The Bad Boy Makes Friends with Some Italian Children--Dad Is
Chased by Lions from the Coliseum--“Not Any More Rome for
Papa,” Says Dad.
Rome, Italy.--My Dear Old “Pard:” Well, sir, if you could see me now,
you wouldn't know me, because foreign travel has broadened me out so
I can talk on any subject, and people of my age look upon me as an
authority, and they surround me everywhere I go and urge me to talk.
The fact that the boys and girls do not understand a word I say makes
no difference. They do not wear many clothes here, and there is no style
about them, and when they see me with a whole suit of clothes on, and
a hat and shoes and socks, and a scarf-pin on my necktie, they think
I must be an Americano that is too rich for any use, or something that
ranks with a prince at least, and the boys delight to be with me and do
errands for me, and the girls seem to be in love with me.
There is no way you can tell if a girl is in love with you, except that
she looks at you with eyes that are as black as coal, and they seem to
burn a hole right into your insides, and when they take hold of your
hand they hang on and squeeze like alamand-left in a dance at home, and
they snug up to you and are as warm and cheerful as a gas stove.
[Illustration: It brought on a revolution 227]
Say, I sat on a bench in a plaza with a girl about my age, for an hour,
while the other girls and boys sat on the ground and looked at us in
admiration, and when I put my arm around her and kissed her on her
pouting lips, it brought on a revolution. An Italian soldier policeman
took me by the neck and threw me across the street, the girl scratched
me with her finger nails and bit me, and yelled some grand hailing sign
of distress, her brother and a ragged boy that was in love with the girl
and was jealous, drew daggers, and the whole crowd yelled murder, and I
started for our hotel on a run, and the whole population of Rome seemed
to follow me, and I might as well have been a negro accused of crime in
the states. I thought they would burn me at the stake, but dad came out
of the hotel and threw a handful of small change into the crowd, and it
was all off.
After they picked up the coin they beckoned me to come out and play some
more, but not any more for little Hennery. I have been in love in all
countries where we have traveled, and in all languages, but this Italian
love takes the whole bakery, and I do not go around any more without a
chaperone. The girls are ragged and wear shawls over their heads,
and there are holes in their dresses and their skin isn't white, like
American girls', but is what they call olive complexion, like stuffed
olives you buy in bottles, stuffed with cayenne pepper, but the girls
are just like the cayenne pepper, so warm that you want to throw water
on yourself after they have touched you. Gee, but I wouldn't want to
live in a climate where girls were a torrid zone, 'cause I should melt,
like an icicle that drops in a stove, and makes steam and blows up the
whole house.
Well, old man, you talk about churches, but you don't know anything
about it. Dad and I went to St. Peter's in Rome, and it is the grandest
thing in the world. Say, the Congregational church at home, which we
thought so grand, could be put in one little corner of St. Peter's, and
would look like 30 cents. St. Peter's covers ground about half a mile
square, and when you go inside and look at grown people on the other
side of it, they look like flies, and the organ is as big as a block of
buildings in Chicago, and when they blow it you think the last day has
come, and yet the music-is as sweet as a melodeon, and makes you want
to get down on your knees with all the thousands of good Christians of
Italy, and confess that you are a fraud that ought to be arrested.
Dad and I have been to all kinds of churches, everywhere, and never
turned a hair, but since we got to this town and got some of the
prevailing religion into our systems, we feel guilty, and it seems as
though everybody could see right into us, and that they knew we were
heathen that never knew there was a God. Sure thing, I never supposed
there were so many people in the world that worshiped their Maker, as
there are here, and I don't wonder that all over the world good people
look to Rome for the light. Dad keeps telling me that when we get home
we will set an example that will make people pay attention, but he says
he does not want to join the church until he has seen all the sights,
and then he will swear off for good.
He said to me yesterday: “Now, Hennery, I have been to all the pious
places with you, the pope's residence, the catacombs and St. Peter's,
where they preach from 40 different places and make you feel like giving
up your sins, and I have looked at carvings and decorations and marble
and jewels and seen the folly of my ways of life, and I am ripe for a
change, but before I give up the world and all of its wickedness, I want
blood. I want to go to the other extreme, and see the wild beasts at the
Coliseum tear human beings limb from limb, and drink their blood, and
see gladiators gladiate, and chop down their antagonists, and put one
foot on their prostrate necks, like they do in the theaters, and then I
am ready to leave this town and be good.”
