I got up and fell down again, and just then the Chicago soap man came up on a gallop, followed by the villains playing lion and tiger, and dad asked the Chicago man what seemed to be the matter, and he said: “Matter enough; there has been an earthquake, and the Coliseum has fallen down, killing more than 10,-000 Romans, and the animals' cages are busted and the animals are loose, looking for fresh meat, and we better get right back to Rome, too quick, or we will be eaten alive. Come on if you are with me. Do you hear the lions after us?” said he, as the hired villains roared.
Well, you'd a died to see dad get up out of that prickly cactus and take the lead for good old Rome. I didn't know he was such a sprinter, but we trailed along behind, roaring like lions and snarling like tigers and yip-yapping like hyenas and barking like timber wolves, and we couldn't see dad for the dust, on that moonlight night.
We slowed up and let dad run ahead, and he got to the hotel first, and we paid off the villains, and finally we went in the hotel and found dad in the bar-room puffing and drinking a high-ball. “Pretty near hell, wasn't it,” said dad, to the soap man. “Did the lions catch anybody?” “O, a few of the lower classes,” said the soap man, “but none of the nobility. The nobility were in the boxes and that part of the Coliseum never falls during an earthquake,” and the soap man joined dad in a high-ball.
After dad got through puffing and had wiped about two quarts of perspiration off his head and neck, and the soap man had told him what a great thing it was to perspire in Rome, on account of the Roman fever, that catches a man at night and kills him before morning, dad turned to me and said: “Hennery, you go pack up and we get out of this in the morning, for I feel as though I had been chewed by one of those hyenas. Not any more Rome for papa,” and the high-ball party broke up, and we went to bed to get sleep enough to leave town.
Do you know, the next morning those hired villains made the soap man and I pay ten dollars extra on account of straining their lungs roaring like lions? But we paid for their lungs all right, rather than have them present a bill to dad.
Well, good-by, old man. We are getting all the fun there is going.
Your only,
Hennery.