PECK’S BAD BOY IN AN AIRSHIP

“Take That from Your Little Hennery.”

Peck’s Bad Boy

in an Airship

By Hon. Geo. W. Peck

Author of Peck’s Bad Boy, Peck’s Bad Boy Abroad, Peck’s Bad Boy

With the Circus, Peck’s Bad Boy With the Cowboys, Etc.

Humorous and Interesting

A story relating the adventures of Peck’s Bad Boy and His Pa who are sent to Europe to investigate airships with an idea of using them in the United States Navy. Tells of their adventures in Europe also in South Africa where the airship is used in hunting wild animals.

Illustrated by Charles Lederer

The Celebrated Illustrator and Cartoonist

Copyright, 1908

By W. G. CHAPMAN

Copyright, 1908

By THOMPSON & THOMAS

CONTENTS.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

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

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

[Gosh, But I Never Had Such an Excursion.]

[Grabbed the Balloon Rope and Gave it a Hitch Around the Pole.]

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

[Hit the Chief of Police With a Bottle.]

[They Pulled Me Through the Forty-Foot Gun to Swab it Out.]

[When it Exploded the Jap Was the Scaredest Person I Ever Saw.]

[The Boss of the Boat Ordered Me Pulled Out With a Boat Hook.]

[I Am Thy Father’s Ghost—Come on in, the Water’s Fine.]

[The Captain Got Upon a Chair and Pulled a Revolver and Was Going to Shoot.]

[I Gave Him a Squeeze That Sent a Shock Through Him That Loosened His Teeth.]

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

[After Pa Had Been Ducked in the Fountain They Charged for Two Ducks He Killed by Falling on Them.]

[The Fireworks Went Off. The Woman Threw a Fit and Pa Raised Out of the Smoke.]

[Up She Went With the Inventor Steering and Pa Hanging on for Dear Life.]

[Pa Gave a Honk Honk Like an Auto, But the Lion Wasn’t Frightened So You Would Notice.]

[When Pa Found the Snake Coiled Up on His Blanket He Threw a Fit.]

[Looking Him Square in the Face I began to Chant, Ene-Mene-Miny-Mo.]

[Pa Astride of a Zebra, Has Frightened the Elephants Into a Stampede by Playing “A Hot Time” on a Mouth Organ.]

[Pa Made a Lunge and Fell on Top of the Little Elephant, Which Began to Make a Noise Like a Baby.]

[“There’s Your Lions, About a Dozen, Captured Down in That Hole; Help Yourselves,” Said Pa.]

[“Get in There, You Measly Cur Dog,” Said Pa, Kicking the Big Lion at Every Jump.]

[Pa Stopped the Music and Repeated an Old Democratic Speech of His, and They Acted Just Like a Caucus.]

[All He Had to Do Was Play “Supper is Now Ready in the Dining Car.”]

[Some of Those Negroes are Running Yet, and Will, No Doubt, Come Out at Cairo, Egypt.]

[Pa Had to Put His Foot on Their Necks and Acknowledge Him Their King and Protector.]

Peck’s Bad Boy in an Airship.

CHAPTER I.

The Bad Boy Wants to Be an Orphan—The Bad Boy Goes to an Orphan Asylum—The Government Gives the Bad Boy’s Pa an Appointment to Travel Over the World and Get Information About Airships, Dirigible Balloons and Everything to Help Our Government Know What Other Governments Are Doing in Case of War.

I have always wanted to be an orphan and I guess now I have got my wish.

I have watched orphans a whole lot and they have seemed to me to have the easiest job outside of politics.

To see a good mess of orphans at an Orphan Asylum, with no parents to butt in and interfere with your enjoyment has seemed to me to be an ideal existence.

When a boy has a father that he has to watch constantly to keep him from going wrong he has no time to have any fun, but to belong to a syndicate of orphans, with an easy old maid matron to look after the whole bunch, an individual orphan who has ginger in him can have the time of his young life. At least that is the way it has always seemed to me.

They set on the food at an orphanage, and if you have a pretty good reach, you can get enough corralled around your plate to keep the wolf from the door, and when it comes to clothes, you don’t have to go to a tailor, or a hand me down store, and take something you don’t want because it is cheap, but you take any clothes that are sent in by charitable people, which have been worn enough so there is no style about them, and no newness to wear off by rolling in the grass, and you put them on and let it go at that, if they do smell of moth balls.

Pa has skipped and I am left alone and I shall enter as a freshman in an Orphan Asylum, and later go out into the world and travel on my shape.

Pa took me to Washington and for a week he was visiting the different Departments, and nights he would talk in his sleep about air ships and balloons, and forts and battleships, and about going abroad, until I thought he was getting nutty.

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.

Then what do you suppose they set me to work at? Skinning bull heads and taking out the insides. It seems the boys catch bull heads in a pond, and the bull heads are used for human food, and the freshest boys were to dress them. Well, I wasn’t going to kick on anything they gave me for a stunt, so I put on an apron, and for four hours I skinned and cut open bull heads in a crude sort of way, until I was so sick I couldn’t protect myself from the assaults of the live bull heads, and the cook said I done the job so well that she would ask to have me skin all the bull heads after that. I said I would rather milk cows so the pirate gave me a milk pail and told me to go and milk the freckled cow, and I went up to the cow as I had seen farmers do, and sat down on a wooden camp stool and put the pail under the cow, and began to squeeze the Summer Sausages she wore under her stomach, four of ’em, and the more I squeezed the more there didn’t any milk come, and the cow looked around at me in a pitying sort of way, but the milk did not arrive on schedule time, and then I thought of a farmer I once saw kick a cow in the slats, and I thought maybe that was the best way to cause the milk to hurry and flow, so I got up off the stool and hauled off my hind leg and gave that cow a swift kick that sent her toes clear in to her liver and lights and sausage covers.

Well I thought it was a car of dynamite running into an elevator and exploding, but the boys that picked me up and poured milk on my face to bring me to, said it was not an explosion, but that the cow had reared up in front and kicked up behind, and struck me with all four feet, and had hooked me with her horns, and switched me with her tail, and pawed me with her forward feet, and licked my hair with her tongue, and laid down and rolled on me. Well, I certainly looked it. Gee, but I don’t want any more farmer’s life in mine.

I certainly thought that was the way to cause a cow to give milk. Maybe I ought to have sworn at her the way the farmer did. I remember now, that he used language not fit to print, but I have not taken the swearing degree yet.

Well, they got me braced up so I could go to dinner, and it was surely a sumptuous repast, fried bull heads and bread. I have eaten fish at home and at hotels, where you had ketchup, and celery, and vegetables, and gravy, and pie, and good things, but to sit down with fifty boys and eat just bull heads, and stale bread, and try to look pleasant like you were at a banquet, was one on your little Hennery that made him feel that the pleasures of being an orphan had been over drawn.

Gosh, but the boys tell me we have bull heads here six times a week, because they don’t cost anything, and that the bones stick through your skin so they hold your clothes on.

I am organizing a union among the boys and we are going to call a strike, and if the pirate with one eye does not grant all we ask, we are going to walk out in a body, and jump a freight train, and go out in the wide world to make our fortunes. I shall go look for pa. There can’t no man give me such a dirty shake. I feel like I had been left on a door step, with a note on the basket asking the finder to take good care of me “’cause I was raised a pet.”

CHAPTER II.

No Encouragement for Inventive Genius in Orphan Home—The Boy Uses His New Invention, a Patent Clothes Wringer, in Milking.

There is no encouragement for inventive genius in this orphans’ home that I am honoring with my patronage.

I always supposed that an orphanage was a place where they tried to make an orphan feel that it wasn’t such a great loss not to have a regular home, among your people as long as you could be lovingly cared for in big bunches by charitable people, who would act like a High School to you, and when you got a diploma from an orphans’ home you could go out into the world and hold up your head like a college graduate, but I can see from my experience at this alleged home that when we boys get out the police will have a tab on us, and we will be pinched like tramps.

What encouragement is there to learn anything but being chambermaid to cows? Gee, but I never want to look a cow in the face again. When I failed to milk that cow and she galloped all over the place, and kicked my liver around where my spleen ought to be, the one-eyed warden of the place told me I must practice on that cow till I got so that I could milk her with my eyes shut, and that I wouldn’t get much to eat until I could show him that I was a he-milkmaid of the thirty-third degree.

I told him I saw a machine last year at the State Fair that had a suction pump that was put on to the cow’s works, and by touching a button the milk and honey flowed into a pail, and if he would get such a machine I could touch the button all right. He said the orphanage couldn’t afford to buy such a machine, but if I wanted to invent any device to milk cows I could go ahead, but it was up to me to produce milk, one way or another.

