Say, I sat on a bench in a plaza with a girl about my age, for an hour, while the other girls and boys sat on the ground and looked at us in admiration, and when I put my arm around her and kissed her on her pouting lips, it brought on a revolution. An Italian soldier policeman took me by the neck and threw me across the street, the girl scratched me with her finger nails and bit me, and yelled some grand hailing sign of distress, her brother and a ragged boy that was in love with the girl and was jealous, drew daggers, and the whole crowd yelled murder, and I started for our hotel on a run, and the whole population of Rome seemed to follow me, and I might as well have been a negro accused of crime in the states. I thought they would burn me at the stake, but dad came out of the hotel and threw a handful of small change into the crowd, and it was all off.
After they picked up the coin they beckoned me to come out and play some more, but not any more for little Hennery. I have been in love in all countries where we have traveled, and in all languages, but this Italian love takes the whole bakery, and I do not go around any more without a chaperone. The girls are ragged and wear shawls over their heads, and there are holes in their dresses and their skin isn’t white, like American girls’, but is what they call olive complexion, like stuffed olives you buy in bottles, stuffed with cayenne pepper, but the girls are just like the cayenne pepper, so warm that you want to throw water on yourself after they have touched you. Gee, but I wouldn’t want to live in a climate where girls were a torrid zone, ’cause I should melt, like an icicle that drops in a stove, and makes steam and blows up the whole house.
Well, old man, you talk about churches, but you don’t know anything about it. Dad and I went to St. Peter’s in Rome, and it is the grandest thing in the world. Say, the Congregational church at home, which we thought so grand, could be put in one little corner of St. Peter’s, and would look like 30 cents. St. Peter’s covers ground about half a mile square, and when you go inside and look at grown people on the other side of it, they look like flies, and the organ is as big as a block of buildings in Chicago, and when they blow it you think the last day has come, and yet the music-is as sweet as a melodeon, and makes you want to get down on your knees with all the thousands of good Christians of Italy, and confess that you are a fraud that ought to be arrested.
Dad and I have been to all kinds of churches, everywhere, and never turned a hair, but since we got to this town and got some of the prevailing religion into our systems, we feel guilty, and it seems as though everybody could see right into us, and that they knew we were heathen that never knew there was a God. Sure thing, I never supposed there were so many people in the world that worshiped their Maker, as there are here, and I don’t wonder that all over the world good people look to Rome for the light. Dad keeps telling me that when we get home we will set an example that will make people pay attention, but he says he does not want to join the church until he has seen all the sights, and then he will swear off for good.
He said to me yesterday: “Now, Hennery, I have been to all the pious places with you, the pope’s residence, the catacombs and St. Peter’s, where they preach from 40 different places and make you feel like giving up your sins, and I have looked at carvings and decorations and marble and jewels and seen the folly of my ways of life, and I am ripe for a change, but before I give up the world and all of its wickedness, I want blood. I want to go to the other extreme, and see the wild beasts at the Coliseum tear human beings limb from limb, and drink their blood, and see gladiators gladiate, and chop down their antagonists, and put one foot on their prostrate necks, like they do in the theaters, and then I am ready to leave this town and be good.”
Well, sir, I have been in lots of tight places before, but this one beat the band. Here was my dad, who did not know that the Roman, gladiator business had been off the boards for over 2,000 years, that the eating of human prisoners by wild beasts in the presence of the Roman populace was played out, and that the Coliseum was a ruin and did not exist as a place of amusement. He thought everything that he had read about the horrors of a Roman holiday was running to-day, as a side show, and he wanted to see it, and I had encouraged him in his ideas, because he was nervous, and I didn’t want to undeceive him. He had come to Rome to see things he couldn’t find at home, and it was up to me to deliver the goods.
