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Peck's Bad Boy Abroad, a fiction by George W. Peck |
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Chapter 11. The Bay Boy Writes About Paris... |
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_ CHAPTER XI. The Bay Boy Writes About Paris--Tells About the Trip Across the English Channel--Dad Feeds a Dog and Gets Arrested
Say, a boat on the English channel does not roll, or pitch, at intervals, like a boat on ordinary water, but it does stunts like a broncho that has been poisoned by eating loco-weeds, and goes into the air and dives down under, and shakes itself like a black bass with a hook in its mouth, and rolls over like a trained dog, and sits up on its hind legs and begs, and then walks on its fore paws, and seems to jump through hoops, and dig for woodchucks, and all the time the water boils like 'pollinarius, full of bubbles, and it gives you the hiccups to look at it, and it flows every way at the same time, and the wind comes from the fourteen quarters at once, and blows hot if you are too hot and want a cool breeze, and if you are too cold, and want a warm breeze to keep you alive, it comes right from the north pole, and you just perish in your tracks. Gee, but it is awful. When you get seasick on an ordinary ocean, you know where to locate the disease, and you know where to go for relief, and when you have got relieved you know that you are alive, but an English channel seasickness is as different from any other as an alcohol jag is different from a champagne drunk. This English channel seasickness begins on your toes, and you feel as though the toenails were being pulled out with pincers, and the veins in your legs seem to explode, your arms wilt like lettuce in front of a cheap grocery, your head seems to be struck with a pile-driver and telescoped down into your spine, and your stomach feels as though you had swallowed a telephone pole with all of the cross arms and wires and glass insulators, and you wish lightning would strike you. Gosh, but dad was hot when he found that he was sick that way, and when we got ashore he wanted to kill the first man he met. He thinks that it is a crime for a man not to understand the English language, and when he tells what he wants, and the man he is talking to shrugs his shoulders and laughs, and brings him something else, he wants to pull his gun and begin to shoot up the town, and only for me he would have killed people before this, but now he takes it out in scowling at people who do not understand him. Dad seems to think that if he cannot make a man understand what he says, all he has to do is to swear at the man, but there is no universal language of profanity, so the more dad swears the more the nervous Frenchman smiles, and acts polite. I think the French people are the politest folks I ever knew. If a Frenchman had to kick a person out of doors, he would wear a felt slipper, and after he had kicked you he would place his hand on his heart, and bow, and look so sorry, and hurt, that you would want to give him a tip. O, but this tipping business is what is breaking dad's heart. I think if the servants would arrange a syndicate to rob dad of two or three dol lars a day, by pocket picking, or sneak thieving, he would overlook it, and say that as long as it was one of the customs of the country we should have to submit to it, but when he has paid his bill, with everything charged extra, and the servants line up and look appealingly, or mad, as the case may be, dad is the hardest man to loosen that ever was, but if they seem to look the other way, and not, apparently, care whether they get a cent or not, dad would go and hunt them up, and divide his roll with them. Dad is not what you would call a "tight wad," if you let him shed his money normally, when he feels the loosening coming on, but you try to work him by bowing and cringing, and his American spirit gets the better of him, and he looks upon the servant as pretty low down. I have told him that the tipping habit is just as bad in America as in France, but he says in America the servant acts as though he never had such a thought as getting a tip, and when you give him a quarter or other tip he looks puzzled, as though he did not just recall what he had done to merit such treatment, but finally puts the money in his pocket with an air as though he would accept it in trust, to be given to some deserving person at the first opportunity, and then he smiles, and gets away, and blows in the tip for something wet and strong. I told dad if he would just ignore the servants, as though he did not understand that they expected a tip, that he would be all right, so when we got ready to move from the hotel to private rooms dad never gave any servant a tip. Well, I don't know what the servants did to our baggage, but they must have marked it with a smallpox sign, or something, for nobody would touch it for several hours, but finally a baggage man took it and started for our apartments, and got lost and didn't show up for two days, and when it was finally landed on the sidewalk nobody would carry it upstairs, and dad and I had to lug it up two flights, and I thought dad would have apoplexy. We found a guide who could talk New Orleans English and he said it would cost three dollars to square it with the servants at the hotel, and have the boycott removed from our baggage, and dad paid it, and now he coughs up a tip every time he sees a servant look at him. He pays when he goes in a restaurant and when