Well, an idea struck me just like being hit with a base ball bat, and in a short time I was ready.

I got a clothes wringer out of the laundry, and went to corral the cow. I thought if a clothes wringer could squeeze the blue water out of a wash tub of clothes, it would squeeze a pail of milk out of a cow, so I took my clothes wringer and the milk pail and got under the cow and gathered all her four weiners together in my hands and put the ends of them between the rubber rollers, just easy, and the boys gathered round to see where my inventive genius was going to get off at. Then when my audience was all ready to cheer me, if the machine worked, I took hold of the handle of the machine, which was across my lap, and turned the crank with a yuck motion, until all the cow’s weiners went through between the rollers, and I noticed the cow flinched, and just there one of the sophomore boys threw a giant firecracker under the cow’s basement near the milk pail, and when the explosion came, just when I was cranking her up a second time and turning on the high speed clutch, the cow bleated as though she had lost her calf, and she went up into the air like the cow that jumped over the moon, and she went across the country on a cavalry charge, with me hanging on the handle of the wringer with one hand, on her tail with the other, and the boys giving the orphan school yell, and the cow bellowing like a whole drove of cattle that have smelled blood around a slaughter house.

Gosh, but I never had such an excursion. The cow went around the house and on to the porch where the manager and some women were, and finally rushed into the kitchen, and everybody came and tied me loose from the cow, and got the clothes wringer off her vital parts, and shooed her back to the barn, and then they took me to the manager’s office, and I fainted away.

Gosh, But I Never Had Such an Excursion!

When I came to the one-eyed manager had a bandage over his nose where the handle of the clothes wringer hit him when he tried to turn the handle back to release the pressure on the cow’s bananas, and he was so mad you could hear him “sis,” like when you drop water on a hot griddle.

He got up and took me by the neck and wrung it just like I was a hen having its neck wrung when there is company coming and he dropped me “kerplunk” and said I had ruined the best cow on the place by flattening out her private affairs so that nothing but skim milk could ever get through the teats, and he asked me what in thunder I was doing, milking a cow with a clothes wringer, when I ought to have known that a clothes wringer would squeeze the milk up into the second story of the cow.

I told him I had never been a dairy farmer, anyway, and a cow was a new proposition to me, and he said I could go and live on bread and water till doomsday, and that I was the worst orphan he ever saw, and he pushed me out of the room.

The boys met me when I came out of the presence of the one-eyed manager, and we went off into the woods and held an indignation meeting, and passed resolutions condemning the management of the orphanage, and I suggested that we form a union and strike for shorter hours and more food, and if we did not get it, we could walk out, and make the orphan school business close up.

We discussed what we would do and say to the boss, and just before supper time we lined up in a body before the house and called out the manager and made our demands, and gave him fifteen minutes to accept, or out we would go, and I tell you we looked saucy.

I never saw anything act as quick as that strike did. In five minutes the manager came out and said he wouldn’t grant a thing, and besides we were locked out, and couldn’t ever get back into the place unless we crawled on our hands and knees and stood on our hind feet like dogs, and barked and begged for food, and he shut the door and the dining room was closed in our faces, and we were told to get off the place or they would set the dogs on us.

For a few minutes not a word was said, then the boys pitched on to me and another boy that had brought on the strike, and gave us a good licking, and made us run to the woods, and when we got nearly out of sight we turned and all the brave dubs that were going to break up the orphanage were down on their seats on the grass, begging like dogs to be taken back, because supper was ready, and my chum and me were pulling for tall timber, wondering where the next meal was coming from, and where we are going to sleep.

We were the only boys in that bunch of strikers that had sand enough to stand up for union principles, and as is usually the case the fellows who had the most gravel in their crops had little else, and I was never so hungry in my life.

A diet of fried bull heads and skim milk, and sour bread for a few days in the orphanage had left me with an appetite that ought to have had a ten course banquet at once, but we walked on for hours, and finally struck a railroad track and followed it to a town.

My chum stopped at a freight car on a side track and began to poke around one of the oil boxes on a wheel, and when I asked him what he was going to do, he said that to a hungry man the cotton waste and the grease in a hot box of a freight car was just as good as a shrimp salad, and he began to poke the stuff out of the hot box to eat it. He said the lives of tramps were often saved by eating out of hot boxes. I swore that I would never eat no hot box banquet, and I pulled him away from the box car just as a brakeman came along with a hook and a can of oil and a bucket of water to cool it off, and we escaped.

I told him we would have a good supper all right, if he would stick by me.

We went into the little town and it was getting dark, and all the people were out doors looking up into the sky, and saying, “there it is, I see it,” and I asked a man in front of a saloon what the excitement was about, and he said that they were watching the balloons from St. Louis, about two hundred miles away, which were sailing to the east.

Did you ever have an idea strike you so sudden that it made you dizzy? Well, I was struck with one so quick that it made me snicker, and I pulled my new chum away and told him how we would get supper and a place to sleep, and that was to go into the woods near where the people were looking up into the air, and when a balloon went over, after it got good and dark, we could set up a yell, as though murder was being done, and when the crowd came to see what was the matter, he could say we fell out of a balloon, and landed in a tree and squirmed down to the ground.

Well, I didn’t want to lie, but my chum, who had once been in a Reform School, did not care so much about lying, so he was to do the talking and I was to be deaf and dumb, as though the fall from the balloon had knocked me silly.

Well, when we saw a light in the sky over us and the people were going wild over thinking they saw a balloon, we began to scream like wild cats, and groan like lost souls, and yell for “help, help.” When the people came on the run, and when they found us with our clothes torn, and our hair standing on end, and our eyes bulging out, and my chum, the old liar, said when we were leaning over the basket of the balloon to see what town we were passing over, we fell out in a tree, and we were so hungry.

“Tossed him over the fence.”

Well, the way those good people swallowed that yarn was too comical, and they picked us up and took us into a house. A pussy woman got me under her arm and said “Poor dear, every bone in his body is busted, but I saw him first, and I am going to have him mended and keep him for a souvenir,” and I hung my legs and arms down so I would be heavy, and she dragged me to the house. All I said was, “pie, pie, pie,” and she said I was starving for pie, and when they got us in bed, with nice night shirts on, they crowded around us and began to feed us, and we took everything from soup to mints, and went to sleep, and the last thing I heard was balloon talk, and the woman who drew me in the shuffle said, “The ways of Providence are past finding out,” and as I rolled over in bed I heard my chum in another bed say “You can bet your sweet life,” and then the people began to go away, talking about the narrow escape of those dear boys, and my pussy fat lady held my hand and stroked my aching stomach until long after midnight, and then she tip-toed off to bed.

I spoke to my chum and said, “Did it work out all right?” and he groaned and said, “Gee, but I et too much, I otter have saved some of it for breakfast,” and then we went to sleep in nice feather beds instead of those beds at the orphanage made of breakfast food.

CHAPTER III.

The Boy Escapes from Orphan Asylum—The Boy and His Chum Had Red Letter Days—The Boy Is Adopted by New Friends.

There is not much fun in being an orphan until you escape from the orphan asylum, and I want to say that my chum and myself have had two red letter days in the town where we seemed to drop out of a balloon into the hearts of the country people.

They took up a subscription to buy clothes for us, and dressed us up, and we looked as though we had been clothing dummies in front of a clothing store, and then the people got into a quarrel as to who should adopt us.

A farmer drew my chum and wanted him to get acquainted with some mules and drive six mules to haul fertilizer on the farm. My chum had to set on a saddle on one mule, and drive the other five mules by using one line, which he pulled and hauled to make them gee round grand right and left.

The fat woman adopted me because I was such a dear little thing. She was one of those hay widows, whose husband got plenty of her sauce, and took to the tall timber, and all she wanted to do was to hug me, and tell me that if I had not dropped into her life, out of that balloon, she would have kicked the bucket, and I thought of how any bucket I ever saw would have collapsed, for she had a foot like a fiddle box.

She made me tell her the story of my past life, and when she found I was Peck’s Bad Boy, and I thought I had made my story so sanguinary that she would want me to go away, so she could have a quiet life, she just froze to me and said she could see that she had been selected by Providence to take the badness out of me, and she went to work hypnotizing me, and giving me absent treatment on my meals, to take my strength for wickedness away, and then she got me so weak I could not hug back when she squeezed me, and you can imagine the condition a growing boy would be in who could not do his share of the hugging.

The second day of my sentence to be her adopted son, with all my crimes on my head, she let me go out on the farm to visit my chum, and there is where my whole new life changed.

