The Bad Boy Writes of Spain--They Call on the King And the
Bad Boy is at it Once More--They See a Bull Fight and Dad
Does a Turn.
Madrid, Spain.--My Dear Uncle: You probably think we are taking our
lives in our hands by coming to Spain, so soon after the Cuban war, in
which President Roosevelt charged up San Juan Hill, in the face of over
thirty bloodthirsty Spaniards, and captured the blockhouse on the
summit of the hill, which was about as big as a switchman's shanty, and
wouldn't hold two platoons of infantry, of twelve men to the platoon,
without crowding, and which closed the war, after the navy had
everlastingly paralyzed the Spanish vessels, and sunk them in wet water,
and picked up the crews and run them through clothes-wringers to dry
them out; but we are as safe here as we would be on South Clark street,
in Chicago. Do you know, when I read of that charge of our troops up San
Juan hill, headed by our peerless bear-hunter, I thought it was like the
battle of Gettysburg, where hundreds of thousands of men fought on each
side, and I classed Roosevelt with Grant, Sheridan, Sherman, Meade and
Thomas, and all that crowd, but one day I got talking with a veteran of
the Spanish-American war, who promptly deserted after every pay day, and
re-enlisted after he had spent his money, and he didn't do a thing to my
ideas of the importance of that battle. He told me it was only a
little skirmish, like driving in a picket post, and that there were not
Spaniards enough there to have a roll call, not so many Spanish soldiers
as there were American newspaper correspondents on our side, that only a
few were killed and wounded, and that a dozen soldiers in an army wagon
could have driven up San Juan hill with firecrackers and scared the
Spaniards out of the country, and that a part of a negro regiment did
pretty near all the shooting, while our officers did the yelling, and
had their pictures taken, caught in the act. So I have quit talking of
the heroism of our army in Cuba, because it makes everybody laugh and
they speak of Shaffer and Roosevelt, and hunch up their shoulders, and
say, “bah,” but when you talk about the navy, and Schley, and Sampson,
and Clark, and Bob Evans, they take off their hats and their faces are
full of admiration, and they say, “magnificent,” and ask you to take a
drink. Gee, but dad got his foot in it by talking about the blowing up
of the Maine, and looking saucy, as though he was going to get even with
the Spaniards, but he found that every Spaniard was as sorry for that
accident as we were, and they would take off their hats when the Maine
was mentioned, and look pained and heart-sick. I tell you the Spaniards
are about as good people as you will find anywhere, and dad has
concluded to fall back on Christopher Columbus for a steady diet
of talk, cause if it had not been for Chris we wouldn't have been
discovered to this day, which might have been a darn good thing for us.
But the people here do not recall the fact that there ever was a man
named Christopher Columbus, and they don't know what he ever discovered,
or where the country is that he sailed away to find, unless they are
educated, and familiar with ancient history, and only once in a while
will you find anybody that is educated. The children of America know
more about the history of Spain than the Spanish children. This country
reminds you of a play on the stage, the grandees in their picturesque
costumes, though few in number, compared to the population, are the
whole thing, and the people you see on the stage with the grandees, in
peasant costume, peddling oranges and figs, you find here in the life
of Spain, looking up to the grandees as though they were gods. Every
peasant carries a knife in some place, concealed about him, and no two
carry their toad stabbers in the same place. If you see a man reach his
finger under his collar to scratch his neck, the chances are his fingers
touch the handle of his dagger, and if he hitches up his pants, his
dagger is there, and if he pulls up his trousers leg to scratch for a
flea, you can bet your life his knife is right handy, and if you have
any trouble you don't know where the knife is coming from, as you do
about an American revolver, when one of our citizens reaches for his
pistol pocket. Spaniards are nervous people, on the move all the time,
and it is on account of fleas. Every man, woman and child contains more
than a million fleas, and as they can't scratch all the time, they keep
on the move, hoping the fleas will jump off on somebody else. When we
came here we were flealess, but every person we have come near to seems
to have contributed some fleas to us, until now we are loaded down
with them, and we find in our room at the hotel a box of insect powder,
which, is charged in with the candles. The king, who is a boy about
three years older than I am, is full of fleas, too, and he jumps around
from one place to another, like he was shaking himself to get rid of
them. He gets up in the morning and goes out horseback riding, and jumps
fences and rides tip and down the marble steps of the public buildings,
as though he wanted to make the fleas feel in danger, so they will
leave him. Seems to me if every man kept as many dogs as they do in
Constantinople, the fleas would take to the dogs, but they say here that
fleas will leave a dog to get on a human being, because they like the
smell of garlic, as every Spaniard eats garlic a dozen times a day. They
are trying to teach dogs to eat garlic, but no self-respecting dog will
touch it. We have had to fill up on garlic in order to be able to talk
with the people, cause dad got sea sick the first day here, everybody
smelled so oniony. Dad wanted a druggist to put up onions in capsules,
like they do quinine, so he could take onions and not taste them, but
he couldn't make the man understand. There ought to be a law against any
person eating onions, unless he is under a death sentence. But you can
stand a man with the onion habit, after you get used to it. It is a
woman, a beautiful woman, one you would like to have take you on your
lap and pet you, that ought to know better than to eat onions. Gee, but
when you see a woman that is so beautiful it makes her ache to carry her
beauty around, and you get near to her and expect to breathe the odor of
roses and violets, that makes you tired when she opens her mouth to say
soft words of love, and there comes to your nostrils the odor of onions.
