Well, sir, I have studied Gibraltar in my geography, and read about it in the papers, and seen its pictures in advertisements, but never realized what a big thing it was. Now, who ever thought of putting that enormous rock right there on that prairie, but God. I suppose the English, when they saw that rock, thought the good Lord had put it there for the English to drill holes in, for guns, and when the Lord was busy somewhere else, the English smoughed the rock away from Spain, by playing a game with loaded dice, and when England got it, that country decided to arm it like a train robber, and hold up the other nations of the earth. 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. It just eats and keeps off the flies with its short tail, and visitors feed it peanuts and wonder what it was made for, and how much hay it eats. 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. It is like the Russian war chest, that is never to be opened as long as they can borrow money. If Gibraltar could be put on castors, and rolled around from one country to another, England could whip all Europe and Asia. It would be a Tro Jane horse on a larger scale, and be a terror; but, say, if it got to America we wouldn't do a thing to it. We would run a standpipe up the side, and connect it with an oil pipe line, fill Gibraltar's tunnels and avenues, and magazines and barracks with crude oil, and touch a match to it, and not an Englishman would live to tell about it. Gee, but I would be sorry for the Irish soldiers, but I guess they wouldn't be there, cause they wouldn't fight America. Well, if England ever has a big war, and she gets chesty about Gibraltar, and says it is impregnable, and defies the world to take it, I bet you ten dollars it could be taken in twenty-four hours. If I was a general, or an admiral, I would have about forty tank steamers, loaded with kerosene, and have them land, innocent like, right up beside Gibraltar, ostensibly to sell oil for perfumery to the natives, who would all be improved by using kerosene on their persons. Then I would get on a barrel, on deck of my flag ship, and command the English general to surrender unconditionally, and if he refused I would set a slow match on every oil vessel, and have the crews get in skiffs and pull for the opposite shore, and when the oil got on fire, and rolled up all over Gibraltar, and burned every living thing, I would throw water from a fire department boat on the rock, and she would split open and roll all over-the prairie, and then I would bury the cremated dead out on the desert, and seek other worlds to conquer, like Alexander the Great. But don't be afraid. I won't do it unless they make me mad, but you watch my smoke if they pick on your little Hennery too much, when he grows up.
But I haven't got any kick coming about Gibraltar, cause they treated dad and I all right, and the commander detailed an ensign to show us all through the fortress. Now don't get an ensign mixed up with a unique, such as showed us through the Turkish harem. An English ensign is just as different from a Turkish unique as you can imagine. Every man to his place. You couldn't teach a Turkish unique how to show visitors around an English fortress, and an English ensign in a Turkish harem would bring on a world's war, they are so different. Well, wc went through tunnels in the rock, and up and down elevators, and all was light as day from electric lights, and we saw ammunition enough to sink all the ships in the world, if it could be exploded in the right place, and they have provisions enough stored in the holes in the rock to keep an army for forty years if they didn't get ptomaine poisoned from eating canned stuff. It was all a revelation to dad, and when we got all through, and got out into the sunlight, we breathed free, and when clad got his second wind he broke up the English officers by taking out a pencil and piece of paper, and asked them what they would take for the rock and its contents, and move out, and let the American flag float over it. Well, say, they were hot, and they told dad to go plum to 'ell, but dad wouldn't do it. He said America didn't want the old stone quarry, anyway, and if it did it could come and take it. I guess they would have had dad arrested for treason, only when we got out into the town there was the whole British Atlantic squadron lined up, with the men up in the rigging like monkeys, and every vessel was firing a salute, as a yacht came steaming by. Dad thought war had surely broke out, or that some rich American owned the yacht, but it turned out to be Queen Alexandria and a party of tourists, and when the band played “God Save the Queen,” dad got up on his hind legs and sang so loud you would think he would split hisself, and a fellow went up and threw his arms around dad, and began to weep, and the tears came in dad's eyes, and another fellow pinched dad's watch, and the celebration closed with everybody getting drunk, and the queen sailed away. Say, we are going to Spain, on the next boat, and you watch the papers. We will probably be hung for taking Cuba and the Phillipines.
Yours,
Hennery.
CHAPTER XXVII.
The Bad Boy Writes of Spain—They Call on the King And the
Bad Boy is at it Once More—They See a Bull Fight and Dad
Does a Turn.
