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
The only thing we have got in America that compares with the Tower of
London and its associates is the Leutgert sausage factory in Chicago,
where Leutgert got his wife into the factory, murdered her, and is
alleged to have cut her up in pieces and made sausage of the meat, given
the pieces with gristle in to his dogs, boiled the bones until they
would run into the sewer, dissolved the remnants in concentrated lye,
and sold the sausage to the lumber Jacks in the pine woods.
I expect Chicago will buy that sausage factory and make a show of it, as
London does the tower, and you can go and see it, and feel that you are
as full of modern history as I am of ancient history, here in London.
I could see that dad was getting nervous every time a new beheading
was described to us, and I thought it was time to wake him up. In going
through the room where the old armor was displayed the beef eater told
us who wore the different pieces of armor, and he said at times the
spirit of the dead came back to the tower and occupied the armor, and
I noticed that dad shied at some of the pieces of armor, so when we got
right into the midst of it, and there was armor on every side, and dad
and the beef eater were ahead of me, and dad was walking fast in order
to get out quick, I pushed over one of the pieces, and it went crashing
to the floor and the noise was like a boiler factory exploding, and the
dust of centuries rose up, and the noise echoed down the halls.
Well, you'd a died to see dad and the beef eater. Dad turned pale and
got down on his knees, and I think he began to pray, if he knows how,
and he trembled like a leaf, and the beef eater got behind a set of
armor that Cromwell or some old duck used to wear, and said, “Wot in
the bloody 'ell is the matter with the h'armor?” and then a lot of other
beef eaters came, and they thought dad was the spirit of King John, and
they stampeded, and finally I got dad to stop praying, or whatever it
was that he was doing, and I led him out, and when he got into the open
air he recovered and said. “'Ennery, 'hi have got to get out of Lunnon,
don't you know, because me 'eart is palpitating,” and we went back to
the 'otel, to see if our invitation to visit King Hedward had arrived.
[Illustration: Beefeater's stampede 107]
Say, we are getting so we talk just like English coachmen, and you won't
hundredstand us when we get 'ome. Yours, with a haccent.
'Ennery.
CHAPTER IX.
The Bad Boy and His Dad Call on King Edward and Almost
Settle the Irish Question.
London, H-england.--Dear Uncle Ezra: The worst is over, and dad and I
have both touched a king. Not the way you think, touching a king for a
hand-out, or borrowing his loose change, the way you used to touch dad
when you had to pay for your goods, but just taking hold of his hand and
shaking it in good old United States fashion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account