My chum was driving his mules around the farm, and I was riding behind him on the wheel mule, when a balloon from St. Louis came over, and the men in the balloon yelled to us to grab hold of the rope as they wanted to land in the field. The mules began to act up and my chum couldn’t control them, and I jumped off the mule and grabbed the rope and gave it a hitch around the pole of the wagon, and that settled it with the mules. They rolled their fawn like eyes around at the great gas bag that was swaying over the wagon, with the two men yelling, and the mules started to run, with the wagon and the balloon, around that field, the balloon striking the fence occasionally, and a tree once in a while, the men yelling for us to cut the rope, and the mules braying and saying mule prayers, and me chasing along to try and cut the rope, and my chum hanging on to the ears of the wheel mule, and the farmers rushing into the field from every direction to stop the mules, and the men in the balloons using the worst language.

Grabbed the Balloon Rope and Gave It a Hitch Around the Pole.

The mules had run around the field several times, and the balloon was doing its best to keep up, when I yelled to the men in the balloon, “Why don’t you throw out your anchor?” and they then seemed to recollect about the anchor, and they threw it out, and when it caught fast in the ground the mules pulled loose from the wagon and went through a fence, and started for Texas, and I guess they are going yet. My chum got off all right, except he was so scared he could not stand up. Well, we had a time straightening things out, the farmers wanted to lynch the balloon men, and make them pay for the mules, but in rolling up the balloon to take to the station, to ship to St. Louis, I found a mail bag, and I told the farmers these balloonists were carrying the U. S. mail, and any man that laid hands on the government mail could be imprisoned for life for treason, and I scared the farmers so they gave the balloonists their dinner, and hauled the balloon to the station with the whole bunch of us, and when the balloonists went away on the train they told my chum and me that if we would come to St. Louis they would give us jobs carrying off balloons, and they would teach us how to fly. Gee, but that was nuts for us. To rise, at once, from being mule drivers and adopted boys, to a place in balloon society, was what we wanted, and my chum and I deserted our more or less happy homes and began to plan to jump a freight train bound for St. Louis.

“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.

My chum and I talked over the depression in the money market, and the panic in Wall street, and tried to think we were better off than millionaires who did not know where the next meal was coming from, and with our stomachs full, and no care on our minds, we wished we could give some of our dog biscuit to the hungry rich.

While we were thinking of the good one can do with a few dog biscuit, there was a terrible crash, the car jumped on the ties and reared up, and finally rolled over and down a bank and all was still as death, except that the boiler of the engine was blowing off steam, and the horses were groaning, and the confounded dog that chewed me was dead.

Men run over the cars, and chopped with axes, and finally a fire engine began to throw water on the burning cars, my chum and I were wedged under bales of hay, one of my legs was asleep, and we both yelled murder, and finally the fire was out, the side was chopped out of the car, and they took us out and put us in an ambulance and the brakeman who had let us into the car said, “Tickets, please,” and the ambulance was driven to a hospital at East St. Louis, and they wanted to amputate us, just for practice. One of the hospital attendants asked me who I was, and when I told him I was “Peck’s Bad Boy,” traveling for my health, he said, “Well, you are certainly getting what is coming to you,” and I guess that is no lie.

CHAPTER IV.

A Bad Railroad Wreck—The Boy Contrasts Their Ride to One in a Parlor Car—The Lawyer Is the Greatest Man on Earth—The Boy Settles His Claim for $20.

The accident by the wrecking of the freight train on which my chum and myself were touring the country, viewing the scenery through an auger hole in the side of a box car, was a darn sight worse than I thought it was. What a come down it was for me, who have always traveled with pa, in a parlor car, to have to ride in a box car, with live stock, and feast on dog biscuit, instead of ordering from the menu in a dining car.

No one likes the luxuries of foreign travel any better than I do, but that freight car experience showed me that we do not know when we are well off, but when a boy goes out into the world to make his fortune, and cuts loose from home ties, and pie, and bath tubs, and a warm bed, and victuals such as mother makes, and winds up in a wreck, under a horse that he does not know the name of, he is going some.

When we got to the hospital a lawyer, who had chased the ambulance on a motorcycle, retained me as his client and offered to sue the railway company for a million dollars damage, and he would furnish all the evidence, and take half of what he got for his fee. I thought it was a good proposition, and probably I can own a railroad if I take stock for my damages, but I shall take nothing but money, and let my lawyer have the railroad stock. Gee, but a lawyer is the greatest man on earth. This one has been riding alongside the railroad track on a motorcycle for years, waiting for an accident, and when he selected me for a client he just cried for joy, and he has drawn a complaint against the Railroad Company that is a work of art.

Started on a stampede.

When he read it to me, and I saw how I had been broken up and damaged by the soulless corporation, and how my promising career had been ruined, I never was so overcome in my life. While I was not hurt any, except where the horse laid on me and squeezed my dog biscuits in my stomach so my backbone was poulticed by the chewed biscuit, the lawyer had the doctors at the hospital put my legs and arms in plaster of paris casts, and had my body done up in splints and bandages, and my face covered with strips of court plaster, until nothing but my mouth was in working order, and I wore out a nurse bringing me things to eat, and I never enjoyed myself more in my life than I did in that hospital, just eating and being petted by good looking nurses.

My lawyer told me to groan all the time when anybody was present, and when a railroad lawyer called at the hospital to take an invoice of my wounds, and my lawyer was present to see that I groaned plenty, it was all I could do to keep from laughing, but my lawyer would run a paper knife into my slats every time I quit groaning, so we were working the railroad all right, and the hospital doctors, who were going to have a share in the money, made a list of my broken bones, and the railroad lawyer wanted to be shown every break in my anatomy.

Well things went on this way for several days, and I was getting nervous from the plaster casts on me.

I didn’t like it very much when the railway lawyer offered to settle for five dollars, claiming I was a tramp stealing a ride, but he brought my chum to see me, and my chum who had his neck twisted around by a bale of hay falling on him, settled for twenty dollars, and so I did the same, and when the nurses were asleep in the afternoon, my chum and me left the hospital with forty good dollars, and started across the bridge for St. Louis, to find the air ships.

We were sitting down on a railroad track, at the east entrance to the bridge, and I had taken off my clothes, and was breaking the plaster of paris off my limbs, when my lawyer came along on his motorcycle, on the way to the hospital to make me groan some more, and when he saw us he had a fainting spell, and when I told him we had been discharged cured, he said it was hard for a deserving lawyer to be knocked out of a half million dollar fee by a dumb fool client who didn’t know enough to look out for his own interests, and he was going to have us arrested for highway robbery, but I told him I wouldn’t have known what to do with so much money if we had kanoodled the railroad out of a million dollars, in addition to a free ride on its palatial freight car, and besides it would be cheating, and the lawyer drew a long sigh and told us to get out of the country and he would continue the suit on the ground that we had been injured so bad that we became insane and jumped into the river, and he offered to throw us in the river, but we jumped on a street car and went across to St. Louis in search of the park where the balloon man was that had offered us a job riding in balloons.

We found the man and he said they were all going to start for somewhere the next morning and we could go along, my chum in one balloon and I in another, and all we would have to do was to throw out ballast when told to do so, and open cans of stuff to eat, and for us to buy thick sweaters, and show up at nine o’clock in the morning, and write the address where we wanted our remains sent to in case we were killed, and pin the address on our sweaters.

It wasn’t cheerful and my chum and I talked it over until late that night, and I am sorry to say my chum showed a streak of yellow, and he confessed to me that he was a coward, and came from a family of cowards, and that he didn’t have sand enough to go up in a balloon, and he would let me go up, but he would rather stay on the ground, where he could feel the earth with his feet, and watch the balloons.

He said that people who go up in balloons were either crazy, or had met with some disappointment in life, and took the balloon method of committing suicide, and he would side step balloons, and if the time ever came when he was tired of life, he would take a job firing on an engine, or go into burglary, or get in love with some old man’s wife, or marry a chorus girl, or something that would be fatal, but on land.

Gee, but I was disappointed in my chum. He had been in a reform school, and I thought he had gravel in his crop, but he proved to have the chilblains, and so I went to the balloon man in the morning alone, and told him I had made my will, and was ready to go up to heaven or down to Helena, Arkansas, any minute he was ready, but my chum had weakened and gone glimmering.

I got in the basket and looked things over, and jumped out and in several times, and asked questions of the two men who were to go up in it, and they seemed pleased that I was not afraid, and they asked me if I thought my father would make a kick if I was killed or lost at sea, or anything, and I told them from my last conversation with Pa I thought he would take it as a kindness if they should find it convenient to spill me out somewhere or lose me, and when they landed, if they could make affidavit that I had been permanently disposed of, like a mess of kittens under water in a bag, with a stone in it, that Pa would be willing to cough up quite a premium.

That held them for a little while, and then they asked me who I was, anyway, and when I told them that I was the only original “Peck’s Bad Boy,” they said that from their recollection of my tricks on my father they could readily see how a fatality might be a blessing, and they seemed relieved of any responsibility, and we went to work to get things in the basket, and they instructed me what I was to do.

