George W. Peck

“ When I fainted we were being driven south, and when I came to, with a smell of ammonia on my hair, we were going east, and the balloon had gone down within a mile of the earth, and the men gave me some hot tea out of a patent bottle, and pretty soon I began to enjoy myself and wonder if I could hit a mess of negroes picking cotton in a field, with a sand bag.
When you are up in the air so far that a policeman cannot reach you, you feel loose enough to insult men that would knock your block off if you should give them any lip when you were on the ground. ”

“ We have spent a comple of days at the Michigan man’s ranch in Darkest Africa, where he has brought civilization right into the Jungle, and after spending six months with negro savages and wild animals, and menagerie people, it has been the most enjoyable two days I ever knew.
It is good sometimes to see ourselves as others see us, and not having looked into a mirror for half a year, we found that we were about the most disreputable looking tourists that ever came in sight of beds with linen sheets on, and pillows. ”

“ All day the women had been cooking an ox and some pigs over a big fire, under Pa’s supervision, cause Pa used to be a soldier and a politician and had superintended political barbecues lots of times, and he had the meat cooked so nice that wild animals had come near camp to smell of the barbecue, and Pa’s soldiers sat there watering at the mouth, and thinking how much better oxen and pigs were for food than human beings, and Pa felt that he had made a big triumph for civilization, and that his name would be handed down to future generations with the names of Stanley, Livingston and Roosevelt. ”

“ I have spent a good many terrible nights in my time, but I never spent such a night as I did up the tree, the night I fired the nigger chasers into the barbecue crowd in Africa, with hyenas and jackals sitting on their haunches and looking up at us, licking their chops, and yapping for us to come down and be chewed. ”

“ Pa was telling them that all the men in America were millionaires and unmarried, and that all of them came abroad to spend money and marry foreign ladies, to take them back to America and make queens of them, and he looked at a French woman across the table with goo-goo eyes, and she said to the man next to her, “Isn’t he a dear, and what a wonder he is not married before,” and Pa smiled at her and put his hand on his watch chain, on which there hung gold nuggets as big as walnuts, and he fixed a big diamond in his scarf, so the electric light would hit it plenty. ”

“ I got a clothes wringer out of the laundry, and went to corral the cow. I thought if a clothes wringer could squeeze the blue water out of a wash tub of clothes, it would squeeze a pail of milk out of a cow, so I took my clothes wringer and the milk pail and got under the cow and gathered all her four weiners together in my hands and put the ends of them between the rubber rollers, just easy, and the boys gathered round to see where my inventive genius was going to get off at. ”

“ After breakfast we laid down on the hay with a horse blanket over us, and slept till noon, when we heard water being poured into the tin trough for the horses, and we quenched our thirst, and ate more dog biscuit, and I hoped that other boys would hear of our distress, and that no boys would ever run away from a happy home again. ”

“ Pa has issued an edict that the eating of human flesh must cease, and he has explained to them that the Great Spirit will have it in for any person that kills except in self defense, and that all who are cannibals will never get to Heaven, and the whole tribe has sworn off on eating the bodies of human beings, and Pa has taught them the way to broil a beef steak, and they can’t get enough of it. They never knew what it was to eat the flesh of cattle, but just raised cattle for the hides, and to sell at the Railroad stations, but they never knew what the white buyers did with the cattle. ”

“ There is not much fun in being an orphan until you escape from the orphan asylum, and I want to say that my chum and myself have had two red letter days in the town where we seemed to drop out of a balloon into the hearts of the country people. ”

“ The African buffalo certainly has a grouch, as though he had indigestion from eating cactus thorns, and when he sees a man his eyes blaze with fire and he gets as crazy as an anarchist and seems to combine in his make-up the habits of the hyena, the tiger, the man-eating shark and the Texas rattlesnake. ”

“ I do not know whether Pa is an expert in hypnotism or what it is, but he certainly delivers the goods when he goes after a wild animal in the jungles of Africa, and he shows bravery at times that astonishes everybody, but he admits that he is a coward at heart, and would run if anybody pulled a gun on him, and I guess he would, but you turn him loose in a wild animal congress and he will be speaker and make the whole bunch get on their knees. ”

“ Well, we went out after dark and took in the concert halls and things, and Pa drank wine and I drank nothing but ginger ale, and women who waited on us sat in Pa’s lap and patted his bald head, and tried to feel in his pockets, but Pa held on to their wrists and told them to keep away, and he took one across his knees and slapped her across the pajamas with a silver tray, and I thought Pa was real saucy. ”

