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.
CHAPTER XVII.
The Bad Boy and His Dad Climb Vesuvius—A Chicago Lady Joins
the Party and Causes Trouble.
Naples, Italy.—Siegnor ze Grocerino: I guess that will make you stand without hitching for a little while. Say, I am getting so full of dead languages, and foreign palaver, that I shall have to have an operation on my tongue when I get home before I can speel the United States language again so you can make head or tail of it. You see, I don't stay long enough in a country to acquire its language, but I get a few words into my system, so now my English is so mixed with French words, Italian garlic and German throat trouble that I cannot understand myself unless I look in a glass and watch the motions of my lips. Dad has not picked up a word of any foreign language, and says he should consider himself a traitor to his country if he tried to talk anything but English. He did get so he could order a glass of beer by holding up his finger and saying “ein,” but he found later that just holding up his finger without saying “ein” would bring the beer all the same so he cut out the language entirely and works his finger until it needs a rest.
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.