The Peck's Bad Boy Megapack

by George W. Peck

  The trouble with dad is that he butts in too much. He thinks he is the whole thing and thinks every crowd he sees is a demonstration for him. When the steamer left New York, there were hundreds of people on the dock to see friends off, and they had flowers to present to Unfriends, and dad thought they were all for him, and he reached for every bunch of roses that was brought aboard, and was going to return thanks for them, when they were jerked away from him, and he looked hurt. When the gang plank was pulled in, and the boat began to wheeze, and grunt, and move away from the dock, and dad saw the crowd waving handkerchiefs and laughing, and saying bon voyage, he thought they were doing it all for him, and he started in to make a speech, thanking his fellow countrymen for coming to see him off, and promising them that he would prove a true representative of his beloved country in his travels abroad, and that he would be true to the stars and stripes wherever fortune might place him, and all that rot, when the boat got so far away they could not hear him, and then he came off his perch, and said, “Hennery, that little impromptu demonstration to your father, on the eve of his departure from his native land, perhaps never to return, ought to be a deep and lasting lesson to you, and to show you that the estimation in which I am held by our people, is worth millions to you, and you can point with pride to your father.” I said “rats” and dad said he wouldn’t wonder if the boat was full of rats, and then we stood on deck, and watched the objects of interest down the bay.

