Peck's bad boy abroad : $b Being a humorous description of the bad boy and his dad in their journeys through foreign lands: 1904Peck, George W. (George Wilbur)
General
Peck's bad boy abroad : $b Being a humorous description of the bad boy and his dad in their journeys through foreign lands: 1904
Peck, George W. (George Wilbur)
American wit and humor; Boys -- Fiction; Practical jokes -- Fiction; Voyages and travels -- Fiction
Dad wanted a druggist to put up onions in capsules,
like they do quinine, so he could take onions and not taste them, but
he couldn't make the man understand. There ought to be a law against any
person eating onions, unless he is under a death sentence. But you can
stand a man with the onion habit, after you get used to it. It is a
woman, a beautiful woman, one you would like to have take you on your
lap and pet you, that ought to know better than to eat onions. Gee, but
when you see a woman that is so beautiful it makes her ache to carry her
beauty around, and you get near to her and expect to breathe the odor of
roses and violets, that makes you tired when she opens her mouth to say
soft words of love, and there comes to your nostrils the odor of onions.
Do you know, nothing would make me commit suicide so quick as to have
a wife who habitually loaded herself with onions. Dad was buying some
candy for me at a confectioner shop, of a beautiful Spanish woman, and
when he asked how much it was, she bent over towards him in the most
bewitching manner and breathed in his face and said, “Quatro-realis,
seignor,” which meant “four bits, mister,” and he handed her a
five-dollar gold piece, and went outdoors for a breath of fresh air, and
let her keep the change. He said she was welcome to the four dollars and
fifty cents if she would not breathe towards him again.
[Illustration: Breathed in his face 339]
Well, we have taken in the town, looked at the cathedrals, attended the
sessions of the cortez, and thew gambling houses, saw the people sell
the staple products of the country, which are prunes, tomatoes and wine.
The people do not care what happens as long as they have a quart of
wine. In some countries the question of existence is bread, but in Spain
it is wine. No one is so poor they cannot have poor wine, and with wine
nothing else is necessary, but a piece of cheese and bread helps the
wine some, though either could be dispensed with. In some countries
“wine, women and song” are all that is necessary to live. Here it is
wine, cheese and an onion. We went to see the king, because he is such
a young boy, and dad thought it would encourage the ruler to see an
American statesman, and to mingle with an American boy who could give
him cards and spades, and little casino, and beat him at any game. I
made dad put on a lot of badges we had collected in our town when there
were conventions held there, and when they were all pinned on dad's
breast he looked like an admiral. There was a badge of Modern Woodmen,
one of the Hardware Dealers' Association, one of the Wholesale
Druggists, one of the Amalgamated Association of Railway Trainmen, one
of the Farmers' Alliance, one of the Butter and Cheese-men's Convention,
one of the State Undertakers' Guild, and half a dozen others in brass,
bronze and tin, on various colored ribbons. Say, do you know, when they
ushered us into the throne room at the palace, and the little king, who
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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