The basket was about nine feet square, and it had more things in it than a delicatessen store.

At about ten o’clock in the morning, with thousands of people watching the balloons, they began to cut loose and go shooting into the air, and it was a race.

The man told me that the balloon that went the farthest from St. Louis before being compelled to land would get the prize, and I began to feel anxious to have our balloon win.

I watched those that started first, and they went up so far I could only see little specks in the sky, and I thought of balloons I had seen go up on fair grounds, where a girl sat on a trapeze bar, and jumped off, and a parachute opened and took her safely to the ground, and I looked around our balloon for a parachute, but there was none, and I wondered what would happen if the balloon came down, with its gas all escaped, like the fair ground balloon, and there is where I came the nearest to weakening and climbing out, but I thought if I did I would be a coward like my chum, and then I thought if those two grown men, with families depending on them for support, were going up, they were not doing it for any suicidal purpose, and I could go if they could, and when the boss man said, “Now, Bub, if you want to stay ashore, this is your last chance,” I said, “Your little Hennery is ready to go where you go, and you can’t tie her loose any too soon to suit me,” and he patted me on the head and said, “Hennery, you sure are game,” and then all was ready and he said to them to let go. My heart went up and rubbed against my palate, and the balloon made a jump like a horse going over a five foot fence, advertising a brand of whiskey, and we shot up into the air, the people yelling, and I saw my chum sitting on a dray, driving a mule, and I thought of the difference between a brave boy and a mucker like my chum, the houses began to look smaller, until St. Louis looked like play houses, with a ribbon of gray on the side of it, which was the river.

The boss looked at a machine and said we were five miles high, and I thought how I had always enjoyed high life, and I was trying to get my heart swallowed down where it belonged.

The balloon basket was as steady as a house, and I got up and looked over the side of the basket, and it seemed awful, cause I had never been higher than the top of a twenty story building before, and I began to weep tears, and the air seemed queer, and I was just going to faint when the boss told me to open a can of lobsters, and I woke up.

CHAPTER V.

The Bad Boy Leaves St. Louis in a Balloon—The Boy Makes a Trip to San Francisco and Joins Evans’ Fleet—The Police Arrest Boy and Tie Up Balloon.

When our balloon left St. Louis, and got up in the air so far that the earth looked like a piece of rag carpet, with pop corn scattered over it, which were villages, and I realized that if anything busted, we would be dropping for hours before we struck a church steeple, and would be so dead when we hit the ground, and stiff and cold that we would be driven down in the mud so far no one would ever find us, and I looked at the two fool men in the basket with me, who didn’t seem to care what became of them, as though they were unhappily married or had money in a shaky bank, I began to choke up, and the tears came to my eyes, and I took a long breath of thin air, and fainted dead away.

When I fainted we were being driven south, and when I came to, with a smell of ammonia on my hair, we were going east, and the balloon had gone down within a mile of the earth, and the men gave me some hot tea out of a patent bottle, and pretty soon I began to enjoy myself and wonder if I could hit a mess of negroes picking cotton in a field, with a sand bag.

When you are up in the air so far that a policeman cannot reach you, you feel loose enough to insult men that would knock your block off if you should give them any lip when you were on the ground.

We came down a half a mile more, and I asked the boss man if I might throw a sand bag at the negroes, and he said I might throw a bundle of advertisements for liver pills at them, so I yelled, “Hello, you black rabbits,” and when the negroes looked up and saw the balloon, they turned pale, and dropped on their knees, and I guess they began to pray, and I didn’t mean to interfere with their devotions, so I threw a bottle of ginger ale at a mule hitched to a wagon near them, and when the bottle struck the mule on the head and exploded and the ginger ale began to squirt all over the colored population, the mule run one way with the wagon, and the negroes ran for the cane brakes. The boss man in the balloon complimented me on being a good shot, and said I had many characteristics of a true balloonist, and probably before we got to the end of the trip I would get so I could hit a church steeple with a bag of ballast, and break up a Sunday School in the basement. He said that being up in the rarefied air made a man feel as though he would like to commit murder, and I found out that was so, for the next town we passed over, when all the people were out in the main street, and the balloon man told me to throw over a bag of sand, so we could go up higher, instead of trying to throw the bag into a field, where there was nobody to be hurt or frightened, do you know, I shied that bag at a fountain in the public square and laughed like a crazy person when the water splashed all over the crowd, and the fountain was smashed to pieces, and the pirates in the balloon complimented me, and yet, when those men are at home, on the ground, they are christian gentlemen, they told me, so I made up my mind that if ballooning became a fashionable pastime, those who participated in it would become murderers, and the people on the ground would shoot at a balloonist on sight.

We went up so high that we were out of range of people on the ground, so you couldn’t pick out any particular person to hit with a bundle of pickle advertisements, so you had to shoot into a flock, and run chances of winging somebody, so I did not enjoy it, but along towards evening we passed over a town in Tennessee or Kentucky, where there was a race track, and races going on, and just as we got over it I said to the boss balloon man, “Just watch me break up that show,” and I pitched overboard a whole mass of advertisements of different things we carried, and two bundles hit the grand stand, and exploded, and about a million circulars advertising pills and breakfast food struck the track, just as the horses were in the home stretch, and of all the stampedes you ever saw that was the worst, horses running away, riders fell off, carriages tipped over, and the people in the grand stand falling over themselves, and as we sailed along none of us seemed to care two whoops whether anybody was killed or not. It was the craziness of being up in the air, and not caring for responsibility, like a drunken chauffeur running a crazy automobile through a crowd of children, and acting mad because they were in the way of progress.

We laughed and chuckled at the sensation we had caused, but cared no more for the results than a hired girl who starts a fire with kerosene.

It came on dark after a while, and all we had to do was to look at the stars and the moon, and it seemed to me that the stars were as big as locomotive headlights, and that you could see into them, and on several of the largest stars I was sure I could see people moving, and the moon seemed so near that you could catch the smile of the man in the moon, and see him wink at you.

The two men had to remain awake all night, but after awhile I said I guessed I would have my berth made up, and the boss man handed me a shredded wheat biscuit for a pillow, and laid me down by the sand bags and the canned food, and threw a blanket over me, and I slept all night, sailing over states, the balloon moving so still there was no sound at all.

I woke up once or twice and listened for a street car, or some noise to put me to sleep again, and found myself wishing there was a fire, so a fire department would go clanging by, making a noise that would be welcome in the terrible stillness.

I dreamed the awfulest dreams, and thought I saw Pa, in another balloon, with a rawhide in his hand, chasing me, and the great bear in the heavens seemed to be getting up on his hind legs, with his mouth open, ready to hug me to his hairy chest.

It was a terrible night, and at daylight the boss man woke me up and I looked over the side of the basket and we were going across a piece of water where there were battle ships lined up like they were at San Diego, when Cevera’s fleet was smashed, and the men said now was the time to demonstrate whether balloons would be serviceable in case of war, and told me to take a bundle of malted milk advertisements, and imagine it was a dynamite bomb, and see if I could land it on the deck of a big white battleship. I took a good aim and let the bundle go and it struck on deck just in front of a cross looking man in a white uniform, and scattered all over the deck and the sailors and marines came up on deck in a wild stampede, and threw the malted milk advertisements overboard, and as we sailed on there was an explosion of red hot language from the cross looking man in the white uniform, and the boss balloon man said, “That is a good shot, Bub, for you landed that bundle of alleged dynamite square on the deck of Admiral Bob Evans’ flagship. Didn’t you hear him swear?” and then we went on, and the man in the white uniform was shaking his fists and his mouth was working overtime, but we couldn’t hear the brand of profanity he was emitting, but we knew he was going some, for before we got out of hearing the bugles were sounding on more than a dozen battleships, the men came up from below and took positions in the rigging and everywhere, and all was live with action, and the boss balloon man said the fleet was preparing for its trip around the horn, to San Francisco, and then I told the balloon man that he couldn’t land me a minute too quick, because I was going to join that fleet and go with Bob Evans, if I never did another thing in my life.

Hit the Chief of Police with a Bottle.

The inspiration came to me up there in the rarefied air, and I was as sure I was going around the Horn as though I was already on one of the ships.

We sailed along part of the day and the gas began to give out, and I had to throw over ballast, and open cans of food, and bottles of stuff to drink, and I made some good shots with the sand bags and the bottles. Once I hit right in front of a brakeman on a freight train with a bottle of soda water, and again I hit an oyster schooner with a sand bag and must have chuckled at least a barrel of oysters. The gas kept escaping, and presently we came down in a field in Delaware, after I had hit a chief of police in Wilmington with a bottle of beer, which is a crime in a prohibition country, and after we landed the police arrested the two balloon men, and tied up the balloon. They paid me thirty dollars for my services, and I took a train for Fortress Monroe to join the fleet, and left the two balloon men on the way to a whipping post.

