“Well, I'll tell you, dad has got what they call a morbid appetite. Whatever you do, old skate, don't you ever get a morbid appetite.”
“What is a morbid appetite?” asked the old man; as he peeled a banana and began to eat it. “I can always eat anything that is not tied down, but I don't know about this morbid business.”
“Scientists say a morbid appetite is one that don't know when it has got enough. Dad likes good things, but he wants all there is on the table. Now, at New Orleans, before we came home, dad and I went in a restaurant to get some oysters, and you know the oysters there are the biggest in the world. When we got there dad was hungry, and the thought of raw oysters on the half shell made him morbid. He had a blue point appetite, and ordered four dozen on the half shell, for himself, and one dozen for me. Well, you would have dropped dead in your tracks if you had been there. Six waiters brought on the five dozen oysters, and each oyster was as big as a pie plate. Six dozen oysters would cover this floor from the door to the ice box. Dad almost fainted when he saw them, but his pride was at stake, and he made up his mind if he didn't eat them all the waiters would think he was a tenderfoot, and so he started in. The first oyster was as big as a calf's liver, and nobody but a sword swallower could ever have got it down. Dad cut one oyster into quarters, and got away with it, and after a while he murdered another, and after he had eaten three he wanted to go home and leave them. Then is the time his little boy got in his work. I told dad that if he didn't eat all the oysters the waiters and the people would mob him, that it was a deadly offense to order oysters and not eat them, and that they would probably kill us both before we got out of the place. He said, 'Hennery, I don't like oysters like I used to, and it seems to me I couldn't eat another one to save my life, but if, as you say, we are in a country where a man's life is held so cheaply, by the great horn spoons, I will eat every oyster in the house, and the Lord have mercy on me.' I told him that was about the size of it, and he would eat or die, and maybe he would die anyway, and just then a wicked-looking negro with a big oyster knife came to the table and looked ugly at dad and said, 'Have another dozen?' and dad said, 'Yes,' and then he began to eat as though his life depended on it, and I could hear the great wads of oysters strike with a dull thud on exposed places inside of dad, and before he got up from the table he had eaten them all, and he told the man we would be in again to lunch after awhile. Dad is the bravest man I ever saw, and don't you forget it. He would have come out all right, I suppose, and lived, if it hadn't been for his devilish morbid appetite for travel and adventure. Quick as we got out of the oyster place dad wanted to take a steamboat ride down the river to the Eades Jetties at the mouth of the river, and we went on board, and had a nice ride down to the mouth. After we had looked over the jetties where Eades made an artificial canal big enough for the largest ocean steamers to come up to New Orleans, the passengers wanted the captain to run the boat outside the bar, into the blue ocean, where the waves come from. Gee, but I hope I may live long enough to forget the ride. We hadn't got a boat's length outside the bar before the boat began to roll and toss, and I held on to dad's hand, and wished I was dead. I told him my little tummy ached, and I wanted a lemon. Dad said my little tummy, with its three oysters in it, was not worth mentioning, and told me to look at him. Talk about your Mount Pelee, and your Vesuvius, those volcanoes were tame and uninteresting, compared to dad, leaning over the railing, and shouting words at the sharks in the water. Why? he just doubled up like a jack knife, one minute, and then straightened up like an elephant standing on its hind legs in a circus, the next minute, and he kept saying, 'Ye-up,' and all the passengers said 'poor man.' I told them he was not so poor, for he owned a brewery at home. Dad finally went to sleep with his arm and head over the rail, and his body hanging limp, down on deck. The boat turned around and went back into the mouth of the river, and the passengers were thanking the captain for giving them such a lovely ride, when I thought I would wake dad up, and so I touched him on the shoulder and asked him if he didn't want a few dozen more raw oysters, and he yelled murder, and began to have hydrophobia again, and bump himself. You know the way people do when they are dissatisfied with the medicine the doctor gives. Well, we got back to New Orleans, and dad took a hack to the hotel, and told the driver not to pass any saloon where there were oyster shells on the sidewalk. We came home next day. Well, I guess I will get my snake out of the ice box, and go home and comfort dad. But wait a minute till that Irishman puts that chunk of ice in the ice box, and see if he notices the snake.” Just then there was a sound as if a house had fallen, a two hundred pound cake of ice struck the floor, and the Irishman came running through the grocery with his ice tongs waving, and yelling, “There's a rattlesnake in yer ice box, mister, and ye can go to h—l for yer ice.” The groceryman looked at the boy, and the boy looked at the groceryman, the cat looked at both, the boy took his snake under his arm and went out, and the old man said:
{Illustration: “Each Oyster Was as Big as a Pie Plate."}
“Well, you are the limit. Call again, and bring an anaconda, and a man-eating tiger,” and he went and scraped up the ice.
CHAPTER XVI.
The Bad Boy Tells the Story of the Bears in Yellowstone Park and How Brave Dad Was.