  As we passed the statue of Liberty, which France gave to the republic, on Bedloe’s Island, dad started to make a speech to the passengers, but one of the officers of the boat told dad this was no democratic caucus, and that choked him off, but he was loaded for a speech, and I knew it was only a matter of time when he would have to fire it off, but I thought when we got outside the bar, into the ocean, his speech would come up with the rest of the stuff, and I guess it did, for after he began to be sea sick he had to keep his mouth shut, which was a great relief to me, for I felt that he would say something that would get this country in trouble with other nations, as there were lots of foreigners on board. I heard that J. Pierpont Morgan was on board, and I told everybody I got in conversation with that dad was Pierpont Morgan, and when people began to call him Mr. Morgan, I told dad the passengers thought he was Morgan; the great financier, and it tickled dad, and he never denied it. Anyway, the captain put dad and I at his own table, and he called me “Little Pierp,” and everybody discussed great financial questions with dad, and everything would have been lovely the whole trip, only Morgan came amongst us after he had been sea sick for three days, and they gave him a seat opposite us, and with two Morgans at the same table it was a good deal like two Uncle Tom’s in an Uncle Tom’s Cabin show, so dad had to stay in his stateroom on account of sickness, a good deal. Then dad got to walking on deck and flirting with the female passengers. Say, did you ever see an old man who was stuck on hisself, and thought that every woman who looked at him, from curiosity, or because he had a wart on his neck, and watch him get busy making ’em believe he is a young and kitteny thing, who is irresistible? Gee, but it makes me tired. No man can mash, and make eyes, and have a love scene, when he has to go to the rail every few minutes and hump hisself with something in him that is knocking at the door of his palate, to come out the same way it went in. Dad found a widow woman who looked back at him kind of sassy, when he braced up to her, and when the ship rolled and side-stepped, he took hold of her arm to steady her, and she said maybe they better sit down on deck and talk it over, so dad found a couple of steamer chairs that were not in use, and they sat down near together, and dad took hold of her hand to see if she was nervous, and he told me I could go any play mumbletypeg in the cabin, and I went in the cabin and looked out of the window at dad and the widow. Say, you wouldn’t think two chairs could get so close, and dad was sure love sick, and so was she. The difference between love sick and sea sick is that in love sick you look red in the face and snuggle up, and squeeze hands, and look fondly, and swallow your emotion, and try to wait patiently until it is dark enough so the spectators won’t notice anything, and in sea sickness you get pale in the face, and spread apart, and let go of hands, and after you have stood it as long as you can you rush to the rail and act as though you were going to jump overboard, and then stop sudden and let-’er-go-gallagher, right before folks, and after it is over you try to look as though you had enjoyed it. I will say this much for dad, he and the widow never played a duet over the rail, but they took turns, and dad held her as tenderly as though they were engaged, and when he got her back to the steamer chair he stroked her face and put camphor to her nose, and acted like an undertaker that wasn’t going to let the remains get away from him. They were having a nice convalescent time, just afore it broke up, and hadn’t either of them been sick for ten minutes, and dad had put his arm around her shoulders, and was talking cunning to her, and she was looking lovingly into dad’s eyes, and they were talking of meeting again in France in a few weeks, where she was going to rent a villa, and dad was saying he would be there with both feet, when I opened the window and said, “The steward is bringing around a lunch, and I have ordered two boiled pork sandwiches for you two easy marks.” Well, you’d a dide to see ’em jump. What there is about the idea of fat pork that makes people who are sea sick have a relapse, I don’t know, but the woman grabbed her stum-mix in both hands and left dad and rushed into the cabin yelling “enough,” or something like that, and dad laid right back in the chair and blatted like a calf, and said he would kill me dead when we got ashore. Just then an Englishman came along and told dad he better get up out of his chair, and dad said whose chair you talking about, and the man said the chair was his, and if dad didn’t get out of it, he would kick him in the pants, and dad said he hadn’t had a good chance at an Englishman since the Revolutionary war, and he just wanted a chance to clean up enough Englishmen for a mess, and dad got up and stood at “attention,” and the Englishman squared off like a prize fighter, and they were just going to fight the battle of Bunker Hill over again, when I run up to an officer with gold lace on his coat and lemon pie on his whiskers, and told him an old crazy Yankee out on deck was going to murder a poor sea sick Englishman, and the officer rushed out and took dad by the coat collar and made him quit, and when he found what the quarrel was about, he told dad all the chairs were private property belonging to the passengers, and for him to keep out of them, and he apologized to the Englishman and they went into the saloon and settled it with high balls, and dad beat the Englishman by drinking two high balls to his one. Then dad set into a poker game, with ten cents ante, and no limit, and they played along for a while until dad got four jacks, and he bet five dollars, and a Frenchman raised him five thousand dollars, and dad laid down his hand and said the game was too rich for his blood, and when he reached in his vest pocket for money to pay for his poker chips he found that his roll was gone, and he said he would leave his watch for security until he could go to his state room and get some money, and then he found that his watch had been pinched, and the Englishman said he would be good for it, and dad came out in the cabin and wanted me to help him find the widow, cause he said when she laid her head on his shoulder, to recover from her sickness, he felt a fumbling around his vest, but he thought it was nothing but his stomach wiggling to get ready for another engagement, but now he knew she had robbed him. Say, dad and I looked all over that boat for the widow, but she simply had evaporated. But land is in sight, and we shall land at Liverpool this afternoon, and dad is going to lay for the widow at the gang plank, and he won’t do a thing to her. I guess not. Well, you will hear from me in London next, and I’ll tell you if dad got his money and watch back.

  Hennery.

  CHAPTER VII.

  The Bad Boy and His Dad Eat Fog—Call on Astor—A Dynamite Outrage.

  London, England.

  Dear Old Man:

  Well, sir, if a court sentenced me to live in this town, I would appeal the case, and ask the judge to temper
his sentence with mercy, and hang me. Say, the fog here is so thick you have to feel around like a blind goddess, and when you show up through the fog you look about eighteen feet high, and you are so wet you want to be run through a clothes wringer every little while. For two days we never left the hotel, but looked out of the windows waiting for the fog to go by, and watching the people swim through it, without turning a hair. Dad was for going right to the Lord Mayor and lodging a complaint, and demanding that the fog be cleared off, so an American citizen could go about town and blow in his money, but I told him he could be arrested for treason. He come mighty near being arrested on the cars from Liverpool to London. When we got off the steamer and tried to find the widow who robbed dad of his watch and roll of money, but never found her, we were about the last passengers to reach the train, and when we got ready to get on we found these English cars that open on the sides, and they put you into a box stall with some other live stock, and lock you in, and once in a while a guard opens the door to see if you are dead from suffocation, or have been murdered by the other passengers. Dad kicked on going in one of the kennels the first thing, and said he wanted a parlor car; but the guard took dad by the pants and gave him a shove, and tossed me in on top of dad, and two other passengers and a woman in the compartment snickered, and dad wanted to fight all of ’em except the woman, but he concluded to mash her. When the door closed clad told the guard he would walk on his neck when the door opened, and that he was not an entry in a dog show, and he wanted a kennel all to himself, and asked for dog biscuit. Gee, but that guard was mad, and he gave dad a look that started the train going. I whispered to dad to get out his revolver, because the other passengers looked like hold up men, and he took his revolver out of his satchel and put it in his pistol pocket, and looked fierce, and the woman began to act faint, while the passengers seemed to be preparing to jump on dad if he got violent. When the train stopped at the first station I got out and told the guard that the old gentleman in there was from Helena, Montana, and that he had a reputation from St. Paul to Portland, and then I held up both hands the way train robbers make passengers hold up their hands. When I went back in the car dad was talking to the woman about her resembling a woman he used to know in the states, and he was just going to ask her how long she had been so beautiful, when the guard came to the side door and called the woman out into another stall, and then one of the passengers pulled out a pair of handcuffs and told dad he might as well surrender, because he was a Scotland yard detective and had spotted dad as an American embezzler, and if he drew that gun he had in his pocket there would be a dead Yankee in about four minutes. Well, I thought dad had nerve before, but he beat the band, right there. He unbuttoned his overcoat and put his finger on a Grand Army button in his buttonhole, and said, “Gentlemen, I am an American citizen, visiting the crowned heads of the old world, with credentials from the President of the United States, and day after tomorrow I have a date to meet your king, on official business that means much to the future peace of our respective countries. Lay a hand on me and you hang from the yard arm of an American battleship.” Well, sir, I have seen a good many bluffs in my time, but I never saw the equal of that, for the detective turned white, and apologized, and asked dad and I out to luncheon at the next station, and we went and ate all there was, and when the time was up the detective disappeared and dad had to pay for the luncheon, but he kicked all the way to London, and the guard would not listen to his complaints, but told him if he tried to hold up the train he would be thrown out the window and run over by the train. We had the compartment to ourselves the rest of the way to London, except about an hour, when the guard shoved in a farmer who smelled like cows, and dad tried to get in a quarrel with him, about English roast beef coming from America, but the man didn’t have his arguing clothes on, so dad began to find fault with me, and the man told dad to let up on the kid or he would punch his bloody ‘ed off. That settled it, when the man dropped his “h,” dad thought he was one of the nobility, and he got quite chummy with the Englishman, and then we got to London, and dad had a quarrel about his baggage, and after threatening to have a lot of fights he got his trunk on the roof of a cab, and in about an hour we got to the hotel, and then the fog began an engagement. If the fog here ever froze stiff, the town would look like a piece of ice with fish frozen in. Gee, but I would like to have it freeze in front of our hotel, so I could take an ax and go out and chop a frozen girl out, and thaw her till she came to.

