Peck's Bad Boy in an airship

by George W. Peck

Pa has had the hardest time of his life in Paris, and if I ever pitied a man it was Pa.

You see, that last fly in the airship pretty near caused him to cash in his chips, and go over the long road to the hereafter, cause he got blood poison from the thorns that run into him where he landed in the top limbs of the thornapple tree, and he sprained his arm and one hind leg while being taken down with a derrick, and then before we left the country town for Paris he drank some goat’s milk, which gave him ptomaine poison in his inside works, and a peasant woman who sewed up his pants where they were torn on the tree pricked him with a needle, and he swelled up so he was unable to sit in a car seat, and his face was scratched by the thorns of the tree and there were blotches all over him, so when we got to Paris the health officers thought he had smallpox and sent him to a pest house, and they wouldn’t let me in, but vaccinated me and turned me loose, and I went to the hotel and told about where Pa was, and all about it, and they put our baggage in a sort of oven filled with sulphur and disinfected it, and stole some of it, and they made me sleep in a dog kennel, and for weeks I had to keep out of sight, until Pa was discharged from the hospital, and the friends of Pa out at the airship club in the country got Pa’s airship that he bought for a government out of the tree and took it to the club and presented a bill for two hundred dollars, and I only had seven dollars, so they held it for ransom.

Pa’s Face Was Scratched So They Sent Him to the Pest House.

Gee, but I worried about Pa!

Well, one day Pa showed up at the hotel looking like he had been in a railroad wreck, and he was so thin his clothes had to be pinned up with safety pins, and he had spent all his money, and was bursted.

The man who hired Pa in Washington to go abroad and buy airships for the government told Pa to use his own money for a month or two and then draw on the secretary of the treasury for all he needed, so before Pa went to the hospital he drew on his government for ten thousand dollars, and when he came back there was a letter for him from the American Consul in Paris telling him to call at the office, so Pa went there and they arrested him on the charge of skull dugging. They said he had no right to draw for any money on the government at Washington. Pa showed his papers with the big seal on, and the consul laughed in Pa’s face, and Pa was hot under the collar and wanted to fight, but they showed him that the papers he had were no good, and that he had been buncoed by some fakir in Washington who got five hundred dollars from Pa for securing him a job as government agent, and all his papers authorized him to do was to travel at his own expense, and to buy all the airships he wanted to with his own money, and Pa had a fit. All the money he had spent was a dead loss, and all he had to show for it was a punctured airship, which he was afraid to ride in.

Pa swore at the government, at the consul, and at the man who buncoed him, and they released him from arrest, when he promised that he would not pose any more as a government agent, and we went back to the hotel.

“Well, this is a fine scrape you have got me in,” says Pa, as we went to our room.

“What in thunder did I have to do about it?” says I, just like that. “I wasn’t with you when you framed up this job and let a man in Washington skin you out of your money by giving you a soft snap which has exploded in your hands. Gee, Pa, what you need is a maid or a valet, or something that will hold on to your wad.” Pa said he didn’t need anybody to act as a guardian to him, cause he had all the money he needed in his letter of credit to the American Express Company in Paris, and he knew how to spend his money freely, but he did hate to be buncoed and made the laughing stock of two continents.