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
After dad got through puffing and had wiped about two quarts of
perspiration off his head and neck, and the soap man had told him what
a great thing it was to perspire in Rome, on account of the Roman fever,
that catches a man at night and kills him before morning, dad turned
to me and said: “Hennery, you go pack up and we get out of this in the
morning, for I feel as though I had been chewed by one of those hyenas.
Not any more Rome for papa,” and the high-ball party broke up, and we
went to bed to get sleep enough to leave town.
Do you know, the next morning those hired villains made the soap man and
I pay ten dollars extra on account of straining their lungs roaring
like lions? But we paid for their lungs all right, rather than have them
present a bill to dad.
Well, good-by, old man. We are getting all the fun there is going.
Your only,
Hennery.
CHAPTER XIX.
The Bad Boy and His Dad Visit the Pope--They Bow to the King
of Italy and His Nine Spots--Dad Finds That “The Catacombs”
Is Not a Comic Opera.
Rome, Italy.--Dear Old Friend: You remember, don't you when you were
a boy, playing “tag, you're it,” and “button, button, who's got the
button?” that one of the trying situations was to be judged to “go to
Rome,” which meant that you were to kiss every girl in the room.
[Illustration: Had to kiss anybody they brought to me 238]
I never got enough “going to Rome” when I attended church sociables
and parties, but always got blindfolded, and had to kiss anybody they
brought to me, which was usually a boy or a colored cook, so I teased
dad to take me to Rome, and when he got over his being rattled and
robbed and burned by lava at Vesuvius, he said he didn't care where
he went, and, besides, I told him about the Roman Coliseum, where they
turned hungry tigers and lions and hyenas loose among the gladiators,
and the people could see the beasts eat them alive, and dad said that
was something like it, as the way he had been robbed and misued in
Italy, he would enjoy seeing a good share of the population chewed by
lions, if the lions could stand it. I didn't tell dad that the wild
animal show had not been running for a couple of thousand years, 'cause
I thought he would find it out when we got here.
Say, old man, I guess I can help you to locate Rome. You remember the
time I spoke a piece at the school exhibition, when I put my hand inside
my flannel shirt, like an orator, and said: “And this is Rome, that
sat on her seven hills, and from her throne of beauty ruled the whole
world.” Well, this is it, where I am now, but the seven hills have been
graded down, and Rome don't rule the whole world a little bit; but she
has got religion awful.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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