  Say, old man, if anybody ever wants to treat you to a trip to Europe, don’t come here, but go to some place where they don’t think they can speak English. You can understand a Nitalian or a Frenchman, or a Dutchman, who can’t speak English, and knows he can’t, better than you can an Englishman who thinks he can speak English, and can’t, “don’t you know.” Everything is “don’t you know.” If a servant gives you an evening paper, he says, “’Ere’s your paiper, don’t you know,” and if a man should—I don’t say they would, but if a man should give you a civil answer, when you asked him the name of a street, he would look at you as though you were a cannibal, and say, “Regent street, don’t you know,” and then he would act as though you had broken him of his rest. Dad asked more than a dozen men where Bill Astor lived, and of all the population of London I don’t believe anybody knows, except one newsboy. We rode half a day on top of a bus, through streets so crowded that the horses had to creep, and dad hung on for fear the bus would be tipped over, and finally we got out into the suburbs, where the rich people live, and dad said we were right on the trail of King Edward, and we got off and loitered around, and dad saw a beautiful place, with a big iron fence, and a gate as big as a railroad bridge, and dad asked a newsboy who lived there, and the boy made up a face at dad and said, “H’astor, you bloke,” and he put out his hand for a tip. It was the first civil answer dad had received in London, so he gave the boy a dollar. The boy fell over on the sidewalk, dead, and dad started to go away for fear he would be arrested for murder, but I kicked the boy on the pants, and he got up and yelled some kind of murdered English, and more than a dozen newsboys came on a gallop, and when the boy told them what had happened they all wanted dad to ask them questions. I told the boys dad was Andrew Carnegie, and that he was giving away millions of dollars, so when dad got to the gate of the beautiful H’astor place, the boys yelled Andrew Carnegie, and a flunkey flunked the gate open and dad and I went in, and walked up to the house. Astor was on the veranda, smoking a Missouri corn cob pipe, and drinking American beer, and seemed to be wishing he was back home in America. Dad marched right up to the veranda, like a veteran soldier, and Astor could see dad was an American by the dandruff on his coat collar, and Astor said, “You are an American citizen and you are welcome. Once I was like you, and didn’t care a continental dam for anybody, but in a moment of passion I renounced my country, swore allegiance to this blawsted country, and everybody hates me here, and I don’t dare go home to collect my rent for fear I will be quarantined at Ellis Island and sent back to England as an undesirable emigrant who has committed a crime, and is not welcome in the land where I was born. Old man, have a glass of Milwaukee beer and let’s talk of your home and my birthplace, and forget that there is such a country as England.” Dad sat down on the porch, and I went out on the lawn chasing peacocks and treeing guinea hens, and setting dogs on the swans, until a butler or a duke or something took me by the collar and shook me till my teeth got loose, and he took me back to the veranda and sat me down on the bottom step so hard my hair raised right up stiff, like a porcupine. Then I listened to dad and Astor talk about America, and I never saw a man who seemed to be so ashamed that he was a brevet Englishman, as he did. He said he had so much money that it made his headache to hear the interest accumulate, nights, when he couldn’t sleep, and yet he had no more enjoyment than Dreyfus did on Devil’s Island. He had automobiles that would fill our exposition building, horses and carriages by the score, but he never enjoyed a ride about London, because only one person
in ten thousand knew him, and those who did looked upon him with pity and contempt because he had renounced his country to get solid with the English aristocracy, and nobody would speak to him unless they wanted to borrow money, and if they did borrow money from him he was afraid they would pay it back, and make him trouble counting it. He told dad he wanted to get back into America, and become a citizen again of that grand old country of the stars and stripes, and asked dad how he could do it, for he said he had rather work in a slaughter house in America than be a grand duke in England. I never saw dad look so sorry for a man as he did for Astor, and he told him the only way was to sell out his ranch in London and go back on an emigrant ship, take out his first papers, vote the democratic ticket and eventually become a citizen. Astor was thinking over the proposition, and dad had asked him if he was not afraid of dynamiters, when he shuddered and said every day he expected to be blown sky high, and finally he smelled something burning and said the smell reminded him of an American 4th of July. You see, I had been sitting still on the step of the veranda so long I got nervous, for something exciting, so I took a giant firecracker out of my pocket and lit the long tail, and shoved it under the porch and looked innocent, and just then one of the flunkies with the tightest pants you ever saw came along and patted me on the head and said I was a nice boy, and that made me mad, and when he went to sit down beside me on the step I took my horse chestnut out of my pocket and put it on the step just where he sat down, and how it happened to come out so I don’t know, it must have been Providence.