The Bad Boy Tells About the Land of the Czar and the Trouble
They Had to Get There--Dad Does a Stunt and Mixes It Up with
the People and Soldiers.
St. Petersburg, Russia.--My Dear Groceryow-ski: Well, sir, I 'spose
you will be surprised to hear from me in Russia, but there was no use
talking when Dad said he was going to St. Petersburg if it was the last
act of his life. He got talking with a Japaneser in Rome and the Jap
said the war in the far east would last until every Russian was killed,
unless America interfered to put a stop to it, and as Roosevelt didn't
appear to have sand enough to offer his services to the czar, what it
needed was for some representative American citizen who was brave and
had nerve to go to St. Petersburg and see the czarovitch and give him
the benefit of a good American talk. The Jap said the American who
brought about peace, by a few well chosen remarks, would be the greatest
man of the century, and would live to be bowed down to by kings and
emperors and all the world would doff hats to him.
At first dad was a little leary about going on such a mission without
credentials from Washington, but as luck would have it, he met an exiled
Russian at a restaurant, who told dad that he reminded him of Gen.
Grant, because dad had a wart on the side of his nose, and he told
dad that Russia would keep on fighting until every Japanese was killed
unless some distinguished American should be raised up who deemed it
his duty to go to St. Petersburg and see the Little Father, and in
the interest of humanity advise the czar to call a halt before he had
exterminated the whole yellow race. Dad asked the Russian if he thought
the czar would grant an audience to an American of eminence in his own
country, and the Russian told dad that Nicholas just doted on Americans,
and that there was hardly ever an American ballet dancer that went to
Russia but what the czar sent for her to come and see him and dance
before the grand dukes, and he always gave them jewels and cans of
caviar as souvenirs of their visit.
[Illustration: The Russian told dad that Nicholas just doted on
Americans 250]
Dad thought it over all night, and the next morning we started for
Russia and I wish we had joined an expedition to discover the North Pole
instead of coming here. Say, it is harder to get into Russia than it
would be to get out of a penitentiary at home. At the frontier we were
met by guards on horseback and on foot, policemen, detectives and other
grafters, who took our passports and money, and one fellow made me
exchange my socks with him. Then they imprisoned us in a stable with
some cows until they could hold a coroner's inquest on our passports and
divide our money. We slept with the cows the first night in Russia, and
I do not want to sleep again with animals that chew cuds all night, and
get up half a dozen times to hump up their backs and stretch and bellow.
We never slept a wink, and could look out through the cracks in the
stable and see the guards shaking dice for our money.
[Illustration: See the guards shaking dice for our money 253]
Finally they looked at the great seal on our passports and saw it was an
American document, and they began to turn pale, as pale as a Russian
can get without using soap, and when I said, “Washington, embassador,
minister plenipotentiary, Roosevelt, Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight, E
Pluribus Unum, whoopla, San Juan Hill,” and pointed to dad, who was just
coming out of the stable, looking like Washington at Valley Forge, the
guards and other robbers bowed to dad, gave him a bag full of Russian
money in place of that which they had taken away, and let us take a
freight train for St. Petersburg, and they must have told the train men
who we were, because everybody on the cars took off their hats to us,
and divided their lunch with us.
Dad could not understand the change in the attitude of the people
towards us until I told him that they took him for a distinguished
American statesman, and that as long as we were in Russia he must try
to look like George Washington and act like Theodore Roosevelt, so every
little while dad would stand up in the aisle of the car and pose like
George Washington and when anybody gave him a sandwich or a cigarette
he would show his teeth and say, “Deelighted,” and all the way to St.
Petersburg dad carried out his part of the programme and we were not
robbed once on the trip, but dad tried to smoke one of the cigarettes
that was given him by a Cossack, and he died in my arms, pretty near.
They make cigarettes out of baled hay that has been used for beddings
and covered with paper that has been used to poison flies. I never
smelled anything so bad since they fumigated our house by the board of
health after the hired girl had smallpox.
Well, we got to St. Petersburg in an awful time, and went to a hotel,
suspected by the police, and marked as undesirable guests by the
Cossacks, and winked at by the walking delegates and strikers, who
thought we were non-union men looking for their jobs.
The next day the religious ceremony of “blessing the Neva” took place,
where all the population gets out on the bank of the river, with
overshoes on, and fur coats, and looks down on the river, covered with
ice four feet thick, and the river is blessed. In our country the people
would damn a river that had ice four feet thick, but in Russia they
bless anything that will stand it. We got a good place on the bank of
the river, with about a million people who had sheepskin coats on,
and who steamed like a sheep ranch, and were enjoying the performance,
looking occasionally at the Winter palace, where the czar was peeking
out of a window, wondering from which direction a bomb would come to
blow him up, when a battery of artillery across the river started
to fire a salute, and then the devil was to pay. It seems that the
gentlemen who handled the guns, and who were supposed to fire blank
cartridges into the air, put in loaded cartridges, filled with grape
shot, and took aim at the Winter palace, and cut loose at Mr. Czar.
