George W. Peck

“ I once saw a dead dog in the river, with bull heads and dog-fish ripping him up the back, and I keep thinking I had rather be that dog, in a nice river at home, with bullheads that I knew chewing me at their leisure, than to be a dead boy miles down in the ocean, with strange fish and sea serpents quarreling over the tender pieces in me. ”

“ The people look mad and savage when they are not drinking, as though they were only looking for an opportunity to commit murder, and then when they take a drink of gin, instead of smiling and smacking their lips as though it was good and braced them up, they look as though they had been stabbed with a dirk and they put on a look of revenge, as though they would like to wring a child's neck or cut holes in the people they meet. ”

“ There is no way you can tell if a girl is in love with you, except that she looks at you with eyes that are as black as coal, and they seem to burn a hole right into your insides, and when they take hold of your hand they hang on and squeeze like alamand-left in a dance at home, and they snug up to you and are as warm and cheerful as a gas stove. ”

“ When a vessel passes that rock it has to hold up its hands and salute the British flag, or get a mess of hardware fired into its vital parts, but that is all it amounts to, cause it couldn't win any battle for England, and could only sink trading vessels. The walls of the rock are perforated from top to bottom, with holes big enough for guns to squirt smoke and shells, but if the enemy should stay away from right in front of the holes, they might shoot till doomsday and never hit anything but fishing smacks and peddlers of oranges. Gibraltar is like a white elephant in a zoological garden. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That is the feeling I had for the king when he came up to us and greeted dad as the father of the bad boy and patted me on the shoulder and said: “And so you are the boy that has made more trouble than any boy in the world, and had more fun than anybody, and made them all stand around and wonder what was coming next. You're a wonder. Strange the American people never thought of killing you.” ”

“ I thought the custom of spanking children was an American institution, but it is as old as the ages, for I saw a Turkish mother grab up a child that had lifted a kitten by the tail, and take it across her knee and give it a few with a red hand covered with soapsuds, and the young Turk yelled bloody murder, just like an American kid, and then sat down on its knees, so the spanking wouldn't hurt, and called its mother names in a language I couldn't understand, but I knew what the child said, by instinct. ”

“ We got a place sitting on an iron picket fence, and we saw the people coming up the street towards the Winter Palace, dressed mostly in blouses, and looking as innocent as a crowd of sewer diggers at home going up to the city hall to ask for a raise in wages of two shillings a day. Nobody had a gun, and no one would have known how to use a gun, and all looked like poor people going to prayers. There were troops everywhere, and every soldier acted as though he was afraid something would happen to spoil their chance of killing anybody. ”

“ Gibraltar is like a twenty-dollar gold piece that a man carries in his watch pocket for an emergency, which he never intends to spend until he gets in the tightest place of his life, and it wears out one pocket after another, and some day drops through on to the sidewalk, and a tramp finds it and goes on a bat and gets the worth of his money, and has a good time, if he saves enough to buy a bromo seltzer the next morning after. ”

“ The bad boy looked around the old grocery, which had not changed a particle during the time he had been away, the same old box of petrified prunes, the dried apples that could not be cut with a hatchet, the canned stuff on the shelves had become so old that the labels had curled up and fallen off, so it must have been a guess with the old groceryman whether he was selling a can of peas or tomatoes, and the old fellow standing there as though the world had gone off and left him, as his customers had. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Dad acts as familiar with the Turks here as though he owned a harem. We go to the low streets, about as wide as a street car, where Turks are selling things, with dad wearing his fez, and he begins to make motions and give grand hailing signs of distress, and the Turks look at him as though he had robbed a bank, and they charge enormous prices for everything, and dad pays with a smile, thinking his brother Masons are fairly giving things away. He looks upon all men who wear the fez as his brothers, and they look at him as though he was crazy in the head. ”

“ I expected to see a king as big as Long John Wentworth of Chicago, a great big fellow that could take a small man by the collar and throw him over a house, and I felt hurt at the small size of the king of Great Britain, but, gosh, he is just like a Yankee, when you get the formality shook off.
We bowed and dad made a courtesy like an old woman, and the king came forward with a smile that ought to be imitated by every Englishman. They all imitate his clothes and his hats and his shoes, but he seems to be the only Englishman that smiles. ”

“ Two drinks of gin makes a man or woman look as though they had swallowed a buzz saw. I always thought drinking liquor made people think they were enjoying themselves, or that they took it to drive away care and make them forget their sorrows, but when these people drink gin they seem to do it the way an American drinks carbolic acid, to end the whole business quick. ”

“ Well, I guess the week was up, and it was time to load the camels with water, for as we came to the Nile every last camel made a rush for the river, and they went in like a yoke of oxen on a stampede, and waded in clear up to the humps, and began to drink, and dad yelled for a life preserver and pulled his feet up on top and sat there like a frog on a pond lily leaf. ”

“ To think we had skinned along as economically as possible all our lives, and never made much money, and now, through this Dakota genius, and this Monte Carlo opportunity, we had wealth raking in by the bushel, made me feel great, and I wondered why more people had not found out this faraway place, where people could become rich and prosperous in a day, if they had the nerve. I tell you, old man, it was great, and I was going to cable you to sell out your grocery for what you could get at forced sale and come here with the money, gamble and become a millionaire. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I don't see how a person can swear when he is seasick on the ocean, with no sure thing that he will ever see land again, and a good prospect of going to the bottom, where you got to die in the arms of a devil fish, with a shark biting pieces out of your tender loin and a smoked halibut waiting around for his share of your corpse, and whales blowing syphons of water and kicking because they are so big that they can't get at you to chew cuds of human gum, and porpoises combing your damp hair with their fine tooth comb fins, and sword fish and sawtooth piscatorial carpenters sawing off steaks. ”