Well, sir, I have been in lots of tight places before, but this one beat
the band. Here was my dad, who did not know that the Roman, gladiator
business had been off the boards for over 2,000 years, that the eating
of human prisoners by wild beasts in the presence of the Roman populace
was played out, and that the Coliseum was a ruin and did not exist as
a place of amusement. He thought everything that he had read about the
horrors of a Roman holiday was running to-day, as a side show, and he
wanted to see it, and I had encouraged him in his ideas, because he was
nervous, and I didn't want to undeceive him. He had come to Rome to
see things he couldn't find at home, and it was up to me to deliver the
goods.
Gee, but it made me sweat, 'cause I knew if dad did not get a show for
his money he would lay it up against me, so I told him we would go to
the Coliseum that night and see the hungry lions and tigers eat some of
the leading citizens, just as they did when Caesar run the show. Then I
found an American from Chicago at the hotel, who sells soap in Rome, and
told him what dad expected of me in the way of amusement, and he said
the only way was to take dad out to the Coliseum, and in the dark roll
a barrel of broken glass down the tiers of seats and make him believe
there was an earthquake that had destroyed the Coliseum, and that the
lions and tigers were all loose, looking for people to eat, and scare
dad and make a run back to town.
[Illustration: What dad expected of me in the way of amusement 230]
I didn't want to play such a scandalous trick on dad, but the Chicago
man said that was the only way out of it, and he could get a barrel of
broken glass for a dollar, and hire four ruffians that could roar like
lions for a few dollars, and it would give dad good exercise, and may be
save him from a run of Roman fever, 'cause there was nothing like a good
sweat to knock the fever out of a fellow's system. The thing struck me
as not only a good experience for dad, but a life saver, so I whacked up
the money, and the Chicago soap man did the rest.
After dark we went out to the ruin of the Coliseum, where a great many
tourists go to look at the ruins by moonlight, and dad was as anxious
and bloodthirsty as a young surgeon cutting up his first “stiff.”
When we got to the right place, and I told dad we were a little early,
because the nobility were not in their seats, the villains began to roar
three dollars' worth like hungry lions, and dad turned a little pale and
said that sounded like the real thing.
I told him we better not get too near, because we were not accustomed
to seeing live men chewed up by beasts, and dad said he didn't care how
near we got, as long as they chewed and tore to pieces the natives; so
we started to work up a little nearer, when there was a noise such as I
never heard before, as the hogshead of broken glass began to roll down
the tiers of stone seats, and I fell over on the ground, and pushed
dad, and he went over in the sand and struck his pants on a cactus, and
yelled that he was stabbed with a dirk.
[Illustration: Went over in the sand and struck his pants on a cactus
233]
I got up and fell down again, and just then the Chicago soap man came
up on a gallop, followed by the villains playing lion and tiger, and dad
asked the Chicago man what seemed to be the matter, and he said: “Matter
enough; there has been an earthquake, and the Coliseum has fallen down,
killing more than 10,-000 Romans, and the animals' cages are busted and
the animals are loose, looking for fresh meat, and we better get right
back to Rome, too quick, or we will be eaten alive. Come on if you are
with me. Do you hear the lions after us?” said he, as the hired villains
roared.
[Illustration: He took the lead for good old Rome 235]
Well, you'd a died to see dad get up out of that prickly cactus and take
the lead for good old Rome. I didn't know he was such a sprinter, but
we trailed along behind, roaring like lions and snarling like tigers and
yip-yapping like hyenas and barking like timber wolves, and we couldn't
see dad for the dust, on that moonlight night.
We slowed up and let dad run ahead, and he got to the hotel first, and
we paid off the villains, and finally we went in the hotel and found
dad in the bar-room puffing and drinking a high-ball. “Pretty near hell,
wasn't it,” said dad, to the soap man. “Did the lions catch anybody?”
“O, a few of the lower classes,” said the soap man, “but none of the
nobility. The nobility were in the boxes and that part of the Coliseum
never falls during an earthquake,” and the soap man joined dad in a
high-ball.
After dad got through puffing and had wiped about two quarts of
perspiration off his head and neck, and the soap man had told him what
a great thing it was to perspire in Rome, on account of the Roman fever,
that catches a man at night and kills him before morning, dad turned
to me and said: “Hennery, you go pack up and we get out of this in the
morning, for I feel as though I had been chewed by one of those hyenas.
Not any more Rome for papa,” and the high-ball party broke up, and we
went to bed to get sleep enough to leave town.
Do you know, the next morning those hired villains made the soap man and
I pay ten dollars extra on account of straining their lungs roaring
like lions? But we paid for their lungs all right, rather than have them
present a bill to dad.
Well, good-by, old man. We are getting all the fun there is going.
Your only,
Hennery.