CHAPTER VI.

The Balloon Lands in Delaware—The Boy Visits the Battleships—They Scour the Boy With a Piece of Brick and Some Laundry Soap—The Boy Investigates the Mechanism of the Battleships—The Boy Goes With the Ships as a Mascot.

When our balloon that sailed from St. Louis came down in Delaware, and I had bid good bye to the two men whom I sailed with, and they had paid me good money for my services and keeping them awake, I thought of that fleet we had passed over at Fortress Monroe, the beautiful white battle ships, and I was afraid I could not get there before it sailed, and secure my berth, as I had made up my mind to go with it around the horn, and help fight Japan or mosquitoes, or any old thing that came in the way, so I took the first train to Fortress Monroe, and found that the whole population of several near by states were going too, as the President was going to review the fleet before it sailed.

The next day I was at the hotel at Old Point and with hundreds of other people took a launch and went out among the battle ships. Everybody was welcome to go aboard the ships, and we visited several of them and were shown all over the vessels by the uniformed jacks.

Gee, but a battleship is like a sky scraper on land, and you can go from the roof clear down half a mile below the water line, and it is like a combination of an engine manufactory, a boiler plant, a coal yard, a wholesale grocery, a packing house, a blacksmith shop, a department store, a hotel, a powder mill, a suburban trolley line, and a bargain sale of blankets, a state fair and a military encampment, and a parade ground, a county jail and an apartment house, with rooms to let on the European plan and all of it in an iron coffin, liable to go to the bottom any minute, if the air tanks are punctured.

Gee, but I was almost afraid to be down cellar in a battleship without any life preserver, and when I went up on deck, where I could jump overboard if she began to sink, there, away on top of the whole old cook stove, were guns so big that it seemed if one got to moving around on deck it would tip the ship over. It seemed to me like boring a hole in a flat iron and crawling in, and being put in a bath tub, or like rigging up a coal stove with paddles and outriggers, and paddling out in a marsh duck shooting.

The first hour I was investigating the mechanism of a battleship and was scared silly for fear she would get ready to sink, and as I looked at the iron everywhere, which I had been taught in school would sink so quick it would make your head swim, I wondered what my nation could be thinking of to build ships of iron and depend on wind to keep them on top of the water, and I thought it would be just as safe to cover an iron railroad bridge with building paper, and launch it for a trip across the ocean; and yet all the officers and men seemed to enjoy it, and forget about the danger, for they laughed and played jokes, and put on airs, and mashed the girls who came on board as though they had made up their minds that it was only a matter of time when the ships would sink, and they seemed to congratulate themselves that when they went down with the ships a time lock would close them up hermetically so sharks and devil fish couldn’t eat the crew, and they could float around for all time and eternity safe from the resurrection as they would be buried in a safety deposit box in the vault of a trust company.

Some of the jacks played it on me. They took me and wrapped an angora goat skin around me, with the hair outside, and tied a string to my feet, and run it out of the breach of the big sixteen inch gun, and another string on my legs, and they pulled me back and forth through that forty foot gun to swab it out, and when I came out alive they laughed and were going to tie a bag of shot to my feet and let me off a plank over the side to practice on a burial at sea, but I yelled for help and a cross looking man came along and pardoned me, and told the fellows to take me to his cabin and wash the powder off my face, and hold me until he could have a talk with me. When they had scoured me with a piece of brick and some yellow laundry soap, the man came into the cabin, and the boys who had hazed me said he was Admiral Evans, and I remembered him cause once when he was in the light house service he entertained Pa and me on his light house tender, and held me on his lap at the New Orleans Mardi Gras, and I said, “Hello, Mr. Evans, don’t you remember little Hennery? I am Peck’s Bad Boy,” and he remembered me, and said, “What n’ell you doing here?” and I told him I knew what he was up against, going around the horn, and to San Francisco and Japan and the Philippines, and that I wanted to go along on his ship as a mascot, or a waiter or anything, and he said he didn’t know, but I would be a good mascot, as last trip they had a goat and a monkey for mascots, and I had a combination of both, and if he was going to make a trip to hades, or any climate hotter than the straits of Magellan, he thought I would be all right.

They Pulled Me Through That Forty-Foot Gun to Swab It Out.

He asked me what I could do and I told him there was nothing that I couldn’t do if properly encouraged, anything, from flying a flag of truce from the fighting top, to riding up in the ammunition elevator with five hundred pounds of dynamite, to acting as the propeller to a Whitehead torpedo.

We talked it over for an hour and he asked about Pa, and then he said he would think it over, and he gave me a ticket with a number on, and told me to be on the front porch of the Hotel Chamberlaine at nine o’clock the second morning after, and if a steam launch from the Connecticut landed there and gave two whistles, for me to get on board with my baggage, and report to him before the fleet sailed.

Well, say, this was quick work, and I called a launch and visited the other vessels, promising to be Johnny on the spot at the appointed hour.

It was a great sight to see the review, when the President came along on the yacht Mayflower and I forgot all about the battleships being of iron liable to sink if the wind got out of the tanks, and was never so proud in my life as I was when I saw the jacks climb up on the rigging and hang on like monkeys, lined up like they were drilling on deck, and when the Connecticut began to fire a salute to the President, out of those great iron sewer pipes, and all the rest of the fleet began to shoot at the air, the noise was so loud that it made your head feel like you do when you take seidletz powders, and it gullups up your nose, and the smokeless powder made the smoke so thick you couldn’t see anything but the President’s teeth, as he sailed along on his yacht, and I got so patriotic that the chills went up my back like when you have the grip coming on, and then the smoke cleared away and when a million American flags were flung to the breeze, I began to choke up like you do when you are sick and the callers say, “Well, brace up boy, you may pull through, but there are a hundred chances against your living till morning,” and the tears rolled down my cheeks, and my throat got full like I had the tonsilitis, and everybody else on our launch except two Japanese were crying, and then the President’s yacht took a position, and all the battleships swinging into line and marched past, and the bands played, and we all just bellered for patriotic joy, and I was so mad to see those Japanese standing there like bottles of castor oil, not even smiling, that I blew up a toy balloon which I have been playing air ship with, and I whacked it on the head of the meanest looking Jap, and when it exploded he was the scardest-looking person I ever saw, because he thought one of those sixteen-inch shells had gone off in his hat, and everybody said, “served him right,” and then he laughed, the first time since the review started, and he wanted the skim of my toy balloon as a souvenir of the first gun fired in the war with Japan.

When it Exploded the Jap Was the Scaredest Person I Ever Saw.

From that day, when I had examined critically our fleet and seen it salute, and monkey around the President, I felt so patriotic that I wanted to fight for my country, and I could hardly wait two days for Mr. Evans to send his launch ashore after me, and I didn’t care if the whole thing was iron, that couldn’t float under natural conditions and if Bob Evans should put oarlocks on a bar of railroad iron, and put me on it, with orders to go sink a Japanese sampon, or whatever they call their war ships, I would step aboard that bar of railroad iron with a light heart, wave my hat and tell them all to go plumb.

So we went ashore, and that evening there was a ball at the hotel, and all the officers of the navy were there, and the army, and millions of ladies with clothes on the lower half of them, and talcum powder and black court plaster on the upper half, and the way they danced and waltzed and flirted and et lobsters would make you dizzy, and when Bob Evans walked limping by me, with a two-hundred-pound lady on one arm, and a ninety-pound girl on the rheumatiz side of him, I was so full of patriotic fire I couldn’t help saying, “Hello, Bob, I will be on deck all right,” and he looked at me with an expression on his face that looked as though he had drawn a lobster that had been dead too long, and he marched along with his female procession, and the orchestra struck up a good-night waltz, and everybody waltzed, and took some drinks, and went home to wait the sailing of the fleet the next day, and I went to bed with an order to be called at sunrise, so I could be on the porch with my ticket in my hand, ready to jump into the launch when she whistled and sail away “for a frolic or a fight,” and I didn’t care which.

CHAPTER VII.

A Storm Comes from the Coast of Cuba—Everyone Goes to Sleep on the Ship Except the Watchman and Pilot—The Bad Boy Is Put in the Dungeon—The Captain Says to Throw the Boy Overboard to Feed the Sharks.

I feel like a bridegroom that has been left waiting at the church, with no bride appearing, and the crowd scoffing at him, and commenting on his clothes.

I waited on the porch of the hotel at Fortress Monroe all the forenoon for Mr. Evans’ launch to come and get me and take me aboard his gladship, holding my ticket in one hand and my bundle of clothes in the other.

