BY GASTON V. DRAKE.
XVIII.—FROM BOB TO JACK.
Geneva.
DEAR JACK,—I did dream about that Guillotine as I was afraid I would and it wasn't any fun. I'm sorry I went to bed that night. I thought I went to the barber's to get my hair cut and all he had to cut it with was the guillotine. He said his scissors were off being ground but if I wouldn't wiggle the guillotine was just as safe, and it was, though I didn't enjoy it very much until I waked up and found it was all a dream, and then like a donkey I went and told Ma all about it and she said I'd have to stop eating Table d'hôte. Do you know what table-d'hôte is? It's French for a kind of a dinner where you eat everything there is on the bill of fare, and it's great because they ring in three or four different kinds of desert in such a way that nobody thinks of telling you it isn't good for you. First you have soup and then you have fish and next comes a patty which is generally a sort of chicken-hash short cake, and it goes right to the spot. Then you have roast lamb with mint sauce and green pease about as big as bird shot cooked with sugar and soft as peaches. Then comes another desert called sherbet, which is only lemon water ice and you think your dinner is over when pop! in walks the waiter with some kind of a bird, with some salad. Then you have cheese and then a pudding and on top of the pudding ice-cream and cake. They call the cakes petty fours but I could eat 'em by the petty sixes and I do. If you ever come abroad don't forget to eat all of these dinners you can. They're cheap and good only don't try to get one by asking for a Tay-bill-de-hote as you'd think it was called. No Frenchman would know what you meant, but if you call for a Tar-bull-doat they'll bring it in a minute. Ma said it was too many of these that was making me have dreams like the guillotine one but Pop said he didn't think it was; the boy is naturally excited by what he sees and hears about. We'll have to tell Jules to stop telling him stories. I'd rather go without the table d'hôte said I. And there it dropped and you can bet I'm not going to bring the subject up again no matter if I dream my head's being chopped off.
We left Paris yesterday. We didn't any of us want to come away but our time was up and so we left leaving about ninety-nine per cent. of the city unvisited. We didn't see the cemetery or go to the opera or any of those places—at least I didn't. Pop went to see the cemetery and he said it was not very cheerful and reminded him of a city of bathing houses, which I think must have been a mighty queer looking cemetery. Jules took me and the babies to the circus, but it isn't like our circus. There wasn't any pink lemonade or monkies or things like that, but all sorts of goings on in the ring and only one ring which I don't think is much and all the clowns cracked their jokes in French so I was just as glad when it was over.
It was a long ride from Paris to Geneva. Fourteen hours and near the end a Frenchman insisted on getting into our compartment which Pop had paid a man to let us have all to ourselves—and wasn't Pop mad! He tried to tell the Frenchman he had no business there, but his French got mixed up with several other languages and Pop never was strong on pantomime so the man didn't catch the idea until we got to Geneva and then he got out, but it was too late. All this time Jules was in the next car but we couldn't get at him to tell him, and that made Pop more nervous than ever. However we all got here alive and Pop has calmed down. He couldn't help calming down here. It's a beautiful city and clean as a whistle—I don't mean a railroad whistle, but the clean kind. It's right on the lake and such green water you never saw and way off in the distance Mount Blanc plays peek-a-booh with you through the clouds. Mount Blanc is the finest Alp I ever saw and it looks good enough to eat—like a great big plate of ice-cream. I wanted Jules to get up early the next morning and go out and climb it with me and have a snow-ball fight, but he says it takes nine hours to get to it riding all the way in a wagon, and two days more to climb it. It hardly seems possible, but I guess he knows because he's done it—leastways he says he has though Pop doubts it. Pop says Jules is a French Sandboys who has done a heap of things which no man ever did, but I don't care he's a good fellow to go with and I like him. He told me that when he climbed up Mount Blanc it was so cold it contracted his head so that he couldn't keep his hat from sliding down over his eyes, and as he had lost his golf cap and wore a beaver this was trying because it prevented him from seeing many of the things that other people who have climbed the mountain have seen and made books of. Jules wants to write a book and I wish he would because I'd like to read it. He's had so many things happen in his life. Why the time he went up this Mount Blanc he encountered a polar bear that wanted to eat him and Jules was willing he should because he said he was so cold he was willing to go anywhere where it was warm and he says the inside of a bear is a great deal warmer than the outside of a bear, but in his frozen state he didn't know what he was doing and so fought like a tiger and killed the bear, which warmed him up a good deal and really in the end saved his life, for if it hadn't been for the bear's skin he'd have frozen while he was up on top of the mountain which rises to a height of 16,000 feet above the level of the sea.
Pop and I went into a place this morning where there was a race going on between two music-boxes and one of 'em did a tune in at least a minute less time than the other one did the same tune. I enjoyed it very much but Pop called it a din and said let's go, so we went. Aunt Sarah may be musical but I've heard her play the piano and she can't get through that Cavalere Rusticannio half so quick as one of these music-boxes.
Pop bought me a gold watch here yesterday, but I don't see what good it's going to do me because he says he thinks he'll carry it a year himself until it gets regulated.
When we get to Genoa where Columbus used to go I'll write again.
Yours always, Bob.