Do you know, nothing would make me commit suicide so quick as to have
a wife who habitually loaded herself with onions. Dad was buying some
candy for me at a confectioner shop, of a beautiful Spanish woman, and
when he asked how much it was, she bent over towards him in the most
bewitching manner and breathed in his face and said, “Quatro-realis,
seignor,” which meant “four bits, mister,” and he handed her a
five-dollar gold piece, and went outdoors for a breath of fresh air, and
let her keep the change. He said she was welcome to the four dollars and
fifty cents if she would not breathe towards him again.
[Illustration: Breathed in his face 339]
Well, we have taken in the town, looked at the cathedrals, attended the
sessions of the cortez, and thew gambling houses, saw the people sell
the staple products of the country, which are prunes, tomatoes and wine.
The people do not care what happens as long as they have a quart of
wine. In some countries the question of existence is bread, but in Spain
it is wine. No one is so poor they cannot have poor wine, and with wine
nothing else is necessary, but a piece of cheese and bread helps the
wine some, though either could be dispensed with. In some countries
“wine, women and song” are all that is necessary to live. Here it is
wine, cheese and an onion. We went to see the king, because he is such
a young boy, and dad thought it would encourage the ruler to see an
American statesman, and to mingle with an American boy who could give
him cards and spades, and little casino, and beat him at any game. I
made dad put on a lot of badges we had collected in our town when there
were conventions held there, and when they were all pinned on dad's
breast he looked like an admiral. There was a badge of Modern Woodmen,
one of the Hardware Dealers' Association, one of the Wholesale
Druggists, one of the Amalgamated Association of Railway Trainmen, one
of the Farmers' Alliance, one of the Butter and Cheese-men's Convention,
one of the State Undertakers' Guild, and half a dozen others in brass,
bronze and tin, on various colored ribbons. Say, do you know, when they
ushered us into the throne room at the palace, and the little king, who
looked like a student in the high school, with dyspepsia from
overstudy and cake between meals, saw dad, he thought he was the most
distinguished American he had ever seen, and he invited dad up beside
him on the throne, and dad sat in the chair that the queen will sit
in when the boy king gets married, and I sat down on a front seat and
watched dad. Dad had read in the papers that the boy king wanted to
marry an American girl who was the possessor of a lot of money, so dad
began to tell the king of girls in America that were more beautiful than
any in the world, and had hundreds of millions of cold dollars, and an
appetite for raw kings, and that he could arrange a match for the king
that would make him richer than any king on any throne. The boy king was
becoming interested, and I guess dad would have had him married off all
right, if the king had not seen me take out a bag of candy and begin to
eat, when he said to me, “Come up here, Bub, and give me some of that.”
Gosh, but I trembled like a leaf, but I went right up the steps of the
throne and handed him the bag, and said, “Help yourself, Bub.” Well,
sir, the queerest thing happened. I had bought two pieces of candy
filled with cayenne pepper, for April fool, and the king handed the bag
to the master of ceremonies, a big Spaniard all covered over with gold
lace, and if you will believe me the king got one piece of the cayenne
pepper candy, and that spangled prime minister got the other, and the
king chewed his piece first, and he opened his mouth like a dog that has
picked up a hot boiled egg and he blew out his breath to cool his tongue
and said, “Whoosh,” and strangled, and sputtered, and then the prime
minister he got his, and he yelled murder in Spanish, and the king
called for water, and put his hands on his stomach and had a cramp, and
the other man he tied himself up in a double bowknot, and called for
a priest, and the king said he would have to go to the chapel, and the
fellows who were guarding the king took him away, breathing hard, and
red in the face, and dad said to me, “What the bloody hell you trying to
do with the crowned heads? Cause you have poisoned the whole bunch, and
we better get out.”
[Illustration: The king got one piece of the cayenne pepper candy 347]
So we went out of the palace while the king's retainers were filling him
with ice water. Well, they got the cayenne pepper out of him, because we
saw him at the bull fight in the afternoon, but for a while he had the
hottest box there ever was outside of a freight train, and if he lives
to be as old as Mr. Methuselah he will always remember his interview
with little Hennery. The bull fights ain't much. Bulls come in the
ring mad as wet hens, cause they stick daggers in them, and they bellow
around, and the Spaniards dodge and shake red rags at them, and after a
bull has ripped a mess of bowels out of a few horses, then a man with a
saber stabs the bull between the shoulders, and he drops dead, and the
crowd cheers the assassin of the bull, and they bring in another bull.
Well, sir, dad came mighty near his finish at the bull fight. When the
second bull came in, and ripped the stomach out of a blind horse, and
the bull was just charging the man who was to stab it, dad couldn't
stand it any longer and he climbed right over into the ring, and he
said: “Look a here, you heathen; I protest, in the name of the American
Humane Society, against this cruelty to animals, and unless this
business stops right here I will have this place pulled, and------”
[Illustration: Dad couldn't stand it any longer 343]
Well, sir, you would of thought that bull would have had sense enough
to see that dad was his friend, but he probably couldn't understand what
dad was driving at, for he made a rush for dad, and dad started to run
for the fence, and the bull caught dad just like dad was sitting in a
rocking chair, and tossed him over the fence, and dad's pants stayed
on the bull's horns, and dad landed in amongst a lot of male and female
grandees and everybody yelled, “Bravo, Americano,” and the police
wrapped a blanket around dad's legs and were going to take him to the
emergency hospital, but I claimed dad, and took him to the hotel. Dad is
ready to come home now. He says he is through.
Yours,
Hennery.
[Illustration: Dad's pants stayed on the bull's horns 349]