Gee, but it made me sweat, ’cause I knew if dad did not get a show for his money he would lay it up against me, so I told him we would go to the Coliseum that night and see the hungry lions and tigers eat some of the leading citizens, just as they did when Caesar run the show. Then I found an American from Chicago at the hotel, who sells soap in Rome, and told him what dad expected of me in the way of amusement, and he said the only way was to take dad out to the Coliseum, and in the dark roll a barrel of broken glass down the tiers of seats and make him believe there was an earthquake that had destroyed the Coliseum, and that the lions and tigers were all loose, looking for people to eat, and scare dad and make a run back to town.
I didn’t want to play such a scandalous trick on dad, but the Chicago man said that was the only way out of it, and he could get a barrel of broken glass for a dollar, and hire four ruffians that could roar like lions for a few dollars, and it would give dad good exercise, and may be save him from a run of Roman fever, ’cause there was nothing like a good sweat to knock the fever out of a fellow’s system. The thing struck me as not only a good experience for dad, but a life saver, so I whacked up the money, and the Chicago soap man did the rest.
After dark we went out to the ruin of the Coliseum, where a great many tourists go to look at the ruins by moonlight, and dad was as anxious and bloodthirsty as a young surgeon cutting up his first “stiff.” When we got to the right place, and I told dad we were a little early, because the nobility were not in their seats, the villains began to roar three dollars’ worth like hungry lions, and dad turned a little pale and said that sounded like the real thing.
I told him we better not get too near, because we were not accustomed to seeing live men chewed up by beasts, and dad said he didn’t care how near we got, as long as they chewed and tore to pieces the natives; so we started to work up a little nearer, when there was a noise such as I never heard before, as the hogshead of broken glass began to roll down the tiers of stone seats, and I fell over on the ground, and pushed dad, and he went over in the sand and struck his pants on a cactus, and yelled that he was stabbed with a dirk.
I got up and fell down again, and just then the Chicago soap man came up on a gallop, followed by the villains playing lion and tiger, and dad asked the Chicago man what seemed to be the matter, and he said: “Matter enough; there has been an earthquake, and the Coliseum has fallen down, killing more than 10,-000 Romans, and the animals’ cages are busted and the animals are loose, looking for fresh meat, and we better get right back to Rome, too quick, or we will be eaten alive. Come on if you are with me. Do you hear the lions after us?” said he, as the hired villains roared.
Well, you’d a died to see dad get up out of that prickly cactus and take the lead for good old Rome. I didn’t know he was such a sprinter, but we trailed along behind, roaring like lions and snarling like tigers and yip-yapping like hyenas and barking like timber wolves, and we couldn’t see dad for the dust, on that moonlight night.
We slowed up and let dad run ahead, and he got to the hotel first, and we paid off the villains, and finally we went in the hotel and found dad in the bar-room puffing and drinking a high-ball. “Pretty near hell, wasn’t it,” said dad, to the soap man. “Did the lions catch anybody?” “O, a few of the lower classes,” said the soap man, “but none of the nobility. The nobility were in the boxes and that part of the Coliseum never falls during an earthquake,” and the soap man joined dad in a high-ball.
After dad got through puffing and had wiped about two quarts of perspiration off his head and neck, and the soap man had told him what a great thing it was to perspire in Rome, on account of the Roman fever, that catches a man at night and kill
s him before morning, dad turned to me and said: “Hennery, you go pack up and we get out of this in the morning, for I feel as though I had been chewed by one of those hyenas. Not any more Rome for papa,” and the high-ball party broke up, and we went to bed to get sleep enough to leave town.
Do you know, the next morning those hired villains made the soap man and I pay ten dollars extra on account of straining their lungs roaring like lions? But we paid for their lungs all right, rather than have them present a bill to dad.
Well, good-by, old man. We are getting all the fun there is going.
Your only,
Hennery.
CHAPTER XIX.
The Bad Boy and His Dad Visit the Pope—They Bow to the King of Italy and His Nine Spots—Dad Finds That “The Catacombs” Is Not a Comic Opera.
Rome, Italy.—
Dear Old Friend: You remember, don’t you when you were a boy, playing “tag, you’re it,” and “button, button, who’s got the button?” that one of the trying situations was to be judged to “go to Rome,” which meant that you were to kiss every girl in the room.
