Dad Sees a Russian Revolution and Faints--The Bad Boy
Arranges a Wolf Hunt--Dad Threatens to Throw the Boy to the
Wolves.
St. Petersburg, Russia.--My Dear Grocery-witz: Well, sir, dad and I have
got too much of Russia the quickest of any two tourists you ever heard
of. That skirmish we saw, the day the Russians blessed the Neva, and
shot blank cartridges filled with old iron at the czar, was not a marker
to the trouble the next Sunday, when the working people marched to the
Winter Palace, to present a petition to the “Little Father.”
We thought a revolution was like a play, and that it would be worth
going miles to see. Dad was in South America once when there was a
revolution, where more than a dozen greasers, with guns that wouldn't
shoot, put on a dozen different kinds of uniforms, and yelled: “Down
with the government,” and frothed at the mouth, and drank buttermilk and
yelled Spanish swear words, and acted brave, until a native soldier with
white pajamas came out with a gun and shot one of the revolutionists
in the thumb, when the revolution was suppressed and the next day the
revolutionists were pounding stone, with cannon balls chained to their
legs; and dad thought a revolution in Russia would be something like
that, and that we could get on a front porch and watch it as it went
by, and joke with the revolution, and throw confetti, like it was a
carnival, but that Sunday that the Russian revolution was begun, we had
enough blood to last us all our lives.
We got a place sitting on an iron picket fence, and we saw the people
coming up the street towards the Winter Palace, dressed mostly in
blouses, and looking as innocent as a crowd of sewer diggers at home
going up to the city hall to ask for a raise in wages of two shillings a
day. Nobody had a gun, and no one would have known how to use a gun,
and all looked like poor people going to prayers. There were troops
everywhere, and every soldier acted as though he was afraid something
would happen to spoil their chance of killing anybody. The snow on the
streets was clean and as white as the wings of a peace dove, and dad
said the show was no better than a parade of laboring men at home on
Labor day.
Suddenly some officer yelled to the parade to stop, and the priest
at the head of the procession, who was carrying a cross, slowed up a
little, like the drum major of a band when the populace at home begins
to throw eggs, but they kept on, and then the shooting began, and in a
minute men, women and children were rolling in the snow, bleeding and
dying, the marchers were too stunned to run, and the deadly guns kept on
spitting fire, and the street was full of dead and dying, and then the
Cossacks rode over the dead and sabered and knouted the living, and as
the snow was patched with red blood, dad fainted away and fell off the
picket fence, and hung by one pant leg, which caught on a picket, and
crowds rushed in every direction, and it was an hour before I could get
a drosky to haul dad to the hotel.
[Illustration: Hung by one pant leg 264]
Dad collapsed when he got to the hotel, and I got a doctor and a nurse,
and for two days I had to watch the revolution alone, while dad had fits
of remorse 'cause he brought me to such a charnel house, he said.
Well, if you ever go anywhere, traveling for pleasure, do not go to
Russia, because it is the saddest place on earth. I have seen no person
smile or laugh in all the ten days we have been here, except a Cossack
when he run a saber through a little girl, and his laugh was like the
coyote on the prairie when he captures a little lamb. The people look
either heart-broken or snarly, like the people confined in an insane
asylum at home.
The czar, who a week ago was loved by the people, who believed if they
went to him, as to their God, and appealed for guidance, is to-day hated
by all, and instead of “Nicholas the Good,” since he scampered away to a
castle in the country, and crawled under a bed, all the people call him
“the Little Jack Rabbit,” and his fate is sealed, as a bomb will blow
him into pieces so small they will have to be swept up in a dustpan for
burial, maybe before dad and I can get out of Russia.
Going to St. Petersburg for a pleasant outing is a good deal like
visiting the Chicago stockyards to watch the bloody men kill the cattle,
and the butchers in the stockyards, calloused against any feeling for
suffering animals, are like the soldiers here who shoot down their
neighbors because they are hired to do so. The murder of those unarmed
working men, that Sunday, has changed a helpless, pleading people
into anarchists with deadly bombs in their blouses, where they were
accustomed to carry black bread to sustain life, and with the menace of
Japan in the far east and an outraged people at home, Russia is in a
bad way, and if I was the czar or a grand duke, I would find a woodchuck
hole and arrange with the woodchuck for a furnished flat.
I didn't think there was going to be anything going on in Russia except
bloodshed and bombs, and things to make you sorry that you were here,
and I was willing to take chloroform and let them carry me home in a
box, with my description on the cover, until the doctor told me that dad
was in a condition of nervousness, that he needed something to happen to
get his mind off of the awful scenes he had witnessed, and asked me if I
couldn't think of something to excite him and wake him up, and then dad
said, after he got so he could go out doors: “Hennery, you have always
been Johnny on the spot when I needed diversion, and I want you to take
your brain apart, and oil the works, and see if you can't conjure up
something to get my blood circulating and my pores open for business,
and anything you think of goes, and I swear I will not kick if you scare
the boots off of me.”