Madrid, Spain.—My Dear Uncle: You probably think we are taking our lives in our hands by coming to Spain, so soon after the Cuban war, in which President Roosevelt charged up San Juan Hill, in the face of over thirty bloodthirsty Spaniards, and captured the blockhouse on the summit of the hill, which was about as big as a switchman's shanty, and wouldn't hold two platoons of infantry, of twelve men to the platoon, without crowding, and which closed the war, after the navy had everlastingly paralyzed the Spanish vessels, and sunk them in wet water, and picked up the crews and run them through clothes-wringers to dry them out; but we are as safe here as we would be on South Clark street, in Chicago. Do you know, when I read of that charge of our troops up San Juan hill, headed by our peerless bear-hunter, I thought it was like the battle of Gettysburg, where hundreds of thousands of men fought on each side, and I classed Roosevelt with Grant, Sheridan, Sherman, Meade and Thomas, and all that crowd, but one day I got talking with a veteran of the Spanish-American war, who promptly deserted after every pay day, and re-enlisted after he had spent his money, and he didn't do a thing to my ideas of the importance of that battle. He told me it was only a little skirmish, like driving in a picket post, and that there were not Spaniards enough there to have a roll call, not so many Spanish soldiers as there were American newspaper correspondents on our side, that only a few were killed and wounded, and that a dozen soldiers in an army wagon could have driven up San Juan hill with firecrackers and scared the Spaniards out of the country, and that a part of a negro regiment did pretty near all the shooting, while our officers did the yelling, and had their pictures taken, caught in the act. So I have quit talking of the heroism of our army in Cuba, because it makes everybody laugh and they speak of Shaffer and Roosevelt, and hunch up their shoulders, and say, “bah,” but when you talk about the navy, and Schley, and Sampson, and Clark, and Bob Evans, they take off their hats and their faces are full of admiration, and they say, “magnificent,” and ask you to take a drink. Gee, but dad got his foot in it by talking about the blowing up of the Maine, and looking saucy, as though he was going to get even with the Spaniards, but he found that every Spaniard was as sorry for that accident as we were, and they would take off their hats when the Maine was mentioned, and look pained and heart-sick. I tell you the Spaniards are about as good people as you will find anywhere, and dad has concluded to fall back on Christopher Columbus for a steady diet of talk, cause if it had not been for Chris we wouldn't have been discovered to this day, which might have been a darn good thing for us. But the people here do not recall the fact that there ever was a man named Christopher Columbus, and they don't know what he ever discovered, or where the country is that he sailed away to find, unless they are educated, and familiar with ancient history, and only once in a while will you find anybody that is educated. The children of America know more about the history of Spain than the Spanish children. 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. If you see a man reach his finger under his collar to scratch his neck, the chances are his fingers touch the handle of his dagger, and if he hitches up his pants, his dagger is there, and if he pulls up his trousers leg to scratch for a flea, you can bet your life his knife is right handy, and if you have any trouble you don't know where the knife is coming from, as you do about an American revolver, when one of our citizens reaches for his pistol pocket. Spaniards are nervous people, on the move all the time, and it is on account of fleas. Every man, woman and child contains more than a million fleas, and as they can't scratch all the time, they keep on the move, hoping the fleas will jump off on somebody else. When we came here we were flealess, but every person we have come near to seems to have contributed some fleas to us, until now we are loaded down with them, and we find in our room at the hotel a box of insect powder, which, is charged in with the candles. The king, who is a boy about three years older than I am, is full of fleas, too, and he jumps around from one place to another, like he was shaking himself to get rid of them. He gets up in the morning and goes out horseback riding, and jumps fences and rides tip and down the marble steps of the public buildings, as though he wanted to make the fleas feel in danger, so they will leave him. Seems to me if every man kept as many dogs as they do in Constantinople, the fleas would take to the dogs, but they say here that fleas will leave a dog to get on a human being, because they like the smell of garlic, as every Spaniard eats garlic a dozen times a day. They are trying to teach dogs to eat garlic, but no self-respecting dog will touch it. We have had to fill up on garlic in order to be able to talk with the people, cause dad got sea sick the first day here, everybody smelled so oniony. Dad wanted a druggist to put up onions in capsules, like they do quinine, so he could take onions and not taste them, but he couldn't make the man understand. There ought to be a law against any person eating onions, unless he is under a death sentence. But you can stand a man with the onion habit, after you get used to it. It is a woman, a beautiful woman, one you would like to have take you on your lap and pet you, that ought to know better than to eat onions. Gee, but when you see a woman that is so beautiful it makes her ache to carry her beauty around, and you get near to her and expect to breathe the odor of roses and violets, that makes you tired when she opens her mouth to say soft words of love, and there comes to your nostrils the odor of onions. Do you know, nothing would make me commit suicide so quick as to have a wife who habitually loaded herself with onions. Dad was buying some candy for me at a confectioner shop, of a beautiful Spanish woman, and when he asked how much it was, she bent over towards him in the most bewitching manner and breathed in his face and said, “Quatro-realis, seignor,” which meant “four bits, mister,” and he handed her a five-dollar gold piece, and went outdoors for a breath of fresh air, and let her keep the change. He said she was welcome to the four dollars and fifty cents if she would not breathe towards him again.