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
Venice, Italy.--My Dear Old Chumireno: Dad couldn't get out of
Switzerland quick enough after he got thawed out the day after we
climbed the glaziers. We found that almost all the tourists in Geneva
were there because they did not want to go home and say they had not
visited Switzerland, so they just jumped from one place to another. The
people who stay there any length of time are like the foreign residents
of Mexico, who are wanted for something they have done at home, that is
against the law. There are more anarchists in Geneva than anything else,
and they look hairy and wild eyed, and they plot to kill kings and drink
beer out of two quart jars.
When we found that more attention was paid to men suspected of crime
in their own countries, and men who were believed to be plotting to
assassinate kings, dad said it would be a good joke if a story should
get out that he was suspected of being connected with a syndicate that
wanted to assassinate some one, so I told a fellow that I got acquainted
with that the fussy old man that tried to ride a glazier without any
saddle or stirrup was wanted for attempting to blow up the president
of the United States by selling him baled hay soaked in a solution of
dynamite and nitro-glycerine.
[Illustration: Dad and the anarchists reveled till morning 188]
Say, they will believe anything in Switzerland. It wasn't two hours
before long-haired people were inviting dad to dinners, and the same
night he was taken to a den where a lot of anarchists were reveling, and
dad reveled till almost morning. When he came back to the hotel he said
his hosts got all the money he had with him, through some game he didn't
understand, but he under stood it was to go into a fund to support
deserving anarchists and dynamiters. He said when they found out he was
a suspected assassin nothing was too good for him. He said they wanted
to know how he expected to kill a president by soaking baled hay in
explosives, and dad said it came to him suddenly to tell them that the
president rode on horseback a good deal, and he thought if a horse was
filled with baled hay, and nitro-glycerine and the president spurred
the horse and the horse jumped in the air and came down kerchunk on an
asphalt pavement, the horse would explode, and when the rider came down
covered with sausage covers and horse meat, he would be dead, or would
want to be. Dad said the anarchists went into executive session and took
up a collection to send a man to Berlin to fill the emperor's saddle
horse with cut feed like dad suggested.
Well, the anarchist story was too much for Switzerland, and the next
morning dad was told by a policeman that he had to get out of the
country quick, and it didn't take us 15 minutes to pack up, and here we
are in Venice.
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.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account