Peck's Bad Boy in an airship

by George W. Peck

“Any Man That Lays Hands on the Government Mail Can Be Imprisoned for Life for Treason.”

We laid down on the platform of the station that night and went to sleep and I dreamed that I sailed across the ocean in a balloon, and landed in a park in Paris, and when the populace came to welcome us to dear old France, Pa was one of the first to see me, and he fell upon my neck, and when the people were going to give me a reception, and a cross of the Legion of Honor, for being the first to cross the ocean in a balloon, Pa told them I was his boy, and Pa wanted to take all the credit for my grand achievement, and when I woke up a watchman at the station kicked us off the platform like we were tramps, and we walked down the tracks and were so mad we wanted to throw stones at the switch lights, and my chum wanted to put a tie on the track to wreck a train, but I persuaded him that it was that kind of revenge that caused the enmity between tramps and the richer class. Then he wanted to set fire to a tank car of kerosene, because Rockafeller owned the railroad, and the watchman who kicked us was an agent of the Standard Oil Company. If I hadn’t been a pretty good citizen there would have been a bon-fire sure, but I showed my chum that we were only temporary tramps, and that in a few days we would achieve success, and own railroads, and that we should show an example of patience, and strive to become members of the four hundred. So we refrained from getting even, and Rockafeller was not kept awake by hearing that another tank car of oil had gone skyward.

We were pretty hungry, but tightened up our belts and pretty soon a freight car stopped on a side track and a brakeman came along with a lantern and I gave him the last half dollar I had and told him we wanted to land in St. Louis, and he looked us over and pointed to a car, and we hustled in and he locked the side door of the car, and we were alone in the dark, hungry and thirsty.

We found a part of a bale of hay, and scattered some on the floor and went to sleep, and I never slept better on a spring mattress, but I dreamed of home, and all the fun I had ever had, making it hot for other people, playing tricks on them, but now all was changed, and I felt that I was on my own resources, making my own way in the world, handicapped by always having an easy life.

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.

When the train stopped I walked through the car, over bags of oats, and looked at the horses, and wished I was a horse. The dog was a watch dog, and when I got near him he snarled and grabbed a mouthful of my new pants and held on and shook me, and I yelled and got away.

As it grew lighter I saw a box near the dog, and in it were some square things that my practiced eye, as the son of an old hunter, told me were dog biscuit, a sort of petrified dough and meat scraps made for high class dogs that are not allowed to eat scraps from the table, and I told my chum we would have breakfast. It took me half an hour to steal a few dog biscuit away from that dog, and all the time he was trying to make his breakfast off of me, but I finally poked out enough for breakfast, and I called my chum to partake of the repast. He said he always had to have some kind of breakfast food before he ate meat, so I cut into a bag of oats, and gave him a handful, and there we sat and chewed away, trying to imagine that we were happy, and thinking of coffee and pancakes and sausage, and waffles, and biscuit and honey.

It was probably the worst breakfast ever eaten by anybody. The dog biscuits were so hard we had to pound them on the floor with a currycomb, and that did not help the flavor much.

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.