Well, you would have been paralyzed to see the change that came over
that crowd, blessing the river one minute and damning the czar and the
grand dukes the next. The shot went into the Winter palace and tore the
furniture and ripped up the ceiling of the room the czar was in, and in
a moment all was chaos, as though every Russian knew the czar was to be
assassinated at that particular moment, and all rushed toward the Winter
palace as though they expected pieces of the Little Father would be
thrown out the window for them to play football with. For a people who
are supposed to be lawful and law-abiding, and who love their rulers, it
seemed strange to see them all so tickled when they thought he was blown
higher than a kite by his own soldiers.
Dad and I started with the crowd for the Winter palace, and then we had
a taste of monarchial government. The crowd was rushing over us and dad
got mad and pulled off his coat and said he could whip any confounded
foreigner that rubbed against him with a sheepskin coat on, and he was
just on the point of smiting a fellow with whiskers that looked like
scrambled bristles off a black hog when a regiment of Cossacks came down
on the crowd, riding horses like a wild west show, and with whips in
their hands, with a dozen lashes to each whip, and they began to lash
the crowd and ride over them, while the people covered their faces with
their arms, and run away, afraid of the whips, which cut and wound and
kill, as each lash has little lead bullets fastened to them and a stroke
of the whip is like being shot with buck shot or kicked with a frozen
boot.
[Illustration: a Cossack rode right up to him and lashed him over the
back 258]
Well, sir, dad was going to show the Cossacks that he was pretty near an
American citizen and didn't propose to be whipped like a school boy by
a teacher that looked like a valentine, so he tried to look like George
Washington defying the British, but it didn't work, for a Cossack rode
right up to him and lashed him over the back (and about 15 buck shot in
his whip took dad right where the pants are tight when you bend over to
pick up something) and the Cossack laughed when dad straightened up and
started to run. I never saw such a change in a man as there was in dad.
He started for our hotel, and as good a sprinter as I am I couldn't
keep up with him, but I kept him in sight. Before we got to the hotel
a sledge came along, not an “old sledge,” such as you play with cards,
high-low-Jack-game, but a sort of a sleigh, with three horses abreast,
and I yelled to dad to take a hitch on the sledge, and he grabbed on
with his feet on the runners, and a man in the sledge with a uniform
on, who seemed to be a grand duke, 'cause everybody was chasing him
and yelling to head him off, hit dad in the nose with the butt of a
revolver, and dad fell off in the snow and the crowd that was chasing
the grand duke picked dad up and carried him on their shoulders because
they thought he had tried to assassinate the duke, and we were escorted
to our hotel by the strikers.
[Illustration: Hit dad in the nose with the butt of a revolver 255]
We didn't know what they were, but you can tell the laboring men here
because they wear blouses and look hungry, and when they left us the
landlord notified the police that suspicious characters were at the
hotel, and came there escorted by the mob, and the police surrounded the
house and dad went to our room and used witch hazel on himself where
the Cossack hit him with the loaded whip. He says Russia will pay pretty
dear for that stroke of the whip by the Cossack, and I think dad is
going to join the revolution that is going to be pulled off next Sunday.
They are going to get about a million men to take a petition to the
czar, workingmen and anarchists, and dad says he is going as an American
anarchist who is smarting from injustice, and I guess no native is
smarting more than dad is, 'cause he has to stand up to eat and lie on
his stummick to sleep. There is going to be a hades of a time here in
St. Petersburg this next week, and dad and I are going to be in it clear
up to our necks.
Dad has given up trying to see the czar about stopping the war and says
the czar and the whole bunch can go plum (to the devil) and he will die
with the mob and follow a priest who is stirring the people to revolt.
Gee, I hope dad will not get killed here and be buried in a trench with
a thousand Russians, smelling as they do.
I met a young man from Chicago, who is here selling reapers for the
harvester trust, and he says if you are once suspected of having
sympathy with the working people who are on a strike you might just as
well say your prayers and take rough on rats, 'cause the Cossacks will
get you, and he would advise me and dad to get out of here pretty quick,
but when I told dad about it he put one hand on his heart and the other
on his pants and said “Arnica, arnica, arnica!” and the police that
were on guard near his room thought he meant anarchy, and they sent four
detectives to stay in dad's room.
The people here, the Chicago young man told me, think the Cossacks are
human hyenas, that they have had their hearts removed by a surgical
operation when young, and a piece of gizzard put in in place of the
heart, and that they are natural murderers, the sight of blood acting
on them the same as champagne on a human being, and that but for the
Cossacks Russia would have a population of loving subjects that would
make it safe for the Little Father to go anywhere in Russia unattended,
but with Cossacks ready to whip and murder and laugh at suffering, the
people are becoming like men bitten by rabid dogs, and they froth at the
mouth and have spasms and carry bombs up their sleeves, ready to blow up
the members of the royal family, and there you are.
If you do not hear from me after next Sunday you can put dad's obituary
and mine in the local papers and say we died of an overdose of Cossack.
If we get through this revolution alive you will hear from me, but this
is the last revolution I am going to attend.
Yours,
Hennery.