Peck's Bad Boy Abroad Part 14

Well, so long, old Pummernickel.

Your only,

Hennery.

CHAPTER XXIX.

The Bad Boy Writes from Brussels--He and Dad see the Field of Waterloo and call on King Leopold and Dad and the King go in for a Swim--The Bad Boy, a Dog and some Goats do the rest.

Brussels, Belgium.--Dear Old Skate: "What is the matter with our going to Belgium?" said dad to me, as we were escaping from Germany. "Well, what in thunder do we want to go to Belgium for?" said I to dad. "I do not want to go to a country that has no visible means of support, except raising Belgian hares, to sell to cranks in America. I couldn't eat rabbits without thinking I was chewing a piece of house cat, and rabbits is the chief food of the people. I have eaten horse and mule in Paris, and wormy figs in Turkey, and embalmed beef fried in candle grease in Russia, and sausage in Germany, imported from the Leutgart sausage factory in Chicago, where the man run his wife through a sausage machine; and stuff in Egypt, with ground mummy for curry powder, but I draw the line on Belgian hares, and I strike right here, and shall have the International Union of Amalgamated Tourists declare a boycott on Belgium, by gosh," said I, just like that, bristling up to dad real s.p.u.n.ky.

"You are going to Belgium all right," said dad, as he took hold of my thumb in a Jiu Jitsu fashion, and twisted it backwards until I fairly penuked, and held it, while he said he should never dare go home without visiting King Leopold's kingdom, and had a talk with an eighty-year-old male flirt, who had a thousand chorus girls on his staff, and could give the Sultan of Turkey cards and spades and little casino in the harem game. "You will go along, won't you, bub?" and he gave my thumb another twist, and I said, "You bet your life, but I won't do a thing to you and Leopold before we get out of the Belgian hare belt," and so here we are, looking for trouble.

It is strange we never hear more about Belgium in America, but actually I never heard of a Belgian settling in the United States. There are Irish, and Germans, and Norwegians, and Italians, and men of all other countries, but I never saw a Belgian until to-day, and it does you good to see a people who don't do anything but work. There is not a loafer in Belgium, and every man has s.m.u.t on his nose, and his hands are black with handling iron, or something. There is no law against people going away from Belgium, but they all like it here, and seem to think there is no other country, and they are happy, and work from choice.

"Began to sell dad relics of the Battle of Waterloo."

I always knew the Belgian guns that sell in America for twelve shillings, and kill at both ends, but I never knew they made things here that were worth anything, but dad says they are better fixed here for making everything used by civilized people than any country on earth, and I am glad to be here, cause you get notice when you are going to be robbed. They ring a bell here every minute to give you notice that some one is after the coin, so when you hear a bell ring, if you hang onto your pocketbook, you don't lose.

This is the place where "There was a sound of revelry at night, and Belgium's capitol had gathered there." You remember, the night before the Battle of Waterloo, when Napoleon Bonaparte got his. You must remember about it, old man, just when they were right in the midst of the dance, and "soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again," and they were taking a champagne bath, inside and out, when suddenly the opening guns of Waterloo, twelve miles away, began to boom, and the poet, who was present, said, "But hush, hark, a deep sound like a rising knell," and everybody turned pale and began to stampede, when the floor manager said, "'Tis but the wind, or the car on the stony street, on with the dance, let joy be unconfined, no sleep till morn, when youth and pleasure meet, to chase the glowing hours with flying feet."