Well, that was right into my hand; and I set my mind to strike at four
p. m. I had been out riding once with the Chicago man, in a sledge, with
three horses abreast, all runaway horses, and the driver was a Cossack
who lashed the horses into a run every smooth place he found in the
road, and it was like running to a fire, so I got the Chicago fellow
to go with me and we found the Cossack, and he was drunker than usual.
There is a kind of liquor here called vodka, which skins wood alcohol
and carbolic acid to a finish, and when a man is full of it he is so mad
he wants to cut his own throat. This driver had put up sideboards on his
neck and had two jags in one, and we hired him by the hour.
I told the Chicago man the circumstances and that I had got to get dad
out of his trance, and he said he would help me. When I was out riding
the day before I noticed that the road was full of great dane dogs, wolf
hounds and stag hounds, which followed their master's sledges out in
the country, and the dogs loafed around, hungry, looking for bones, and
fighting each other, so I decided to get the dogs to chase our sledge
and make dad think we were chased by wolves. I thought that would make
dad stand without hitching, and it did.
The Chicago man bought some cannon firecrackers, and I bought a cow's
liver, and hitched it to a rope, and hid it in the back seat, and my
Chicago friend and I took the back seat, and we got dad in the seat
behind the driver, and started about an hour before dark out in the
country, through a piece of woods that looked quite wolfy. On the way
out the driver let his horses run away a few times, like you have seen
in Russian pictures, and dad was beginning to sit up and take notice,
and seemed to act like a man who expects every minute to be thrown over
a precipice and mixed up with dead horses. Dad touched the driver once
on the coat-tail and told him not to hurry so confounded fast, and the
driver thought he was complaining because it was too slow, and he gave
a Comanche yell and threw the lines into the air, and the horses just
skedaddled, and run into a snow bank and tipped over the sledge, and
piled us out on top of dad, but dad only said: “This is getting good.”
[Illustration: Piled us out on top of dad 269]
We righted up, and dad wanted to know where all the pups came from that
we had passed. I had been throwing out pieces of meat into the road for
a mile or so, and the dogs were having a picnic. It was getting pretty
dark by this time, and we started back to town, and I threw out my
liver, fastened to the rope, and the Chicago man, who had given the
driver a drink of vodka when we tipped over, told him, in Russian, that
when the dogs began to follow us, to get hold of the liver, to yell
“wolves,” and give the team the rein, for a five-mile run, and yell all
the time, because we wanted to give the old gentleman a good time.
Well, uncle, I would have given anything if you could have seen dad,
when the dogs began to chase that liver, and bark and fight each other.
The driver yelled something in Russian, and pointed back with his whip,
the Chicago man said: “My God, we are pursued by a pack of ravenous
wolves, and there is no hope for us,” and I began to cry, and implored
dad, if he loved me, to save me.
[Illustration: Dad stood up in the sledge 267]
[Illustration: Pursued by a pack of ravenous wolves 271]
Dad stood up in the sledge and looked back, and saw the wolves, and
he was scared, but he said the only thing to do was to throw something
overboard for them to be chewing on while we got away, but he sat down
and pulled a robe over his head and his lips were moving, but I do not
know whom he was addressing.
The Chicago man touched off a couple of cannon firecrackers behind the
sledge, but that only kept the dogs back for a minute, and dad said
probably the best thing to do was to throw me overboard and let them eat
me, and I said: “Nay, nay, Pauline,” and then I think dad fainted away,
for he never peeped again until the team had run away a lot more, and
I cut my liver rope, and when we got into the suburbs of St. Petersburg
the dogs had overtaken the liver, and were fighting over it.
The driver had to pull up his horses as we struck the town, and dad must
have got a whiff of the driver's vodka, because he come to, and we
got to the hotel all right, and I thought dad would simply die in his
tracks, but the ride and the excitement did him good, and he wanted to
buy a gun and go out wolf hunting the next day, but our tickets were
bought and we shall get out of this terrible country to-morrow.
Dad woke me, up in the night and wanted to know if I saw him when he
pulled his knife and wanted to get out and fight the pack of wolves
single-handed. I am not much of a liar, but I told him I remembered it
well, and it demonstrated to me that he was as brave a man as the czar,
“the Little Jack Rabbit,” as his people call him.
Well, thanks to my wolf hunt, dad is all right again, and now we shall
go to some country where there is peace. I don't know where we will find
it, but if such a country exists, your little Henry will catch on, if
dad's money holds out.
Yours, covered with Gore.
Hennery.