Peck's Bad Boy in an airship

by George W. Peck

One day he called me up to our room in the hotel and after locking the door, and plugging up the keyhole with chewed paper he said: “Now, Hennery, I want you to listen right out loud. The government has given me an appointment to travel over the world and get information about air ships, divagable balloons, and everything that will help our government to know what other governments are doing in inventing things to be used in case of war. I am to be the Billy Pinkerton of the War Department and shall have to spy in other governments, and I am to be the traveling diplomat of the government, and jolly all nations, and find out how things are running everywhere.

“You will have to stay home this time because you would be a dead give away, so I will send you to a nice orphan home where you will be taught to work, and where guards will keep you on the inside of the fence, and put you to bed in a straight jacket if you play any of your jokes, see?” and Pa gave me a ticket to an orphans’ home, and a letter of introduction to the matron and the next day I was an inmate, with all the degrees coming to me. What do you think of that, and Pa on the ocean, with a government commission in his pocket?

Gee, but my ideas of an orphans’ home got a shock when I arrived at the station where the orphans’ home was located. I thought there would be a carriage at the train to meet me, and a nice lady dressed in white with a cap on her head, to take me in her arms and hug me, and say, “Poor little boy, I will be a sister to you,” but there was no reception committee, and I had to walk a mile with my telescope valise, and when I found the place and went in the door, to present my letter to the matron, a man with a scar on his face, and one eye gone, met me and looked over my papers, and went, one eye on me, and called an assistant private and told him to take me and give me the first or entered apprentice degree.

Gee, My Ideas of an Orphan Home Got a Shock.

The private took me by the wrist and gave me a jerk and landed me in the laundry, and told me to strip off, and when I had removed my clothes and folded them and laid them on a table, he took the clothes away from me, and then told me to climb into a laundry tub, and he turned cold water on me and gave me a bar of yellow laundry soap, and after I had lathered myself he took a scrubbing brush, such as floors are scrubbed with, and proceeded in one full swoop to peel the hide off of me with a rough crash towel till you could see my veins and arteries, and inside works as well as though you had used X-rays, and when I was ready to die and wanted to, I yelled murder, and he put his hand over my mouth so hard that he loosened my front teeth, and I guess I died right there or fainted, for when I came to, and thought the resurrection morning, that they used to tell me about in the Sunday School, had come. I found myself dressed in a sort of combination shirt and drawers, like a bunny nightie, made of old saddle blankets, and he told me that was the uniform of the orphanage and that I could go out and play for fifteen minutes, after which the bell would ring and I could go from play to work. Gosh, but I was glad to get out doors, but when I began to breathe the fresh air, and scratch myself where the saddle blanket clothes pricked me, about fifty boys, who were evidently sophomores in the orphanage, came along, and made a rush for me, to haze me as a freshman.

Well, they didn’t do a thing to me. They tied a rope around one ankle, and threw the rope over a limb, and pulled me off the ground, and danced a war dance around me and run thistles up my trouser’s legs, and spanked me with a board with slivers in it, and let me down and walked over me in a procession, singing “There’ll be a hot time in the old town to-night.” I laughed all the time, because that is the way freshmen do in college when they are being murdered, and I thought my new associates would like me better if I died game. Just before I died game the bell rang, and the one eyed pirate and his chief of staff came out and said we would go to work, and the boys were divided into squads and put to work, some husking corn, others sweeping up dead leaves, others milking cows, and doing everything necessary around a farm.

Before I was set to work I had a few minutes of silent reflection, and I thought of my changed condition from my porcelain lined bath tub with warm water and soft towels, to that bath in the laundry, and the skinning process of preparing a boy for a better life.

The Way Freshmen Do in College When They’re Being Murdered.