Well, sir, this is the place where that ball took place, which is described in the piece I used to speak in school, but I never thought I would be here, right where the dancers got it in the neck. When dad found that the battlefield of Waterloo was only a few miles away, he hired a wagon and we went out there. Well, sir, of all the frauds we have run across on this trip the battlefield of Waterloo is the worst. When the farmers who are raising barley and baled hay on the battlefield, saw us coming, they dropped their work and made a rush for us, and one fellow yelled something in the Belgian language that sounded like, "I saw them first," and he got hold of dad and me, and the rest stood off like a lot of hack drivers that have seen a customer fall into the hands of another driver, and made up faces at us, and called the farmer who had caught us the vilest names. They said we would be skinned to a finish by the faker who got us, and they were right.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 368 began to sell things to dad]

He showed us from a high hill, where the different portions of the battle were fought, and where they caught Napoleon Bonaparte, and where Blucher came up and made things hum in the German language, and then he took us off to his farm where the most of the relics were found, and began to sell things to dad, until he had filled the hind end of the wagon with bullets and grape-shot, sabres and bayonets, old rusty rifles, and everything dad wanted, and we had enough to fill a museum, and when the farmer had got dad's money we went back to Brussels, and got our stuff unloaded at the hotel. Say, when we came to look it over we found two rusty Colt's revolvers, and guns of modern construction, which have been bought on battlefields in all countries, and properly rusted to sell to tourists. I showed dad that the revolver was unknown at the time of the battle of Waterloo, and that every article he had bought was a fraud, the sabers having been made in America, before the war of the rebellion, and dad was mad, and gave the stuff to the porter of the hotel, who charged dad seven dollars for taking it away.

Dad kept one three-cornered hat that the farmer told him Bonaparte lost when his horse stampeded with him, and it drifted under a barbed wire fence, where it had lain until the day before we visited the battlefield. Say, that hat is as good as new, and dad says it is worth all the stuff cost, but I would not be found dead wearing it, cause it is all out of style.

We have seen the King of Belgium, and actually got the worth of our money. He is an old dandy, and looks like a Philadelphia Quaker, only he is not as pious as a Quaker. Dad wrote to the King and said he was a distinguished American, traveling for his health, and had a niece who had frequently visited Belgium with an opera company, and she had spoken of the King, and dad wanted to talk over matters that might be of interest both to Belgium and to America. Well, the messenger came back and said dad couldn't get to the palace a minute too quick, and so we went over, and as we were going through the park we saw an old man, in citizen's clothes, sitting on a bench, patting the head of a boar hound, and when he saw us he said, "Come here, Uncle Sam, and let my dog chew your pants." Dad thought it must be some lunatic, and was going to make a sneak, and get out, when the man rose up and we saw it was the King, and we went up to him and sat down on the bench, and he asked dad if he had come as the relative of the opera singer, to commence suit against the King for breach of promise, or to settle for a money consideration, remarking that he had always rather pay cash than to have any fuss made about these little matters. Dad told him he had no claim against him for alienating anybody's affections, or for breach of promise, and that all he wanted was to have a little talk with the King, and find out how a King lived, and how he had any fun in running the king business, at his age, and they sat down and began to talk as friendly as two old chums, while the dog played tag with me. We found that the King was a regular boy, and that instead of his mind being occupied by affairs of state, or his African concessions in the Congo country, where he owns a few million slaves who steal ivory for him, and murder other tribes, he was enjoying life just as he did when he was a barefooted boy, fishing for perch at the old mill pond, and when he mentioned his career as a boy, and his enjoyments, dad told about his youth, and how he never got so much pleasure in after life as he did when he had a stone bruise on his heel, and went off into the woods and cut a tamarack pole and caught sunfish till the cows came home.

The King brightened up and told dad he had a pond in the palace grounds, stocked with old-fashioned fish, and every day he took off his shoes and rolled up his pants, and with nothing on but a shirt and pants held up by one suspender of striped bed ticking, he went out in a boat and fished as he did when a boy, with a bent pin for a hook, and he was never so happy as when so engaged, and they could all have their grand functions, and b.a.l.l.s, and dinners, and Turkish baths, if they wanted them, but give him the old swimming hole. "Me, too," said dad, and as dad looked down into the park he saw a little lake, and dad held up two fingers, just as boys do when they mean to say, "Come on, let's go in swimming," and the King said, "I'll go you," and they locked arms and started through the woods to the little lake, and the dog and I followed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Dad and Leopold make a rush for that swimming place 372]

Well, sir, you'd a dide to see dad and Leopold make a rush for that swimming place. The King put his hand in the water, and said it was fine, and began to peel his clothes off, and dad took off his clothes and the King made a jump and went in all over, and came up with his eyes full of water, strangling because he did not hold his nose, and then dad made a leap and splashed the water like an elephant had fallen in, and there those two old men were in the lake, just like kids.

