared dad was that every little way there was a shrine,
where the guides left dad lying on the ground, blocked with a piece of
cold lava, so he wouldn't roll down, like you would block a wagon wheel,
and they would go to the shrine and kneel and say some prayers.
Dad was afraid they were going to charge the prayers in the bill for
pushing him up, but I told dad that these people expected every time
they, went up to the top that it would be their last trip, as they knew
that some day the volcano would open in a new place and swallow them
whole, with all the tourists. Then he gave them a dollar apiece to pray
for him, and wanted to go back down the mountain and let Vesuvius run
its own fireworks, but the Chicago lady told dad to brace up and she
would protect him, and so the guides gave a few more pushes, and we were
on top of the volcano, and dad collapsed and had to be brought to with
smelling salts and whisky that the woman carried in her pistol pocket.
Gee, but it was worth all the trouble to get up the mountain, to see the
sight that opened up. The hole in the mountain filled with boiling stuff
was worth the price of admission, and the roaring of the boiling stuff,
and the explosions way down cellar, and the flying stones, the smoke
going into the air for a mile, like the burning of an oil well, the
red-hot lava finding crevices to leak through, and flowing down the
side of the mountain in streams like hot maple sirup, made a scene thai
caused us to take off our hats and thank the good Lord that the thing
hadn't overflowed enough to hurt us. But I could see dad was scared,
'cause when I wanted him to go around the edge of the crater with me,
and see the hell-roaring free show from other points of view, and
see where the hot ashes years ago rolled down and covered Pompeii and
Herculaneum, he balked and said he had seen all he wanted to, and if he
could stay alive until the next car went down the mountain, they could
all have his interest in Vesuvius, and be darned to them, but he said if
I wanted to go around looking for trouble, he would stay there under a
big rock, with the Chicago lady, and wait for me to come back. She said
she knew dad was all tired out, and needed rest, and she would stay with
him, and keep him cheered up; so I left them and went off with one
of the dagoes, to slide down hill on some flowing lava, and pick up
specimens.
Well, sir, I wish I could get along some way without telling the rest of
this sad story, but if I am going to be a historian I have got to tell
the whole blame thing.
[Illustration: And she was stroking his hair 217]
When I left dad and the Chicago woman she had produced a lunch from
somewhere about her person, and a small bottle, and they were eating and
drinking, and dad was laughing more natural than I had seen him laugh
since we run over the old woman with the automobile at Nice, and she was
smiling on dad just as though she was his sweetheart. (As I went around
the crater, a couple of blocks away, I looked back and dad had laid his
head in her lap, and she was stroking his hair. )
Well, I picked up specimens, burned the soles off my shoes wading in the
lava, and took in the volcano from all sides, and after an hour I went
back to where dad and the woman were lunching, but the woman was gone,
and dad acted as though he had been hit by an express train, his eyes
were wild, his collar was gone, his pocketbook was on the ground, empty,
his coat was gone, his scarf-pin had disappeared and the $11 watch he
bought when he was robbed the other time was missing, and dad's tongue
was run out, and he was yelling for water. I thought he had been trying
to drink some lava.
[Illustration: He was yelling for water 223]
“Dad, what in the world has happened to you?” said I, as I rushed up to
him.
“That woman has happened to me, that is all,” said dad, as he took a
swallow of water out of a canteen one of the dagoes had.
“Tell me about it, dad,” said I, trying to keep from laughing, when I
saw that he was not hurt.
“Say, let this be a lesson to you,” said dad, “and don't you steer
another woman to me on this trip. Do you know you hadn't more than got
around that big rock when she said she was tired and was going to faint,
for the altitude was too high for her, and I tried to soothe her, and
she did look pale, and, by gosh, I thought she was going to die on my
hands, and I would have to carry her corpse down the mountain. I heard
a scuffling on the rocks, and she looked up and saw a man not ten feet
away, and she said: 'Me husband!' and then she fainted and grabbed me
around the neck, and I couldn't get her loose. She just froze to me
like a person drowning, and that husband of hers, who had come up on the
last car, hunting for his wife, who had eloped, pulled a long blue gun
and told me he would give me five minutes to pray, and then he would
kill me and throw my body down in the creater, to sizzle.”
[Illustration: Pulled a long blue gun 220]
“I told him I could pay up enough ahead in three minutes, and he could
take all I had if he would loosen up his wife, and bring her to, and
take her away, and let me die all alone, and let the buzards eat me,
uncooked. He took the bet, pulled her arms away from my throat, took my
money and coat, brought her to, and said he was going to throw her into
the crater, but I told him she had certainly been good to me, and if he
would spare her life, and take her away in the cars, he could have my
watch and scarfpin, and he took them, and they went to the cars.
“She looked back at me with the saddest face I ever saw, and said:
'O, sir, it is all a terrible dream, and I will see you in Naples, and
explain all,' and now, by Christmas, I want to go back to town and find
her, and rescue her from that jealous husband,” and dad got up and we
started for the car.
The man and his wife went down on the car ahead of us, and dad wouldn't
believe they were regular bunko people, who play that game everyday on
some old sucker, but the man that runs the car told me so.
I can be responsible for dad in everything except the women he meets.
When it comes to women, your little Hennery don't know the game at all.
Yours,
Hennery.