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Peck's Bad Boy Abroad, a fiction by George W. Peck |
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Chapter 20. The Bad Boy Tells About The Land Of The Czar... |
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_ CHAPTER XX. The Bad Boy Tells About the Land of the Czar and the Trouble They Had to Get There--Dad Does a Stunt and Mixes It Up with the People and Soldiers.
At first dad was a little leary about going on such a mission without credentials from Washington, but as luck would have it, he met an exiled Russian at a restaurant, who told dad that he reminded him of Gen. Grant, because dad had a wart on the side of his nose, and he told dad that Russia would keep on fighting until every Japanese was killed unless some distinguished American should be raised up who deemed it his duty to go to St. Petersburg and see the Little Father, and in the interest of humanity advise the czar to call a halt before he had exterminated the whole yellow race. Dad asked the Russian if he thought the czar would grant an audience to an American of eminence in his own country, and the Russian told dad that Nicholas just doted on Americans, and that there was hardly ever an American ballet dancer that went to Russia but what the czar sent for her to come and see him and dance before the grand dukes, and he always gave them jewels and cans of caviar as souvenirs of their visit. Dad thought it over all night, and the next morning we started for Russia and I wish we had joined an expedition to discover the North Pole instead of coming here. Say, it is harder to get into Russia than it would be to get out of a penitentiary at home. At the frontier we were met by guards on horseback and on foot, policemen, detectives and other grafters, who took our passports and money, and one fellow made me exchange my socks with him. Then they imprisoned us in a stable with some cows until they could hold a coroner's inquest on our passports and divide our money. We slept with the cows the first night in Russia, and I do not want to sleep again with animals that chew cuds all night, and get up half a dozen times to hump up their backs and stretch and bellow. We never slept a wink, and could look out through the cracks in the stable and see the guards shaking dice for our money. Finally they looked at the great seal on our passports and saw it was an American document, and they began to turn pale, as pale as a Russian can get without using soap, and when I said, "Washington, embassador, minister plenipotentiary, Roosevelt, Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight, E Pluribus Unum, whoopla, San Juan Hill," and pointed to dad, who was just coming out of the stable, looking like Washington at Valley Forge, the guards and other robbers bowed to dad, gave him a bag full of Russian money in place of that which they had taken away, and let us take a freight train for St. Petersburg, and they must have told the train men who we were, because everybody on the cars took off their hats to us, and divided their lunch with us. Dad could not understand the change in the attitude of the people towards us until I told him that they took him for a distinguished American statesman, and that as long as we were in Russia he must try to look like George Washington and act like Theodore Roosevelt, so every little while dad would stand up in the aisle of the car and pose like George Washington and when anybody gave him a sandwich or a cigarette he would show his teeth and say, "Deelighted," and all the way to St. Petersburg dad carried out his part of the programme and we were not robbed once on the trip, but dad tried to smoke one of the cigarettes that was given him by a Cossack, and he died in my arms, pretty near. They make cigarettes out of baled hay that has been used for beddings and covered with paper that has been used to poison flies. I never smelled anything so bad since they fumigated our house by the board of health after the hired girl had smallpox. Well, we got to St. Petersburg in an awful time, and went to a hotel, suspected by the police, and marked as undesirable guests by the Cossacks, and winked at by the walking delegates and strikers, who thought we were non-union men looking for their jobs. The next day the religious ceremony of "blessing the Neva" took place, where all the population gets out on the bank of the river, with overshoes on, and fur coats, and looks down on the river, covered with ice four feet thick, and the river is blessed. In our country the people would damn a river that had ice four feet thick, but in Russia they bless anything that will stand it. We got a good place on the bank of the river, with about a million people who had sheepskin coats on, and who steamed like a sheep ranch, and were enjoying the performance, looking occasionally at the Winter palace, where the czar was peeking out of a window, wondering from which direction a bomb would come to blow him up, when a battery of artillery across the river started to fire a salute, and then the devil was to pay. It seems that the gentlemen who handled the guns, and who were supposed to fire blank cartridges into the air, put in loaded cartridges, filled with grape shot, and took aim at the Winter palace, and cut loose at Mr. Czar. Well, you would have been paralyzed to see the change that came over that crowd, blessing the river one minute and damning the czar and the grand dukes the next. The shot went into the Winter palace and tore the furniture and ripped up the ceiling of the room the czar was in, and in a moment all was chaos, as though every