[Ill.u.s.tration: I'll swim you a match to the other side 378]

"I'll swim you a match to the other side," said the King. "It's a go,"

said dad, and they started porpoising across the little lake, and then I thought it was time there was something doing; so I got busy and tied their clothes in knots so tight you couldn't get them untied without an act of parliament. They went ash.o.r.e on the opposite side of the lake, cause some women were driving through the grounds, and then I found a flock of goats grazing on the lawn, and the dog and I drove them to where the clothes were tied in knots, and when the goats began to chew the clothes I took the dog and went back to the entrance of the park, and dad and the King swam back to where the clothes and the goats were, and when they drove the goats away, and couldn't untie the knots, the King gave the grand hailing sign of distress, or something, and the guards of the palace and some cavalry came on the run, and the park seemed filled with an army, and I bid the dog good-bye, and went back to the hotel alone and waited for dad.

[Ill.u.s.tration: When the goats began to chew the clothes 375]

Dad didn't get back till after dark, and when he came he had on a suit of the King's clothes, too tight around the stomach, and too long in the legs, cause dad is pusey, and the King is long-geared. "Did you have a good time, dad?" says I, and he said, "Haven't you got any respect for age, condemn you? The King has ordered that you be fed to the animals in the zoo." I told him I didn't care a darn what they did with me; I had been brought up to tie knots in clothes when I saw people in swimming, and I didn't care whether they were crowned heads or just plain dubs, and I asked dad how they got along when their clothes were chewed up. He said the soldiers covered them with pouches and got them to the palace, and they had supper, he and the King, and the servants brought out a lot of clothes and he got the best fit he could. I asked him if the King was actually mad, and he said no, that he always enjoyed such things, and wanted dad and I to come the next day and go fishing with him, barefooted. Say, dad can go, but I wouldn't be caught by that King on a bet. He would get even, sure, cause he has a look in his eye like they have in a sanitarium. Not any king business for your little Hennery.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

The Bad Boy's Delayed Letter about Holland and Cuba--Dad and the Boy go for a Drive in a Dogcart--They have a Great Time-- Land in Cuba and See the Island t we Fought for.

Havana, Cuba. My Dear Old Greaser: We stopped in Holland for a couple of days after we left Belgium, and it was the most disappointing country we visited on our whole trip. We expected to be walked on with wooden shoes, and from what we had heard of that Duke that married Queen Wilhelmina, we thought we were going to a country where men were cruel to their wives, and swatted them over the head when things didn't go right, but when we saw the queen riding with her husband, as free, from ostentation as a department store clerk would ride out with his cash girl wife, and saw happiness beaming on the face of the queen and her husband, and saw them squeeze hands and look lovingly into each other's eyes, we made up our minds that you couldn't believe these newspaper scandals. And when we saw the broad-shouldered, broad-chested and broad-everywhere women of Holland we concluded that it would be a brave or reckless husband who would be unkind to one of them, and mighty dangerous because the women are stronger than the men, and any woman could whip four men at the drop of the hat, because she could take off her wooden shoes and strike out and a man would think he had been hit by a railroad tie.

Ill.u.s.tration: Any woman could whip four men at the drop of the hat 388

I do not know what makes Hollanders wear wooden shoes, unless they are sentenced to do it, or that they are unruly, and have to be hobbled, to keep them from jumping fences, but the people are so good and honest that after you have met them you forget the vaudeville feature of their costumes, and love them, and wish the people of other countries were as honest as they. For two or three days we were not robbed, and I do not believe there is a dishonest man or woman in Holland, except one. There was one woman that played it on dad in Amsterdam, but I think she only played him for a sucker for a joke, for she laughed all the time.