I never got enough “going to Rome” when I attended church sociables and parties, but always got blindfolded, and had to kiss anybody they brought to me, which was usually a boy or a colored cook, so I teased dad to take me to Rome, and when he got over his being rattled and robbed and burned by lava at Vesuvius, he said he didn’t care where he went, and, besides, I told him about the Roman Coliseum, where they turned hungry tigers and lions and hyenas loose among the gladiators, and the people could see the beasts eat them alive, and dad said that was something like it, as the way he had been robbed and misued in Italy, he would enjoy seeing a good share of the population chewed by lions, if the lions could stand it. I didn’t tell dad that the wild animal show had not been running for a couple of thousand years, ’cause I thought he would find it out when we got here.
Say, old man, I guess I can help you to locate Rome. You remember the time I spoke a piece at the school exhibition, when I put my hand inside my flannel shirt, like an orator, and said: “And this is Rome, that sat on her seven hills, and from her throne of beauty ruled the whole world.” Well, this is it, where I am now, but the seven hills have been graded down, and Rome don’t rule the whole world a little bit; but she has got religion awful.
The pope lives here, and he is the boss of more religious people than anybody, and though you may belong to any other kind of church, and when you are home you don’t care a continental for any religion except your own, or your wife’s religion, and you act like an infidel, and scoff at good people, when you get to Rome and see the churches thicker than saloons in Milwaukee, and everybody attending church and looking pious, you catch the fever, and try to forget bad things you have done, and if you get a chance to see the pope, you may go to his palace just ’cause you want to see everything that is going on, and you think you don’t care whether school keeps or not, and you feel independent, as though this religion was something for weak people to indulge in, and finally you come face to face with the pope, and see his beautiful face, and his grand eyes, and his every movement is full of pious meaning, you “penuk” right there, and want to kneel down and let him bless you, by gosh.
Say, I never saw dad weaken like he did when the pope came in. We got tickets to go to his reception, but dad said he had rather go to the catacombs, or the lion show at the Coliseum. He said he didn’t want to encourage popes, because he didn’t believe they amounted to any more than presiding elders at home. He said he had always been a Baptist, and they didn’t have any popes in his church, and he didn’t believe in ‘em, but some other Americans were going to see the pope, and dad consented to go, under protest, it being understood that he didn’t care two whoops, anyway.
Well, sir, we went, and it was the grandest thing you ever saw. There were guards by the thousand, beautiful gardens that would make Central Park look like a hay marsh, hundreds of people in church vestments, and an air of sanctity that we never dreamed; jewels that are never seen outside the pope’s residence, and we lined up to see the holy father pass.
Gee, but dad trembled like a dog tied out in the snow, and the perspiration stood out on his face, and he looked sorry for himself. Then came the procession, all nobles and great people, and then there was a party of pious men carrying the most beautiful man we ever saw on a platform above us, and it was the pope, and he smiled at me, and the tears came to my eyes, and I couldn’t swallow something which I s’pose was my sins, and then he looked at dad, and held up one hand, and dad was pale, and there was no funny business about dad any more, and then they set the platform down and the pope sat in a chair, and those who wanted to went up to him, and he blessed them.
Say, for awhile dad dassent go up, ’cause he thought the pope could see right through him, and would know he was a Baptist, but the rest of the Americans were going up, and dad didn’t want to be eccentric, so he and I went up. The pope put out his hand to dad, and instead of shaking it, as he would the hand of any other man on earth, and asking how his folks were, dad bent over and kissed the pope’s hand, and the pope blessed him. Dad looked like a new man, a good man, and when the pope put his hand on my head, and blessed me, my heart came up in my throat, ’cause I thought he must know of all the mean things I had ever done, but I can feel his soft, beautiful hand on my head now, and from this out I would fight any boy twice my size that ever said a word against the pope and his religion. When we got outside dad says to me: “Hennery, don’t you ever let me hear of your doing a thing that would make the good man sorry if he was to hear about it.” And we went to our hotel and stayed all the afternoon, and all night, and just thought of that pope’s angelic face, and when one of the Americans came to our room and wanted dad to play cinch, he was indignant, and said: “I would as soon think of robbing a child’s bank,” and we went to bed, and if dad wasn’t a converted man I never saw one.