he comes out, and says he is cured of trying to reform the customs of anybody else's country. We have engaged a guide to stay with us day and night. The guide took us out for a bat last night, and dad had the time of his life. Dad has drank a good deal of spiritous and malt liquors in his time, but I don't think he ever indulged much in champagne at three or four dollars a bottle at home. Maybe he has been saving himself up till he got over here, where champagne is cheap and it takes several quarts to make you see angels. The guide took us to one of these bullyvards, where there are tables out on the sidewalk, and you can eat and drink and look at the dukes and counts and dutchesses and things promenading up and down, flirting like sin, and we sat down to a table and ordered things to eat and drink, and dad looked like Uncle Sam, and felt his oats. When he had drank a few thimblefuls of absinthe, and some champagne, and eat a plateful of frogs, he was just ripe for trouble. A woman and a man at an adjoining table had one of these white dogs that is sheared like a hedge fence, with spots of long hair left on in places, and dad coaxed the dog over to our table and began to feed him frogs' legs, and the woman began to talk French out loud, and look cross at dad, and the count that was with her came over to our table and looked at dad in a tone of voice that meant trouble, and said something sassy, and the guide said the man wanted to fight a duel because dad had contaminated the woman's dog, and dad got mad and offered to wipe out the whole place, and he got up with a champagne bottle and looked defiance at the count, and the waiters began to scatter, when the woman came up to dad and begged him not to hurt the count, and as she spoke broken English dad could understand her, and she looked so beautiful, and her eyes were filled with tears, and dad relented and said: "Don't cry, dear, I won't hurt the little runt." She was so glad dad was not going to kill the count that she threw herself into his arms and thanked dear America for producing such a grand citizen, such a brave man as dad, who could forego the pleasure of killing a poor, weak man who had insulted him, particularly as dad's wild Indian ancestry made it hard for him to refrain from blood. Well, dad's face was a study, as he braced up and held that 150 pounds of white meat in his arms, with all the people looking on, and he seemed proud and heroic, and he stroked her hair and told her not to worry, and finally she hied herself away from dad and the count took her away, and they went up the bullyvard, and after all was quiet again dad said: "Hennery, let this be a lesson to you. When you are tempted to commit a rash act and avenge an insult in blood, stop and think of the sorrow and shame that will come to you if you draw your gun too quick, and have a widow on your hands as the result. Suppose I had killed that shrimp, the face of his widow would have haunted me always, and I would have wanted to die. Don't ever kill anybody, my boy, if you can settle a dispute by shaking the dice." Well, dad ordered some more wine, and as he drank it, he allowed the populace to admire him and say things about the great American millionaire, who spent money like water and was too brave to fight. Then dad called for his check to pay his bill, and when he felt in his pocket for his roll of bills, he hadn't a nickel and the woman, when she was in his arms, weeding with one hand, had gone through dad's pockets with the other. Dad felt for his watch, to see what time it was, and his watch was gone, and the waiter was waiting for the money and dad tried to explain that he had been buncoed, and the head waiter came and begun to act sassy, and then they called a policeman to stay by us till the money was produced, and everybody at the other tables laughed, and dad turned blue, and I thought he would have a fit. Finally, the guide began to talk, and the result was that a policeman went home with us, and dad found money enough to pay the bill, but he talked language that caused the landlady to ask us to find a new place. The next morning the guide showed up with an officer who had a warrant for dad for hugging a woman in a public cafe, and it seemed as though we were in for it, but the guide said he could settle the whole business by paying the officer $20, and dad paid it and I think the guide and the officer divided the money. Say, this is the greatest town we have struck yet for excitement, and I guess dad will not have a chance to think of his sickness. This morning we went into a big department store, and, by gosh! we found the count that dad was going to fight was a floor-walker, and the countess was behind a counter selling soap. When dad saw the count leering at him, he put his hand on his pistol pocket and yelled a regular cowboy yell, and the count rushed down into the basement, the soap countess fainted, and the police took dad to the police station, and all day the guide and I have been trying to get him out on bail. If we get dad out of this we are going to put a muzzle on him. Well, if anyone asks you if I am having much of a time abroad, you can tell them the particulars. P. S.--We got dad out for $20 and costs, and he says he will blow Paris up before night. We are going up to the top of the Eiffel tower this afternoon, to count our money, as dad dasscnt take out his pocketbook anywhere on the ground for fear of being robbed. Yours full of frogs. Hennery. _ |
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