Dad was much struck at seeing the women selling milk from little carts, hauled by teams of big dogs, and he negotiated with a woman for a dog team and cart, and all one day dad and I put on wooden shoes, and Dutch clothes and drove the dog team around town, and we had the time of our lives, more fun than I ever had outside of a circus, but the shoes skinned our feet, and when the dogs laid down to rest, and dad couldn't talk dog language to make them get up and go ahead, he kicked the off dog with his wooden shoe, and the dog got up and grabbed a mouthful of dad's ample pants and shook dad till his teeth were loose.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Grabbed a mouthful of dad's ample pants 386]

A woman driving another mess of dogs had to come and choke the off dog so he wouldn't swallow dad, pants and all. Dad gave her a dollar for rescuing him, and what do you think? Say, she pulled an old stocking of money out of her bosom and counted out ninety-six cents in change and gave it back to dad, and only charged four cents for saving his life, and that couldn't occur in any other country, cause in most places they would take the dollar and strike him for more.

Dad wanted to take the dog team and cart to Milwaukee to give it to a friend who sells red hot weiners, and so we arranged to have the team loaded on the boat, but just before the boat sailed, the dog team was lying down on the dock, sleeping and scratching flees, when the woman dad bought the team of came along and spoke to the dogs in Dutch, and, say, those dogs woke up and started on a regular runaway down the dock, after the laughing woman, and disappeared up the street. Just as the boat whistled to pull in the gang planks, dad and I stood on deck and saw the team disappear, and dad said, "Buncoed again, by gosh, and it is all your condemned fault. Why didn't you hang on to that off dog." Well, we lost our dog team, but we got the worth of our money, for we saw a people who do not eat much beside cabbage and milk, and they are the strongest in the world, and there never was a case of dyspepsia in their country. We saw a people with stone bruises on their heels and corns on their toes, smiling and laughing all the time. We met a people that work all the time, and never take any recreation except churning and rocking babies, and yet never have to call a doctor, because there are no doctors except veterinary surgeons, who care for dogs and cattle.

The people we met in Holland wear wooden shoes to teach them patience and humility. With wooden shoes no frenzied financier of Holland will ever travel the fast road of speculation, slip on a bucket-shop banana peel, and fall on the innocent bystander who has coughed up his savings and given them to the honest financier to safely invest.

The bank of Holland is an old woolen stock ing, and money never comes out of the stocking unless there is a string to it, and the string is the heart string of an honest people, that will stand no trifling. If a dishonest financier came to Holland from any other country, and did any of his dirty work, the women of Holland, who handle the funds, would give him such a hazing that he would never open his three-card monte lay-out in any other country.

It is a country where you get the right change back, and the cows give eighteen carat milk, and the hens have not learned to lay small, cold storage eggs. It is the country for me, if the women would wear corsets, and not be the same size all the way down, so that if you hugged a girl you wouldn't make a dent in her, that would not come out until she got her breath.

And we left such a country and such a people, to come here to Cuba, where the population now comprises the meanest features of the desperate and wicked Spaniards, beaten at their own game of loot, the trickiness of the native Cuban, flushed with pride because his big American brother helped him to drive away the Spaniard that he could never have gotten rid of alone, and with no respect for the American who helped, and only meets him respectfully because he is afraid of being thrown into the ocean if he is impudent, and the worst cla.s.s of Yankee grafters and highway robbers that have ever been allowed to stray away from the land of the free. That is what Cuba is to-day.

