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
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
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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