Peck's bad boy abroad : $b Being a humorous description of the bad boy and his dad in their journeys through foreign lands: 1904 — John Shaqi
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
Do you know, those people who drink gin and go hungry are different from
our American murderers. Our murderers will assault you with a smile, rob
you with a joke on their tongue's end, and give you back car fare when
they hold you up, and if they murder you they will do it easy and lay
you out with your hands across on your breast and notify the coroner,
but your White Chapel murderer wants to disembowel you and cut you up
into chunks, and throw your remains head first into something nasty,
and if you have money enough on your person to buy a bottle of gin your
murderer is as well satisfied as though he got a roll. Some men in our
country commit murders in order to get money to lay away so they can
live a nice, respectable life and be good ever afterwards, but your slum
murderer in London just kills because his stomach craves a drink, and
when he gets it he is tame, like a tiger that has eaten a native of
India.
You may think this letter is a solemn occasion because I tell you about
things that are not funny, but if you ever traveled abroad you will find
that there is no fun anywhere except in America unless you make it or
buy it.
We are taking in the solemn things first in order to get dad's mind in a
condition so he can be cured of things he thinks ail him. I took dad to
the Tower of London, and when we got out of it he wanted to have America
interfere and have the confounded place burned down and grass sown on
the site and a park made of it.
The tower covers 13 acres of ground, and there are more things brought
to a visitor's attention that ought to be forgotten than you ever
thought about.
I remember attending the theater at home and seeing Richard the Third
played, and I remember how my sympathies were aroused for the two little
boy princes that were murdered by Richard the Third, but I thought it
was a fake play, and that there was nothing true about it, but, by gosh,
it was right here in the Tower of London that the old hump-backed cuss
murdered those little princes, and dad and I stood right on the spot,
and the beef-eater who showed us around told us all the particulars. Dad
was indignant, and said to the beef-eater:
[Illustration: Stood around and let Richard kill those princes 098]
“Do you mean to tell me you stood around and let Richard kill those
princes without uttering a protest or protecting them or ringing for
the police? By the great hornspoon, you must have been accessory to the
fact, and you ought to be arrested and hung,” and dad pounded his cane
on the stone floor and looked savage.
The beef-eater got red in the face and said: “Begging your pardon, don't
you know, but h'l was not 'ere at the time. This 'istory was made six
'undred years ago.”
Dad begged the man's pardon and told him he supposed the boys were
murdered a year or two ago, and he gave the beef-eater a dollar, and he
was so gratified I think he would have had a murder committed for dad
right there and then if dad had insisted on it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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