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
Say, for awhile dad dassent go up, 'cause he thought the pope could see
right through him, and would know he was a Baptist, but the rest of the
Americans were going up, and dad didn't want to be eccentric, so he and
I went up. The pope put out his hand to dad, and instead of shaking it,
as he would the hand of any other man on earth, and asking how his folks
were, dad bent over and kissed the pope's hand, and the pope blessed
him. Dad looked like a new man, a good man, and when the pope put his
hand on my head, and blessed me, my heart came up in my throat, 'cause
I thought he must know of all the mean things I had ever done, but I can
feel his soft, beautiful hand on my head now, and from this out I would
fight any boy twice my size that ever said a word against the pope and
his religion. When we got outside dad says to me: “Hennery, don't you
ever let me hear of your doing a thing that would make the good man
sorry if he was to hear about it.” And we went to our hotel and stayed
all the afternoon, and all night, and just thought of that pope's
angelic face, and when one of the Americans came to our room and wanted
dad to play cinch, he was indignant, and said: “I would as soon think
of robbing a child's bank,” and we went to bed, and if dad wasn't a
converted man I never saw one.
Well, sir, trouble, and sorrow, and religion, don't last very long on
dad. The next morning we talked things over, and I quoted all the Roman
stuff I could think of to dad, such as “In that elder day, to be a Roman
was greater than a king,” but before I could think twice there was a
commotion in the streets and a porter came and made us take off our
hats, because the king was riding by, and we looked at the king, and dad
was hot. He said that fellow was nothing but a railroad hand, disguised
in a uniform, and, by ginger, if we had seen that king out west working
on a railroad, with canvas clothes on, he would not have looked like
a king, on a bet. There was nothing but his good clothes that stood
between the king and a dago digging sewers in Chicago.
After the king and his ninespots had passed, dad said: “When you are in
Rome, you must do as the Romans do,” and he said he wanted to get
that heavy feeling off his shoulders, which he got at the religious
procession, and wanted me to suggest something devilish that we could
do, and I told him we better go and see the “Catacombs.” He wanted
to know if it was anything like “a trip to Chinatown,” or the “Black
Crook,” and I told him it was worse. Then he asked me if there was much
low neck and long stockings in the “Catacombs,” and I told him there was
a plenty, and he said he was just ripe to see that kind of a show, and
so we took a carriage for the “Catacombs,” and dad could hardly keep
still till we got there.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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