Soulless Yankee corporations have got hold of most of the branches of business that there is any money in, and the things that do not pay and never can be made to pay, are for sale to tenderfeet. The cuban hates the Yankee, the Yankee hates the Cuban, and the Spaniard hates both, and both hate him. In Havana your hotel, owned by a Cuban, run by a Yankee, with a Spanish or Portuguese cashier, will take all the money you bring into it for a bed at night, and hold your baggage till your can cable for money to buy breakfast. It is a "free country," of course, run by men who will fly high as long as they can borrow money for some one else to pay after they are dead, but within ten years the taxes will eat the people so they will be head over heels in debt to the Yankee and the Spaniard, the German and the Englishman, the Frenchman and the Italian, and some day warships will sail into Havana harbor, over the submerged bones of the "Maine," and there will be a fight for juicy morsels of the Cuban dead horse, by the congregated buzzards of strange navies, unless they shall shake the dice for the carca.s.s, and by carefully loading the dice saw the whole thing off on to Uncle Sam, and make him pay the debts of the deceased republic, and act as administrator for the benefit of the children of the sawed off republic, whose only a.s.set now is climate that feels good, but contains germs of all diseases, and tobacco that smells good when it is in conflagration under your nose, and does not kill instantly if it is pasted up in a Wisconsin wrapper, that is the pure goods. If tobacco ever ceases to be a fad with the rich consumer of fifty-cent cigars, and beet sugar is found to contain no first aid to Bright's disease, Cuba will amount to about as much as Dry Tortugas, which has purer air, and the Isle of Pines, which has more tropical scenery and less yellow fever. But now the Island of Cuba is a joy, and Havana is like Heaven, until you come to pay your bill, when it is h.e.l.l.

Streets so wide you cannot see a creditor on the other side, pavements as smooth as the road to perdition, and tropical trees, plants and flowers, with birds of rare plumage, you feel like sitting on a cold bench in the shade, and wishing all your friends were here to enjoy a taste of what will come to those who are truly good, in the hereafter, when suddenly you are taken with a chill up the spinal column, and a cold sweat comes out on the forehead, and the internal arrangements go on a strike because of the cold, perspiring cuc.u.mber you had for lunch, and you go to the doctor, who does not do a thing to you, but scare you out of your boots by talking of cholera, and giving you the card of his partner, the undertaker, telling you never to think of dying in a tropical country without being embalmed, because you look so much better when you are delivered at your home by the express company, and then he gives you pills and a bill, and an alarm clock that goes off every hour to take a pill by, and furnishes you an officer to go home to your hotel with you to collect his bill, and you p.a.w.n your watch and sleeve b.u.t.tons for a steerage ticket to New York, where you arrive as soon as the Lord will let you, and stay as long as He thinks is good for you.

Dad has not been much good in Havana, cause he wanted to see the whole business in one day. He got a row boat and went out in the harbor to where the back-bone of the "Maine" acts as a monument to the fellows who yet sleep in the mud of the bottom, and after tying a little American flag on the rigging that sticks up above the water, and d.a.m.ning the villains who blew up the good ship, we went back to town and drove out to the cemetery where several hundred of our boys are buried, where we left flowers on the graves and a cuss in the balmy air for the guilty wretches who fired the bomb, and then we went back to the city and walked the beautiful streets, until dad began to have cramps, from trying to eat all the fruit he could hold, and then it was all off, and I was going to call a carriage to take him to the hotel, when dad saw a negro astride a single ox, hitched to a cart, who had come in from the country, and dad said he wanted to ride in that cart, if it was the last act of his life, and as dad was beginning to swell up from the fruit he had eaten, I thought he better ride in an open cart, cause in a carriage he might swell up so we couldn't get him out of the door when we got to the hotel, so I hired the negro, got dad in the cart, and we started, but the ox walked so slow I was afraid we would never get dad there alive, so I told the negro dad had the cholera, and that settled, for he kicked the slats of the ox in with his heels, and the ox bellowed and run away, and the negro turned pale from fright, and I guess the runaway ride on the cobble stone pavement was what saved dad's life, for the swelling in dad's inside began to go down, and when we got to the hotel he got out of the cart alone, and I knew he was better, for he shook himself, gulluped up wind, and said, "You think you are smart, don't you?" So I will close.

Yours,

Hennery.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The ox bellowed and run away 382]