“ Once I went home from church with a girl, and on the way back home the father of the girl came out with a ghost sheet over him, with phosphorus eyes, and scared me into a hen coop, and as I was praying to die, a negro with a dark lantern came to steal the chickens, and when he saw me in the coop he gave me some chickens he had stolen from another coop, and he run one way and I run the other, and I guess he went around the world one way and I the other, and we met last night at the barbecue, sure, and he started back around the world the other way when my fireworks went off. ”

“ My chum and I talked over the depression in the money market, and the panic in Wall street, and tried to think we were better off than millionaires who did not know where the next meal was coming from, and with our stomachs full, and no care on our minds, we wished we could give some of our dog biscuit to the hungry rich. ”

“ The captain gave me a swat across the jaw for making noise enough to scare the crew into mutiny, the mate gave me a kick when I started for the cook’s galley, and several of the under officers hit me, and by the time I got my apron on to help cook dinner I was bruised and mad, and decided to get even with the captain. I am a peaceful citizen until somebody walks on my frame, then I become a terror to the foe. ”

“ When we got to the hospital a lawyer, who had chased the ambulance on a motorcycle, retained me as his client and offered to sue the railway company for a million dollars damage, and he would furnish all the evidence, and take half of what he got for his fee. I thought it was a good proposition, and probably I can own a railroad if I take stock for my damages, but I shall take nothing but money, and let my lawyer have the railroad stock. Gee, but a lawyer is the greatest man on earth. ”

“ Pa and the cowboy have been training the male members of the tribe in the military drill, and we have got eight Companies that can march by fours and in platoons, and come into line just like soldiers, and they are proud of what they can do, but they only use clubs for guns, though Pa has promised them that when he gets money enough he will buy Winchesters for the whole army, and we will go and wipe out a tribe about twenty miles away, and take all their gold and diamonds, and they are going to dig up their gold and diamonds and give them to Pa to buy guns. ”

“ The lion acted like a big St. Bernard dog that smells something ahead that he don’t exactly know what to make of, but is going to find out, and the rhinoceros just rooted along as though he was getting what he wanted out of the ground, and would be along after a while to investigate that thing that was rising like a big ant hill on the prairie and smelling like a natural gas well. Finally the tigers got near enough to the gas bag with their claws, running their noses down into the holes where the gas was escaping, and fairly drinking in the gas. ”

“ He got on the zebra with his lariat rope and put the spurs to the animal and rode through the camp and threw his rope over the old ex-king and tightened it up around his neck, just to show what he could do, and the zebra ran away and dragged the king through the chaparral and came near killing him, but Pa explained to the old king that the cowboy was the agent of the Great Spirit, and was trying out the king to see if he had patience, and could take a joke without letting his angry passions rise, and that if he could and could smile at adversity, he would be looked upon as one of the elect. ”

“ I never slept a wink that night after the phosphorus episode, which I painted the wild steer so it looked like a four-legged ghost, and scared the crew so they nearly deserted the ship, because the captain ordered, as I supposed, that I be cast overboard the next morning, to give the sharks a meat sandwich, and all night I tried to prepare myself for death, though I could not help thinking that in some way I would escape. ”

“ I always supposed that an orphanage was a place where they tried to make an orphan feel that it wasn’t such a great loss not to have a regular home, among your people as long as you could be lovingly cared for in big bunches by charitable people, who would act like a High School to you, and when you got a diploma from an orphans’ home you could go out into the world and hold up your head like a college graduate, but I can see from my experience at this alleged home that when we boys get out the police will 29have a tab on us, and we will be pinched like tramps. ”

“ These African buffaloes live in a marsh, where the grass and cane grows high above them, and the only way you can tell where they are is to watch the birds flying around and alighting on the backs of the animals to eat wood ticks and gnats. The marsh is so thick with weeds that a man cannot go into it, so we planned to start the airship on the windward side of the marsh, after lining up the whole force of helpers, negroes and white men, and building a corral of timber on the lee side of the marsh. ”

“ It came on dark after a while, and all we had to do was to look at the stars and the moon, and it seemed to me that the stars were as big as locomotive headlights, and that you could see into them, and on several of the largest stars I was sure I could see people moving, and the moon seemed so near that you could catch the smile of the man in the moon, and see him wink at you. ”

“ Along towards daylight in the morning some horses began to paw and whinner and a colly dog began to bark in the car, and some sheep bleated in the car, and as morning came, and a little light came in the car, which was hitting the high places, running at high speed, so it shook us out of our hay bed, we looked around starved and stiff, and sick at heart. ”