“ When you think of the way the British government treats the Irish, and then you look on while an orderly sergeant calls the roll of a company, and find that nine out of ten answer to Irish names, and only one out of ten has the cockney accent, you feel that the Irish ought to rule England, and an O'Rourke or a O'Shaunnessy should take the place of King Edward. ”

“ It was imposing, but solemn, and the people on both sides of the street acted like they do in America when the funeral of a great man is passing. No man spoke, and all looked as though they expected, if they moved, to be arrested and have a stone tied to their feet and thrown into the Bosphorus, the way they kill one of the sultan's wives when she flirts with a stranger. ”

“ I was always thinking of George either chopping cherry trees, or standing on a pedestal to have his picture taken, but here at the old farm, with dad to inspire me, I was just mingling with Washington, the planter, the neighbor, telling the negroes where they would get off at if they didn't pick cotton fast enough, or breaking colts, or going to the churn and drinking a quart of buttermilk, and getting the stomach ache, and calling upstairs to Martha, who was at the spinning wheel, or knitting woolen socks, and asking her to fix up a brandy smash to cure his griping pains. ”

“ You take an almanac and read about all the diseases that the medicine advertised in the almanac cures, and dad has got the whole lot of them, nervous prostration, rheumatism, liver trouble, stomach busted, lungs congested, diaphragm turned over, heart disease, bronchitis, corns, bunions, every darn thing a man can catch without costing him anything. But he is not despondent. He just thinks it is an evidence of genius, and a certificate of standing in society and wealth. He argues that the poor people who have only one disease are not in it with statesmen and scholars. ”

“ Well, I scratched a match and lit the giant fire cracker, and put it under the hind legs of dad's camel, and when it got to fizzing I lit my roman candle, and as the fire cracker exploded like a 16-inch gun, my roman candle began to spout balls of fire, and I aimed one at each camel, and the whole push started on a stampede for the pyramids, the camels groaning, the Arabs praying to Allah, dad yelling to stop 'er, and my jackass led the bunch, and I was left in the desert to pick up the hats. ”

“ After we had succeeded for an hour or two in convincing the people that we were properly heartless and purse proud, dad said the only thing we needed to make the trip a success was to run over somebody. He said nearly all the American automobile tourists in Europe had killed somebody and had been obliged to settle and support a family or two in France or Italy, and they were prouder of it than they would be if they endowed a university, or built a church, and he said he trusted our chauffeur would not be too careful in running through the country, but would at least cripple some one. ”

“ When I used to study my geography at the little red schoolhouse, and look at the picture of the volcano Vesuvius, and read about how it would throw up red-hot lava, and ashes, and rocks as big as a house, and wipe out cities, it looked so terrible to me that I was glad when we got through with the volcano lesson, and got to Greenland's icy mountains, where there was no danger except being frozen to death, or made sick by eating blubber sliced off of whales. ”

“ There is laughter everywhere, except when the Emperor drives by, escorted by his bodyguard, on the finest horses in the world; then every citizen on the street stops smiling and laughing; all stand at attention, and every face takes on a solemn, patriotic, almost a fighting look, as though each man would consider it his happiest duty and pleasure to walk right up to the mouth of cannon and die in his tracks for his pale-faced, haggard and loved Emperor. ”

“ I spose a brave man, a hero, has to have all his inside things working together, to be real up and up brave, but if his heart is strong, and his liver is white, he goes to pieces in an emergency, and if his liver is all right, and he tries to fight just on his liver, when the supreme moment arrives, and his heart jumps up into his throat, and wabbles and beats too quick, he just flunks. ”

“ At home when a man gets full of whisky, he wants to hug the man he drinks with and weep on his collar, and then hit him on the head with a bottle; but here every kind of drink puts the drinker in condition to want to hug. Dad says he never knew he had a brain until he learned to drink absinthe, but now he can close his eyes and see things worse than any mince pie nightmare, and when we go out among people he never sees a man at all, but when a woman passes along, dad's eyes begin to take turns winking at them and it is all I can do to keep him from proposing marriage to every woman he sees. ”

“ At times, when you have been unusually mean, I have thought I hated you, but when I have said something ugly to you, and have laid awake all night regretting it, it has occurred to me that you were about the best friend I had. I think it makes an old man forget his years, to be chummy with a live boy, full of ginger, and I do like you, condemn you, and I can't help it. ”

“ Our murderers will assault you with a smile, rob you with a joke on their tongue's end, and give you back car fare when they hold you up, and if they murder you they will do it easy and lay you out with your hands across on your breast and notify the coroner, but your White Chapel murderer wants to disembowel you and cut you up into chunks, and throw your remains head first into something nasty, and if you have money enough on your person to buy a bottle of gin your murderer is as well satisfied as though he got a roll. ”

“ I do not know as the Eiffel tower was intended to act as a Keeley cure, but of the 50 people who went up with us, half of them were so full their back teeth were floating, including dad and the guide, but when we got to the top and they got a view of the awful height to which we had come, it seemed as though every man got sober at once, and their tongues seemed to cleave to the roof of their mouths. ”

“ 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. ”