Well, sir, trouble, and sorrow, and religion, don’t last very long on dad. The next morning we talked things over, and I quoted all the Roman stuff I could think of to dad, such as “In that elder day, to be a Roman was greater than a king,” but before I could think twice there was a commotion in the streets and a porter came and made us take off our hats, because the king was riding by, and we looked at the king, and dad was hot. He said that fellow was nothing but a railroad hand, disguised in a uniform, and, by ginger, if we had seen that king out west working on a railroad, with canvas clothes on, he would not have looked like a king, on a bet. There was nothing but his good clothes that stood between the king and a dago digging sewers in Chicago.
After the king and his ninespots had passed, dad said: “When you are in Rome, you must do as the Romans do,” and he said he wanted to get that heavy feeling off his shoulders, which he got at the religious procession, and wanted me to suggest something devilish that we could do, and I told him we better go and see the “Catacombs.” He wanted to know if it was anything like “a trip to Chinatown,” or the “Black Crook,” and I told him it was worse. Then he asked me if there was much low neck and long stockings in the “Catacombs,” and I told him there was a plenty, and he said he was just ripe to see that kind of a show, and so we took a carriage for the “Catacombs,” and dad could hardly keep still till we got there.
I suppose I ought to be killed for fooling dad, but he craved for excitement, and he got it. The “Catacombs” are where Roman citizens have been buried for thousands of years, in graves hewn out of solid rock, and they are petrified, and after they have laid in the graves for a few hundred years, the mummified bodies are taken out and stood up in corners, if the bodies will hang together, and if not the bones are piled up around for scenery.
We had to take torches to go in, and we wandered through corridors, gazing at the remains, until dad asked one of the men with us what it all meant, and the man said it was the greatest show on earth. Dad began to think he was nutty, and when I laughed, and said: “That is great,” and clapped my
hands, and said: “Encore,” dad stopped and said: “Hennery, this is no leg show, this is a morgue,” but to cheer him up I told him his head must be wrong, and I pointed to about a hundred dried corpses, a thousand years old, in a corner, with grinning skulls all around, and told him that was the ballet, and told him to look at the leading dancer, and asked him if she wasn’t a beaut, from Butte, Mont., and that killed dad. He leaned against me, and said his eyes must have gone back on him, because everything looked dead to him. I told him he would get over it after awhile, and to stay where he was while I went and spoke to one of the ballet that was beckoning to me, and I left him there, dazed, and went around a corner and hid.
People were coming along with torches all the time, looking at the catacombs and reading the inscriptions cut in the rock, and after awhile I went back to where I left dad, and he was gone, but after awhile I found him standing up with the stiffs. He was glad to see me, and wanted to know if I thought he was’ dead. I told him I was sure he was alive, though he had a deathly look on his face.
“Well, sir,” says dad, “I thought it was all over with me, after you left, for a man came along and moved me around, and took hold under my arms and jumped me along here by these stiffs, and told me if I didn’t stay where I belonged he would break me up into bones, and throw me into a pile, and I thought I would have to do as the Romans do and stay here, and before the man left me he reached into my pocket and took my money, and said I couldn’t spend any money in there where I was going to stay for a million years, and, by gosh, I was so petrified I couldn’t stop him from robbing me. Say, Hennery, they will rob you anywhere, even in the grave, and if this Catacomb show is over, and the curtain has gone down, I want to get out of here, and go to the Coliseum or the Roman amphitheater, where the wild beasts eat people alive.” And so we left the Catacombs and went back to town, and dad began to show life again. Say, you tell the folks at home that dad is gaining every day, and his vacation is doing him good. He has promised to kill me for taking him to the Catacomb show, but dad never harbors revenge for long, and I guess your little nephew will pull through. I wish I had my skates, cause dad wants to go to Russia.
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