“ Pa always makes some mistake before he has a proposition well in hand, and he did this time, of course. As we were about to start the gorilla Rastus, who had become Pa’s chum, looked at Pa so pitiful that Pa said he guessed he would let Rastus out and he and Rastus would walk along ahead and get the brush out of the road, so he opened the door of the cage and beckoned to Rastus, and the big gorilla came out with his oldest boy, and Pa and the two of them took hold of hands and started on ahead, and we started to haul the wagon by drag ropes, when the worst possible thing happened. ”

“ Well, it was like moving a circus to get the stuff loaded for South Africa, as we had more than fifty cages to put animals in to bring home, and tents and food enough for an arctic expedition, and over two hundred men, and several tame lionesses and female tigers to use for decoys, and some elephants for Judases to rope in the wild animals, and when we got started it was more than a week before we struck the coast of 162Africa, and all there was to do on the trip was to play poker and practice on the tame animals. ”

“ They rolled their fawn like eyes around at the great gas bag that was swaying 46over the wagon, with the two men yelling, and the mules started to run, with the wagon and the balloon, around that field, the balloon striking the fence occasionally, and a tree once in a while, the men yelling for us to cut the rope, and the mules braying and saying mule prayers, and me chasing along to try and cut the rope, and my chum hanging on to the ears of the wheel mule, and the farmers rushing into the field from every direction to stop the mules, and the men in the balloons using the worst language. ”

“ Well, you know how nigger chasers will chase. Gee, but they went under the crew’s table, smoking and hissing, the sparks flew, and the brave crew got up and run out on deck yelling “fire,” and “murder,” and “dam that boy,” and the man in charge of the fire hose turned it into the cabin and drowned everything out, and the crew run away and hid, and when things cleared off the captain said, “Boy, I like a joke as well as anybody, but you have overdone this thing, and I am mighty glad we land tomorrow, and you can go to your Pa and his confounded airships, and may the Lord have mercy on him.” ”

“ A head waiter whispered to me and wanted to know what ailed the old sport, and I told him Pa was bitten by a wolf in our circus last year and we feared he was going to have hydrophobia, and always when these spells come on the only thing to do was to throw him into a tank of water, and I should be obliged to them if they would take Pa and duck him in the fountain in the center of the cafe and save his life. ”

“ They set on the food at an orphanage, and if you have a pretty good reach, you can get enough corralled around your plate to keep the wolf from the door, and when it comes to clothes, you don’t have to go to a tailor, or a hand me down store, and take something you don’t want because it is cheap, but you take any clothes that are sent in by charitable people, which have been worn enough so there is no style about them, and no newness to wear off by rolling in the grass, and you put them on and let it go at that, if they do smell of moth balls. ”

“ Mr. Hagenbach took Pa out to the corral and pointed to the wild white mules and said, “What do you think of your green zebras now?” Pa looked them over and 200said, “Say, that negro king is nothing but a Pullman porter, and he painted those mules and sawed them onto me,” so we had to kill Pa’s green zebras and feed them to the negroes and the animals. Mr. Hagenbach told Pa plainly that he couldn’t stand for such conduct. He said he was willing to give Pa carte blanche, whatever that is, in his love affairs in South Africa, but he drew the line at being bunkoed on painted animals. ”

“ The officers at the other end of the cabin were eating the steer all right, but the crew never touched it, confining themselves to the bread and coffee, and pretty soon one of the crew proposed that they show their displeasure by taking the meat and throwing it at the officers.
Well, if I live a million years I will never have so much fun again. About thirty men got up and grabbed the meat I had put on their plates, and began to throw it at the captain and mate, and all the officers, and of all the greasy mess I ever saw, that was the worst. ”

“ The Germans that are with us on the animal hunt in South Africa all speak English, and while at the Hagenbach farm Pa convinced everybody that he was the bravest animal man in the world, “cause he would go up to any cage where the animals had been tamed and act as free with them as though he did not know fear,” and he went around in his shirt sleeves the way he used to in the circus, and would pat a lion 159on the head, and if the animal growled Pa would scowl at him and make the lion believe Pa was king of beasts. ”

“ Of course, we shall take along all of the traps and things usually used for that purpose, because roping animals from an airship is only an experiment, and we want to be on the safe side, but if the airship proves a success I will be considered the pioneer in airship wild animal capturing, and all animal men will bow down to your Pa, see, and my fortune will be made. ”