Launches came by the dozen, bringing people ashore, but no one was allowed to go out to the ships. Finally the last launch came, and it was manned by “Connecticut” men, and when I showed my ticket and was going to get on, the boss said “skiddoo,” the boat moved away with one of my feet on board and the other on the dock, and I promptly fell in the water, the boss of the boat yelled to some one on the dock to “get a boat hook and pull it out,” and soon I came up strangling, a hook caught me in the pants and I was hauled out on the dock, they rolled me on a barrel and stood me on my head to empty the water out of me, and a soldier took me into the kitchen of the hotel to have me dried out by the gas boiler, and I felt deserted and demoralized. The guns boomed, the bands played, and I looked out of the kitchen window and saw the fleet sail away south without me, and I realized that Bob Evans had been “stringing” me, and that he never intended I should go around the horn with the fleet, and I thought that may be, if he was a liar, and used profane language, and was subject to rheumatism, it was better that I did not go, as I might be spoiled. But they can go plumb with their old fleet, and if the Japs get Bob Evans and roast him over the coals, all I hope is that he will be sorry for treating me as he did.

The Boss of the Boat Ordered Me Pulled Out with a Boat Hook.

But I always light on my feet. After I got dried out, I met a man who was picking up a crew to go to Europe from Baltimore on a cattle ship, and he pictured to me the easy life on the ocean wave with a load of steers, and hired me to go along, and I thought it was the chance of my life to meet up with Pa, who is over there hunting airships for his government, so we went to Baltimore, and that night we were in the cattle ship and I slept in a hammock and ate my bread and beef out of a tin basin.

Gee, what a change it was over my former trip to Europe with Pa, on a regular liner, with a bed and meals in the cabin. But when a boy goes out in the world to gain his own living, and travel on his face, he has got to take what comes to him.

The next morning my work began. Our vessel went up to the stock yards, and began to load steers for shipment, and all I had to do was to act as a “twister.” When the cattle came through the shute, and landed on the deck, and refused to go into the dark places, we had to take hold of the tails of the cattle and twist them so they would move on, and of all the bellowing you ever heard, that was the worst.

Whether the bellowing was caused by the tail twisting, or because the cattle were home sick, and did not want to be kidnapped or “shonghaid” on board a foreign-bound vessel, I don’t know, but it was more exciting than the sea fight at Santiago and about as dangerous, for the cattle hooked with their horns and kicked, and I was kicked more than forty times, and would have quit, only the man that hired me said if any of us were injured we would be put on the government pension list, and be supported in luxury the balance of our lives, so I worked for two days, and finally we got a thousand or more steers down in the hold, sliding them down on skids, and they were lined up in stalls, with a hay rack in front of them, and a bar across behind them, and we sailed for the ocean, after feeding the cattle bailed hay and giving them water and bedding.

It seemed to me those cattle were almost as comfortable as steerage passengers on a liner, but they kicked and bellowed, and pawed the planks off the deck, and mourned like lost souls.

The first day out I found that I was not a passenger, but a crew. Instead of the easy life I had expected, loafing along across the ocean, I had to get up before daylight and skin potatoes, and help stir soup, and pulverize hard tack, and carry the food up into the cabin for the officers, and be sea sick, and wash dishes and wait on table, and feed cattle, and do everything anybody told me to do. After a few days I mutinied, and went to the captain and complained. He was an English nobleman, and after hearing my tale of woe, he told me if I didn’t like it I could go to ’ell, and I went down cellar to the cook room, which was the nearest to ’ell I could go on that vessel. I found the man that hired me, and told him I seemed to be doing the most of the work on the excursion, and that I wanted an assistant. He said if I thought I was working much now, I better wait until we run into a storm, when I would not only have to be cook and waiter and chamber maid to the steers, but I would have to be trained nurse down in the cattle regions, for when the steers began to be sea sick that was a time when any man who had a heart could use it to the best advantage, for there was nothing more pitiful than a steer with a pain under his belt. He said steers were not at all like the Irishman who was on the bow of the boat on the last trip, feeding the fish, when the captain came along and said, “Pat, your stomach seems to be weak,” and Pat said, “O, I dunno, I am throwing it as far as any of them.” He said when there was a storm at sea the animals acted perfectly human. They would get down on their knees and roll their eyes heavenward, and moan, and cry, and tears would be in their eyes, but they never lost their cud, only they swelled up and bellowed.

Well, it wasn’t an hour before a storm came from towards Cuba, and the boat was rocking and pitching, and the captain blew three whistles, which was a signal for all hands to go below and nurse the steers, and we all made a rush down to the very bowels of the ship, where the cattle were, and such a sight I never saw.

Every steer was standing on one leg and then another, pitching forward into the manger, and then back against the bar that held them in the stall, and all bellowing as though their hearts would break, and the duty of the crew was to go in the stalls and throw the cattle down on their sides, and tie their legs so they couldn’t get up, when they could lie there and ride easy.

They sent me into a stall where a steer was slowly dying by inches, with instructions to hold up his left foreleg, so they could throw him, and just as I had raised the leg they threw him onto me, and went on to the next stall, leaving me with the wind all jammed out of me, and the haunch of the steer holding me down.

They went all through the lower deck, got the steers down, and went off and left me there to die, never seeming to miss me. I have slept with a good many different kinds of people and things in my time. I have had a porcupine crawl into bed with me when camping in the North woods, and he was rough enough, for sure. I once had a skunk come into a tent where some of us boys were camping, and when the skunk found out who we were he didn’t do a thing and all the boys said it was me, and they kicked me out, and made me sleep with the dogs, until the dogs struck, when I was lonely enough.

Once I had a snake get under my blanket and shake his rattles, and I got out of the tent so quick the snake never knew I was there, but in my wildest moments of seeking for new experiences, I never thought I should be a pillow for the stomach of a sea sick thousand-pound steer.

When I got my breath so I could yell it was night, and I had probably been under that steer for several hours. I tried to kick the steer in a vital part, where ox drivers kick oxen to make them “haw” and “gee,” but the steer had gone to sleep and never paid any attention to me.

I guess everybody had gone to sleep on the ship, except the watchman and the pilot, but I could lay there all night, so I began to make a noise like a ghost, and I wailed so the watchman heard me, and he peered down the hatch, and I mumbled, “I am thy father’s ghost,” and I rubbed some phosphorus I had in my pocket on the hair of the steer that was acting as my bed clothes. The man skipped, and pretty soon he came back with the English captain, who had told me if I didn’t like my job I could go to ’ell, and when he saw the shining steer with the phosphorus on its hair, I wailed and said, “This is ’ell, come in, the water is fine, and I smell the blood of an Englishman.”

“I Am Thy Father’s Ghost!—Come on in, the Water’s Fine!—I Smell the Blood of an Englishman!”

Well, the captain weakened, and wouldn’t come down, but I heard bells ringing all over the boat, like a fire alarm, and pretty soon the whole crew came down cellar with hose and began to squirt water on the steer and me, and the steer was so scared it broke the rope on its legs and got up off me, and then the animal stampeded out of the stall and charged the firemen, and rubbed its phosphorus side against the English captain, and he thought he was in hell, for sure, and he made them turn the hose on him, and then a man hit the steer in the head with an ax, and the trouble was over, except that the captain laid it all to me, and told the crew I was a “’oodoo,” and they searched me and found my phosphorus, and that settled it with me.

They were ordered to put me in the dungeon, and when they were going up stairs I heard the captain say, “At daylight ’oist it h’out of the ’old, and chuck it h’over board to feed the sharks,” so I guess I can see my finish all right.

CHAPTER VIII.

The Boy Dresses Up in His Sunday Clothes and Tells the Captain He Is Ready to Die—The Crew Throw a Steer Overboard to Feed a School of Sharks—The Boy Produces His New Electric Battery—The Bad Boy Makes a Trip to France to Meet His Pa.

I never slept a wink that night after the phosphorus episode, which I painted the wild steer so it looked like a four-legged ghost, and scared the crew so they nearly deserted the ship, because the captain ordered, as I supposed, that I be cast overboard the next morning, to give the sharks a meat sandwich, and all night I tried to prepare myself for death, though I could not help thinking that in some way I would escape.

The next morning I got up and collected all the shoes of the officers and got a blacking brush and began blacking them. Soon there was trouble, because every man missed his shoes, and they began to hunt for them, and they found me working at the shoes and singing, “Pull for the shore, brother,” and such pious hymns.

