Chapter 16. The Bad Boy Writes From Naples...

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_ CHAPTER XVI. The Bad Boy Writes from Naples--Dad Sees Vesuvius and Calls the Servants to Put Out the Fire--They Have Trouble with a "Dago" in Pompeii

Naples, Italy.--Dear Old Partner in Crime: Well, sir, we have struck a place that reminds us of home, and your old grocery store. The day we got here dad and I took a walk into the poorer districts, where they throw all the slops and refuse in the streets, and where nobody ever seems to clean up anything and burn it. The odor was something that you cannot describe without a demonstration, and after we had turned pale and started to go away, dad said the smell reminded him of something at home, and finally he remembered your old grocery in the sauerkraut season, early in the morning, before you had aired out the place. Your ears must have burned when we were talking about you.

If you want to get an idea of Naples, at its worst, go down into your cellar and round up all the codfish, onions, kraut, limburger cheese, kerosene, rotten potatoes, and everything that is dead, put it all in a bushel basket, and just before the Health officers come to pull your place, get down on your knees and put your head down in the basket, and let some one sit on your head all the forenoon, and you will have just such a half day as dad and I had in the poor quarter of Naples, and it will not cost you half as much as it did us, unless, after you have enjoyed yourself in your cellar with your head in the basket, you decide to have a run of sickness and hire a doctor who will charge you the price of a trip to Europe.

Well, sir, Naples is a dandy, in its clean part. The bay of Naples is a dead ringer for Milwaukee bay, in shape and beauty, but Milwaukee lacks Vesuvius and Pompeii, for suburbs, and she lacks the customary highwaymen to hold you up. Every man, woman and child we have met makes a living out of the tourists, and nobody that I have seen works at any other business.

We woke up the first morning and dad looked out the window and saw Vesuvius belching forth flame and lava and stone fences, and wanted to turn in a fire alarm, but I told him that that fire had been raging ever since the Christian era, and was not one of these incendiary barn burnings, but he opened the window and yelled fire, and the porters and chambermaids came running to our room, with buckets of water, and wanted to know where the fire was. Dad pointed out of the window towards Vesuvius and said: "Some hired girl has been starting a fire with kerosene, in that shanty on the knoll out there, and the whole ranch will burn if you don't turn out the fire department, you gosh blasted lazy devils. Get a move on and help carry out the furniture."

Well, they calmed dad, and then I had to go to work and post dad up on the geography he had forgotten, and finally he remembered seeing a picture of a volcano or burning mountain in his geography 50 years ago, but he told me he never believed there was a volcano in the world, but that he always thought they put those pictures in geographies to make them sell. How a man can attain the prominence and position in the business world that dad has, and not know any more than he does, is what beats me.

Of course, you know, having kept a grocery since the war, and having had opportunities to study history, by the pictures on the soap boxes and insurance calendars, that Nero, the Roman tyrant, after Rome was burned, while he fiddled for a dance in a barn, got so accustomed to fire and brimstone that he retired to Naples and touched off Vesuvius, just so he could look at it. But Vesuvius, about 2,000 years ago, got to burning way down in its bowels, and the fire got beyond control, and I suppose now the fire is away down in the center of the earth, and you know when you get down in the earth below the crust, on which we live and raise potatoes, everything is melted, like iron in a foundry, and Vesuvius is the spigot through which the fluid comes to the surface. You see, don't you?

Just imagine that this earth is a barrel of beer, which you can understand better than anything else, and it is being shaken up by being hauled around on wagons and cars, and is straining to get out, then a bartender drives a spigot into the bung, turns the thumb piece, and the pent-up beer comes out foaming and squirting, and there you are.

Instead of beer, Vesuvius is loaded with lava, that runs like molasses, and when it is cold it is indigestible as a cold buckwheat cake, and you can make it up into jewelry, that looks like maple sugar and smells like a fire in a garbage crematory. Besides the lava there are stones as big as a house that are thrown up by the sea-sickness of the earth, as it heaves and pants, and then the ashes that come out of the crater at times would make you think that what they need there is to have a chimney sweep go down and brush out the flues.

To get an idea of what a nuisance the ashes from the crater are to the cities on the plain below, you remember the time you were out in your back yard splitting boxes for kindling wood and my chum and I threw a pail of ashes over the fence, and accidentally it went all over you, about four inches thick. That time you got mad and threw cucumbers at us, when we ran down the alley. Keep that in your mind and you can understand the destruction of Pompeii, when Vesuvius, thousands of years ago, coughed up hot ashes and covered the town 40 feet deep with hot stuff, and killed every living thing, and petrified and preserved the whole business, and made a prairie on top of a town, and everybody eventually forgot that there had ever been a town there, for about 2,000 years. If my chum and I had not run out of ashes we would have buried you so deep in your back yard that you would have been petrified with your hatchet, and when they excavated the premises a thousand years later they would have found your remains and put you in a museum.