Russian knew the czar was to be assassinated at that particular moment, and all rushed toward the Winter palace as though they expected pieces of the Little Father would be thrown out the window for them to play football with. For a people who are supposed to be lawful and law-abiding, and who love their rulers, it seemed strange to see them all so tickled when they thought he was blown higher than a kite by his own soldiers. Dad and I started with the crowd for the Winter palace, and then we had a taste of monarchial government. The crowd was rushing over us and dad got mad and pulled off his coat and said he could whip any confounded foreigner that rubbed against him with a sheepskin coat on, and he was just on the point of smiting a fellow with whiskers that looked like scrambled bristles off a black hog when a regiment of Cossacks came down on the crowd, riding horses like a wild west show, and with whips in their hands, with a dozen lashes to each whip, and they began to lash the crowd and ride over them, while the people covered their faces with their arms, and run away, afraid of the whips, which cut and wound and kill, as each lash has little lead bullets fastened to them and a stroke of the whip is like being shot with buck shot or kicked with a frozen boot. Well, sir, dad was going to show the Cossacks that he was pretty near an American citizen and didn't propose to be whipped like a school boy by a teacher that looked like a valentine, so he tried to look like George Washington defying the British, but it didn't work, for a Cossack rode right up to him and lashed him over the back (and about 15 buck shot in his whip took dad right where the pants are tight when you bend over to pick up something) and the Cossack laughed when dad straightened up and started to run. I never saw such a change in a man as there was in dad. He started for our hotel, and as good a sprinter as I am I couldn't keep up with him, but I kept him in sight. Before we got to the hotel a sledge came along, not an "old sledge," such as you play with cards, high-low-Jack-game, but a sort of a sleigh, with three horses abreast, and I yelled to dad to take a hitch on the sledge, and he grabbed on with his feet on the runners, and a man in the sledge with a uniform on, who seemed to be a grand duke, 'cause everybody was chasing him and yelling to head him off, hit dad in the nose with the butt of a revolver, and dad fell off in the snow and the crowd that was chasing the grand duke picked dad up and carried him on their shoulders because they thought he had tried to assassinate the duke, and we were escorted to our hotel by the strikers. We didn't know what they were, but you can tell the laboring men here because they wear blouses and look hungry, and when they left us the landlord notified the police that suspicious characters were at the hotel, and came there escorted by the mob, and the police surrounded the house and dad went to our room and used witch hazel on himself where the Cossack hit him with the loaded whip. He says Russia will pay pretty dear for that stroke of the whip by the Cossack, and I think dad is going to join the revolution that is going to be pulled off next Sunday. They are going to get about a million men to take a petition to the czar, workingmen and anarchists, and dad says he is going as an American anarchist who is smarting from injustice, and I guess no native is smarting more than dad is, 'cause he has to stand up to eat and lie on his stummick to sleep. There is going to be a hades of a time here in St. Petersburg this next week, and dad and I are going to be in it clear up to our necks. Dad has given up trying to see the czar about stopping the war and says the czar and the whole bunch can go plum (to the devil) and he will die with the mob and follow a priest who is stirring the people to revolt. Gee, I hope dad will not get killed here and be buried in a trench with a thousand Russians, smelling as they do. I met a young man from Chicago, who is here selling reapers for the harvester trust, and he says if you are once suspected of having sympathy with the working people who are on a strike you might just as well say your prayers and take rough on rats, 'cause the Cossacks will get you, and he would advise me and dad to get out of here pretty quick, but when I told dad about it he put one hand on his heart and the other on his pants and said "Arnica, arnica, arnica!" and the police that were on guard near his room thought he meant anarchy, and they sent four detectives to stay in dad's room. The people here, the Chicago young man told me, think the Cossacks are human hyenas, that they have had their hearts removed by a surgical operation when young, and a piece of gizzard put in in place of the heart, and that they are natural murderers, the sight of blood acting on them the same as champagne on a human being, and that but for the Cossacks Russia would have a population of loving subjects that would make it safe for the Little Father to go anywhere in Russia unattended, but with Cossacks ready to whip and murder and laugh at suffering, the people are becoming like men bitten by rabid dogs, and they froth at the mouth and have spasms and carry bombs up their sleeves, ready to blow up the members of the royal family, and there you are. If you do not hear from me after next Sunday you can put dad's obituary and mine in the local papers and say we died of an overdose of Cossack. If we get through this revolution alive you will hear from me, but this is the last revolution I am going to attend. Yours, Hennery. _ |
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