I was dressed up in my Sunday clothes, and when the captain got his shoes he wanted to know what was the meaning of my sudden industry, and the funeral aspect all around, and I told him I had heard him tell the crew to chuck me overboard, and I was preparing myself for death, and I gave him a letter to mail to Pa, after I was gone, and told the captain I was ready. “Why, you dumb fool,” said the captain, “it was not you I meant to throw overboard, but that phosphorus steer that we killed last night. They are hauling it up out of the hold now with the tackle. We will save you for a worse fate.”

Well, I never felt so happy in my life as I did when that dead steer came up through the hatchway, and was launched over the side, and when I saw the flock of sharks jump on the steer and begin to hunt for the tenderloin, I let out a yell for joy that sounded like the cry of a timber wolf.

Then I got what was coming to me. The captain gave me a swat across the jaw for making noise enough to scare the crew into mutiny, the mate gave me a kick when I started for the cook’s galley, and several of the under officers hit me, and by the time I got my apron on to help cook dinner I was bruised and mad, and decided to get even with the captain. I am a peaceful citizen until somebody walks on my frame, then I become a terror to the foe.

When we began to fry the beef for dinner I told one of the crew that it was a shame to feed men on steer meat, when the steer had died in its stall of Texas fever or rhinderpest, and before we got the meat cooked, ready for the dinner of the officers and crew, every man but the officers had talked over the dead steer, and resolved that they would not eat it, and when they sat down to the table, and I began to bring in the meat, they all looked like a mob of anarchists ready to murder somebody, and I helped all I could by saying in a whisper, “This is perfectly good meat, but this is a good day to fast, and you will live longer.” The officers at the other end of the cabin were eating the steer all right, but the crew never touched it, confining themselves to the bread and coffee, and pretty soon one of the crew proposed that they show their displeasure by taking the meat and throwing it at the officers.

Well, if I live a million years I will never have so much fun again. About thirty men got up and grabbed the meat I had put on their plates, and began to throw it at the captain and mate, and all the officers, and of all the greasy mess I ever saw, that was the worst. The captain got up on a chair and pulled a revolver, and asked what was the cause of the assault, and was going to shoot, when the crew drew revolvers and told him that if he pulled a trigger they would annihilate every officer on the boat, and take charge of it themselves, and run it into the first port. He said the crew could stand anything except eating diseased cattle, and that they drew the line at steers that had died of rhinderpest.

The Captain Got Up on a Chair and Pulled a Revolver and Was Going to Shoot.

The captain was stunned, and said the beef flying through the air was good, and he got it from cold storage in Baltimore, and asked that a committee go with him down in the hold and see the evidence, and a committee was appointed to go down and see about it.

When they came back they were satisfied, and the captain asked them how they got the idea the meat was bad, and when it came to that I felt as though some one would squeal on me, and as I started to make a get away, and hide somewhere until the storm blew over, one of the crew took me by the neck and said to the captain, “This young man told us about the meat.”

The captain told the fellow that had me collared to take me to his cabin, and he came in pretty mad, and called in a few officers, and they were getting ready to kill me, when I thought of the little electric battery in my pistol pocket.

It is one I got in St. Louis to scare people with. I can turn a button, and the battery will send electricity into my arm and through my body, and I turned the dingus, and felt the electricity going through me like ginger ale up your nose, and when they had got ready to maul me I began to weep, and told the captain I was no saint, but I wanted a quiet life, and all the fun I could have, and I asked him as a special favor to allow me to shake his hand before I died, as I knew my earthly career was about done for, and by that time the battery was buzzing, and I reached out my hand to shake his. He gave me his hand, and when I began to squeeze his hand the electricity went up his arm so he turned pale, and I hung on and he yelled to the officers to take me off, as I was killing him, and the sweat stood out on his face.

I Gave Him a Squeeze That Sent a Shock Through Him That Loosened His Teeth.

The mate grabbed hold of me and I gave him my other hand and he began to dance, and the three of us were as full of electricity as a trolley wire. I hung on and made them get down on their knees and swear they would not lick me, and then I let go of them and began to weep again, and they were sorry for me.

Then they made me tell them who I was, and that I was going to France to meet Pa, and monkey with air ships, and when they were sure I was Peck’s Bad Boy they said I could have the free run of the ship and that I had the right to play all the tricks on anybody that I wanted to.

They made me show them how I worked my little pocket battery and then they wanted me to shake hands with all the crew so they got the whole bunch in the cabin and the captain said they had been entertaining an angel unawares, and that I was the original Bad Boy, who had traveled all over Europe and met the crowned heads, and he wanted to introduce me to each member of the crew personally, as a distinguished guest who honored the ship by being on board. Then he began to pass them up to be shook by the great and only.

The first fellow to put out his hand was a Greek, who drew a knife on me once because the coffee was weak, and I gave him a squeeze that sent a shock through his system that loosened his teeth, and when the captain alluded to me as the angel child who was loaded for fear, and who had a charmed life that could not be destroyed by knives or guns, the Greek looked at me in a respectful way as though he didn’t want to have any more truck with me.

Then a big Welshman came up and shook my hand, and when I gave him the third degree he let go and jumped out of the window of the cabin, on deck, and began to use language that was equal to Russian, and then a Swede came bowing to me, thinking I must be at least a crown prince, and when I squeezed his hand he looked at his fingers and his arm, and trembled and squirmed and said, “Ah tank a got yim yams,” and he lit out in a hurry.

A small Irishman came next, and as he was the one who promised to cut my ears off to serve on toast, I gave him the limit, and he curled up like a German dockshound and laid down to the mat, making motions with his mouth as though he was repeating poetry, and he said, “Kape away from me, ye hoodoo,” and he crawled out so quick it almost broke the door.

The captain and mate laughed every time I shook hands with any of the crew, and when I had paralyzed them all, and got them so scared they would come to me if I whistled, and eat out of my hand, the captain said I was worth more towards maintaining discipline on the boat than a whole police force, and he wanted me to do something every day to keep the crew from being lonely, so that night at supper time I charged all of the steel knives and forks with electricity and got two nigger chasers ready for business.

It was to be the last night before we landed in France, and I was prepared to make it a meal long to be remembered. I sat next to the captain, and that brought me right close to the crew’s table, and when the crew filed in and took their places, they all looked at me as though I was the devil instead of an “angel child.”

I had a match all ready and when the supper was put on and the crew grabbed their knives and forks they were shocked real hard, and they dropped them and yelled something like the swear words of each nationality, and then I put my nigger chasers down on the floor, headed for the crew’s table, and lit the fuse.

Well, you know how nigger chasers will chase. Gee, but they went under the crew’s table, smoking and hissing, the sparks flew, and the brave crew got up and run out on deck yelling “fire,” and “murder,” and “dam that boy,” and the man in charge of the fire hose turned it into the cabin and drowned everything out, and the crew run away and hid, and when things cleared off the captain said, “Boy, I like a joke as well as anybody, but you have overdone this thing, and I am mighty glad we land tomorrow, and you can go to your Pa and his confounded airships, and may the Lord have mercy on him.”

Then we went to bed, and I expected some of the crew would stab me before morning, but I guess they were too much rattled.

Gee, but I am dying to see Pa, and help him spend government money for eatings, seems as though I haven’t had a square meal since my chum and I struck that community near St. Louis, as escaped balloonaticks.

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.

So Pa and I went down to the Express Office, and Pa gave the man in charge a paper and the grand hailing sign of distress, and he handed out bags of gold and bales of bills, and Pa hid a lot in his leather belt, and put some in his pockets, and said, “Come on, Henry, and we will see this town, and buy it if we like it.”

Well, we went out after dark and took in the concert halls and things, and Pa drank wine and I drank nothing but ginger ale, and women who waited on us sat in Pa’s lap and patted his bald head, and tried to feel in his pockets, but Pa held on to their wrists and told them to keep away, and he took one across his knees and slapped her across the pajamas with a silver tray, and I thought Pa was real saucy.

A head waiter whispered to me and wanted to know what ailed the old sport, and I told him Pa was bitten with a wolf in our circus last year, and we feared he was going to have hydrophobia, and always when these spells come on the only thing to do was to throw him into a tank of water, and I should be obliged to them if they would take Pa and duck him in the fountain in the center of the café, and save his life.

Pa was making up with the girl he had paddled with the silver tray, buying champagne for her and drinking some of it himself out of her slipper, when the head waiter called half a dozen Frenchmen who were doing police duty, and told them to duck Pa in the fountain, and they grabbed him by the collar and the pants and made him walk turkey towards the fountain, and he held on to the girl, and the Frenchmen threw Pa and the girl into the brink with a flock of ducks, and they went under water, and Pa came up first yelling murder, and then the girl came up hanging to Pa’s neck, and she gave a French yell of agony, and Pa gave the grand hailing sign of distress, and yelled to know if there was not an American present that would protect an American citizen from the hands of a Paris mob. The crowd gathered around the circular fountain basin and one drunken fellow jumped in the water and was going to hold Pa’s head under water while the girl found his money, when Pa yelled “Hey, Rube,” the way they do in a circus when there is a fight, and by ginger it wasn’t a second before half a dozen old circus men that used to belong to the circus when Pa was manager in the States made a rush for the fountain, knocked the Frenchmen galley west, and pulled Pa out of the water and let him drain off, and they said, “Hello, old man, how did you happen to let them drown you?” and Pa saw who the boys were and he hugged them, and invited them to all take something and then go to his hotel.