Well, a couple of hundred years ago a peasant was sinking a well down in the ashes, and he struck a petrified barroom, with a bartender standing behind the bar in the act of serving some whisky 2,000 years old, and the peasant located a claim there, and the authorities took possession of the prairie and have been digging the town out ever since, looking for more of that 2,000-year-old whisky.

When I told dad about what they were finding at the ruins of Pompeii, and how you were liable to find gold and diamonds and petrified women, he wanted to go and dig in the ashes, as he said it would be more exciting than raking over the dumping grounds in Chicago for tin cans and lumps of coal, and so we hired a hack and went to the buried town, but dad insisted on carrying an umbrella, so if Vesuvius belched any more ashes he could protect himself. Gee, but from what I have seen at that old ruin, a man would need an umbrella made of corrugated iron to keep from being buried.

Well, when we got to Pompeii dad was for going right where they were digging, but I got him to look over the streets and houses that had been uncovered first, and he was paralyzed to think that a town could be covered with ashes all these thousands of years, and then be uncovered and find a town that would compare, in many respects, with cities of the present day, with residences complete with sculpture, paintings and cut marble that would skin Chicago to a finish.

We went through residences that looked as rich as the Vanderbilt houses in New York, baths that you could take a plunge and a swim in, if they had the water, paintings that would take a premium at any horse show to-day, pavements that would shame the pavements of London and Paris, and petrified women that you couldn't tell from a low-necked party in Washington, except that the ashes had eaten the clothes off. I guess most of the people in Pompeii got away when the ashes began to rain down, for they must have seen that it wasn't going to be a light shower, but a deluge, 'cause they never have found many corpses. They must have run to Naples, and maybe they are running yet, and you may see some of them at your grocery, and if you do see anybody covered with ashes, looking for a job, give them some crackers and cheese and charge it to dad, for they must be hungry by this time.

Say, do you know that some of those refugees from Pompeii went off in such a hurry that they left bread baking in the ovens, and meat cooking in the pots? It seems the most wonderful thing to me of anything I ever saw. We went all through the streets and houses and saw ballrooms that beat anything in San Francisco, and when we went into a building occupied by the officers in charge of the excavations, and dad saw a telephone and an electric light, he thought those things had been dug up, too, and he claimed that the men who were receiving millions of dollars in royalties on telephones and electric lights were frauds who were infringing on Pompeii patents 2,000 years old, and he wouldn't believe me when I told him that telephones and electric lights were not dug up; he said then he wouldn't believe anything was dug up, but that the whole thing was a put-up job to rob tourists. But when we got to a locality where the dagoes were digging the ashes away from a house and were uncovering a parlor, where rich things were being discovered, he saw that it was all right.

I suppose I never ought to have played such a thing on dad, but I told him that anybody who saw a thing first when it came out of the ashes could grab it and keep it, and just as I told him a workman threw out a shovel full of ashes, just as you would throw out dirt digging for angle worms, and there was a little silver urn with a lot of coins in it, and you could not hold dad. He grabbed for it, the workman grabbed for it, and they went down together in the ashes, and the man rolled dad over and he was a sight, but the workman got the silver urn, and dad wanted to fight.

Finally a man with a uniform on came along and was going to arrest dad, but they finally compromised by the man offering to sell the silver urn and the gold coins to dad for a hundred dollars, if he would promise not to open it up until he got out of Italy, and dad paid the money and wrapped the urn up in a Chicago paper, and we took our hack and went back to Naples on a gallop.

Dad could hardly wait till we got to the hotel before opening up his prize, but he held out until we got to our room, when he unwrapped the urn to count his ancient gold coins. Well, you'd a-died to see dad's face when he opened that can. It was an old tomato can that had been wrought out with a hammer so it looked like hammered silver, and when he emptied the gold coins out on the table there was a lot of brass tags that looked like dog license tags, and baggage checks and brass buttons. I had to throw water on dad to bring him to, and then he swore he would kill the dago that sold him the treasure from the ruins of Pompeii. It was a great blow to dad, and he has bought a dirk knife to kill the dago. To-morrow we take in Vesuvius, and when we come down from the crater we go to Pompeii and kill the dago in his tracks. Dad may cause Vesuvius to belch again with hot ashes, and cover the ruins of Pompeii, but if he can't turn on the ashes, the knife will do the business.

Yours,

Hennery. _

Read next: Chapter 17. The Bad Boy And His Dad Climb Vesuvius...

Read previous: Chapter 15. Dad Plays He Is An Anarchist...

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