After Pa Had Been Ducked in the Fountain They Charged for Two Ducks He Killed by Falling on Them.

When Pa paid the check for the drinks they charged in two ducks they said Pa killed in the tank by falling on them. But Pa paid it and was so tickled to meet the old circus boys that he gave the girl he went in swimming with a twenty-franc note, and after staying until along towards morning we all got into and on top of a hack and went to the hotel and sat up till daylight talking things over.

We found the circus boys were on the way to Germany to go with the Hagenbach outfit to South Africa to capture wild animals for circuses, and when Pa told the boss, who was one of Hagenbach’s managers, about his airship and what a dandy thing it would be to sail around where the lions and tigers live in the jungle, and lasso them, from up in the air, out of danger, he engaged Pa and me to go along, and I guess we will know all about Africa pretty soon.

The next day we went out to the club where Pa keeps his airship, with the boss of Hagenbach’s outfit and a cowboy that used to be with Pa’s circus, to practice lassoing things. They got out the machine and Pa steered it, and the boss and I were passengers, and the cowboy was on the railing in front with his lariat rope, and we sailed along about fifty feet high over the farms, until we saw a big goat. The cowboy motioned for Pa to steer towards the goat, and when we got near enough the cowboy threw the rope over the goat’s horns and tightened it up, and Mr. Goat came right along with us, bleating and fighting. We led the goat about half a mile over some fences, and finally came down to the ground to examine our catch, and we landed all right, and Hagenbach’s boss said it was the greatest scheme that ever was for catching wild animals, and he doubled Pa’s salary, and said we would pack up the next day and go to the Hagenbach farm in Germany and take a steamer for South Africa in a week.

They were talking it over, and the cowboy had released the goat, when that animal made a charge with his head on our party. He struck Pa below the belt, butted the boss in the trousers until he laid down and begged for mercy, stabbed the cowboy with his horns, and then made a hop, skip and jump for the gas bag, burst a hole in it, and when the gas began to escape the goat’s horns got caught in the gas bag and the goat died from the effects of the gas, and we were all glad until about fifty peasant women came across the fields with agricultural implements, and were going to kill us all.

Pa said, “Well, what do you know about that?” but the women were fierce and wanted our blood. The boss could talk French and he offered to give them the goat to settle it, but they said it was their goat anyway, and they wanted blood or damages.

Pa said it was easier to give damages than blood, and just as they were going to cut up the gas bag the boss settled with them for about twenty dollars, and hired them to haul the airship to the nearest station, and we shipped it to Berlin, and got ready to follow the next day.

Pa says we will have a high old time in Africa. He says he wants to ride up to a lion’s den in his airship and dare the fiercest lion to come out and fight, and that he wouldn’t like any better fun than to ride over a royal Bengal tiger in the jungle, and reach down and grab his tail, and make him snarl like a tom cat on a fence in the alley.

He talks about riding down a herd of elephants, and picking out the biggest ones, and roping them; and the way Pa is going to scare rhinoceroses and hippopotamuses and make them bleat like calves is a wonder.

I think Pa is the bravest man I ever saw, when he tells it, but I noticed when we had that goat by the horns and he was caught in a barbed wire fence, so the airship had to slow down until he came loose, Pa turned as pale as a sheet, and when the goat bucked him in the stomach Pa’s lips moved as though he was praying. Well, anyway, this trip to Africa to catch wild animals is going to show what kind of sand there is in all of us.

CHAPTER IX.

The Bad Boy Arrives in France—The Boy’s Pa Is Suspected of Being an Anarchist—The Boy Finds Pa Seated at a Large Table Bragging About America—He Told Them the Men in America Were All Millionaires and Unmarried.

The greatest relief I ever experienced was getting off of that cattle ship, which I did somewhere in France, because the ship had become so foul smelling that one had to stay on deck to breathe, and there was no more fun to have, cause the officers and crew got on to me, and everyone expected to be blown up or electrocuted if they got near to me, and the last three days they wouldn’t let me eat in the cabin or sleep in my hammock, so I had to go down with the cattle and eat hot bran mash, and sleep in the hay. Gee, but when you eat hot bran mash for a few days you never want to look at breakfast food again as long as you live.

I traded my electric battery to a deck hand for a suit case, and so I looked like a tourist, because I went to a hotel and got a square meal, and had a porter paste some hotel ads. on my suit case, and I took a train for Paris, looking for Pa, cause I knew he wouldn’t be far away from the bullyvards.

I left my baggage at a hotel where we stopped when we were in Paris before, and the man who spoke shattered English told me Pa was rooming there, but he was not around much, because he was being entertained by the American residents, and had some great scheme that took him away on secret expeditions often, and they thought he was either an anarchist or grafter, and since the assassination of the king and crown prince of Portugal the police had overhauled his baggage in his room several times, but couldn’t find anything incriminating, so I had my baggage sent to Pa’s room, and went out to find Pa, and pick up something that would throw suspicion on him if he showed any inclination to go back on me when I found him.

It was getting along towards dark when I walked down a bullyvard where Pa used to go when we were in Paris before, and as I came to a café where there was a sign, English spoken, I saw a crowd out on the sidewalk surrounding tables, eating and drinking, and there was one big table with about a dozen men and women, Americans, Frenchmen and other foreigners, listening to an elderly man bragging about America, and I saw it was Pa, but he was so changed that but for his bald head and chin whiskers I would not have known him.

He had on French clothes, one of those French silk hats that had a flat brim and a bell crown, and he had a moustache that was pointed at the ends and was waxed so it would put your eyes out.

Pa was telling them that all the men in America were millionaires and unmarried, and that all of them came abroad to spend money and marry foreign ladies, to take them back to America and make queens of them, and he looked at a French woman across the table with goo-goo eyes, and she said to the man next to her, “Isn’t he a dear, and what a wonder he is not married before,” and Pa smiled at her and put his hand on his watch chain, on which there hung gold nuggets as big as walnuts, and he fixed a big diamond in his scarf, so the electric light would hit it plenty.

They ate and drank and the party began to break up, when Pa and the beautiful woman were alone at the table, and they hunched up closer together, and Pa was talking sweet to her, and telling her that all wives in America had special trains on railroads, and palaces in New York, and at Newport and in Florida, and yachts and gold mines, and she could be the queen of them all if she would only say the word, and she was just going to say the word, or something, and had his fat, pudgy hand in both of hers, and was looking into his eyes with her own liquid eyes, and seemed ready to fall into his arms, when I got up behind him and lighted a giant fire cracker and put it under his chair and just as the fuse was sputtering, I said, “Pa, ma wants you at the hotel,” and the fireworks went off, the woman threw a fit and Pa raised up out of the smoke and looked at me and said, “Now, where in hell did you come from just at this time?” and the head waiter took the woman into a private room to bring her out of her fit, the waiters opened the windows to let the smoke out, and the crowd stampeded, and the police came in to pull the place and find the anarchist who threw the bomb, and Pa took me by the hand and we walked up the sidewalk to a corner, and when we got out of sight of the crowd Pa said, “Hennery, your ma ain’t here, is she?” in a pitiful tone, and I said no she wasn’t along with me this trip, and Pa said, “Hennery, you make me weary,” and we walked along to the hotel, Pa asking me so many questions about home that it was a like a catekism.

The Fireworks Went Off—the Woman Threw a Fit, and Pa Raised Out of the Smoke.

When we got to the hotel and went to Pa’s room and I told him what I had been doing since he abandoned me, he said he was proud of me, and now he had plenty of work and adventure for me to keep him in.

He said he had tried several airships, by having someone else go up in them, and that he was afraid to go up in one himself, and he seemed glad that I had been ballooning around home, and he said he could use me to good advantage.

I asked him about the woman he was talking to about marriage, and he said that was all guff, that she had a husband who had invented a new airship, and he was trying to get title to it for use in America, for war purposes, and that the only way to get on the right side of these French women was to talk about marriage and money, because for money any of them would leave their husbands on fifteen minutes’ notice. He said he had arranged for a trial of the airship the next day, from a place out in the country, and that I could go up with the inventor of the ship and see how it worked and report, so we went to bed and I slept better than I had since I shipped on the cattle ship.