The Peck's Bad Boy Megapack

by George W. Peck

  Dad stood it first rate until a girl got on the carpet barefooted and began one of those willowy sort of dances that nearly broke up the Chicago fair, when people left the buildings filled with the work of the world’s artists, in all lines of progress, and went to the Midway in a body to see “Little Egypt,” but when this dancer waltzed up to dad and wiggled in a foreign language, dad sashayed up to her and I couldn’t hold him back.

  He was just getting warmed up to “balance to partners,” when a frown came over the sultan’s face and he looked cross at dad, and then the hewgag sounded, and the girls scattered out of a side door and dad wanted to follow, but I held him by the coat, and it was over. I think those girls were the only ones in the whole harem that were good looking.

  Dad breathed hard a little from his exercise, and said he was ready to inspect the stock, and the sultan detailed a tall negro, with a face dried up like a mummy, and we started out through the harem, dad pulling the long hair on the side of his head over his bald spot, and throwing his shoulders back and drawing in his stomach to make him look young.

  Well, say, there is nothing about a harem, much different from keeping house at home, except that there is more of it. The idea people get of harems is that the women are all young and beautiful, and that they sit around a swimming tank and play guitars and keep the flies off the man who owns the place, while he smokes the vile Turkish tobacco burning in a jardiniere, through a section of rubber hose, and goes to sleep like a Chinaman smoking opium, and that they drink rare wines and dance with bangles on their legs and ropes of pearls on their necks and arms.

  I have seen alleged imitations of a Turkish harem on the stage, with American girls doing the acting, and it would make you feel as though you would invest in a harem when you got old enough, but, gee, when you see a regular harem, run by an up-to-date Turk, you think of the Mormon apostle who has 40 wives of all ages, from 70 down to a 16-year-old hired girl, with a hair-lip and warts on her thumbs. This harem was like a big stock barn in the states, with a big room to exercise the colts, and box stalls for the different wives and their families to live in and do their own cooking and washing.

  Instead of sitting by a bath playing a harp, the poor old wives stand by a washtub and play tunes on the washboard, and scrub, and take care of children. I thought the custom of spanking children was an American institution, but it is as old as the ages, for I saw a Turkish mother grab up a child that had lifted a kitten by the tail, and take it across her knee and give it a few with a red hand covered with soapsuds, and the young Turk yelled bloody murder, just like an American kid, and then sat down on its knees, so the spanking wouldn’t hurt, and called its mother names in a language I couldn’t understand, but I knew what the child said, by instinct. Dad started to interfere, because he is a member of the humane society, but the unique that was showing us around saved dad’s life by pushing him along, before the woman got a chance to brain him with the washboard.

  The women mostly had on these baggy Turkish trousers, like the Zouaves wear, and a jacket, and a cloth around their heads, and they acted as though if the next meal came along all right they would be in luck. We saw a few women pretty white, and they were Circassian slaves, with big eyes and hoops in their ears, and a little different clothes on, but there were none that dad would buy at an auction, or at a bargain sale, if they were marked down to 99 cents.

  We passed one woman running an American sewing machine, and dad said he’d bet she was an American, and he went up to her and said: “Hello, sis!” She stopped the machine, looked up at dad with a sort of Bowery expression, and said: “Gwan, Chauncey Depew, you old peach, or I’ll have you pinched,” and the unique took dad by the arm and pulled him along real spry, but he hung back and looked over his shoulder at the woman, but she went on sewing, and dad said to me: “Well, wouldn’t that frost you?” And we went on making the inspection.

  I don’t think I ever saw so many children, outside of an orphan asylum, all about the same size and all looking exactly alike. They all had the same beady black eyes that look as though they were afraid of getting caught in a trap, like muskrats, and their noses had the same inquiring appearance, as though the owner was speculating as to how much money the visitors had in their pockets, and whether it was fastened in. Race suicide is impossible in Turkey, but a race of bandits is growing up that will let no foreigners with a pocketbook escape.

  It took us an hour to go through the harem, and it was more like going through the quarters of the working women of a home laundry in the tenement district of a large city, than a comic opera, as we had been led to expect by what we had read of harems. When we went into the harem I think dad was going to insist on having the women dance for him, while he sat on a throne and threw kisses at the most beautiful women in all the world, but before we had got around all the box stalls I think if any of them had started to dance dad would have stampeded in a body.

  We finally got back to the great marble room, where the sultan was sleeping in a stuffed chair, surrounded by his staff, and one of them woke him up, and he asked dad what he thought of the home life of a crowned head, and dad said it beat anything he had ever seen, and he should recommend to his government that the harem system be adopted in America, and actually the sultan seemed pleased. He said as an evidence of his love for America he wanted to present to the president, through dad, 50 of his wives, and if dad would indicate where he wanted them delivered, they would be there, Johnny on the spot, or words to that effect.

  At first I thought dad would faint away, but I whispered to him that it would be discourteous to decline a present, after giving the sultan a gold mine, and that may be the old man would be so mad, if he declined the wives, that he would tie stones to our legs and sink us in the Bosphor-ous, so dad rallied and said, on behalf of his government, he would accept the kindly and thoughtful gift of his highness, and that he would cable for a war vessel to take the wives to his own America, and he would notify the sultan when to round them up and load them on the vessel.

  Well, sir, I do not know what possessed me to make a scene, before we got out of the presence of the sultan, but it all came to me sudden, like an inspiration comes to a poet. I had been eating some fruit that I bought in a paper bag, and when I had eaten the last of it, I wondered what I would do with the bag, and then I thought what fun it would be to blow the bag up, and suddenly burst it, when all was still. So I blowed up the bag, so it was as hard as a bladder, and tied a string around the neck, and waited. I did not think how afraid everybody in these old countries is of bombs, or I never would have done it, honestly.

  The sultan was signing some papers, and looking out of the corners of his eyes to see if anybody was present who was suspicious, and dad was getting ready to make a salam, and back out of the presence of the ruler of Turkey, when I got behind some of the officials who were watching the sultan, and I laid my paper bag on the marble floor, and it was as still as death, and all you could hear was the scratching of the pen, when I jumped up in the air as though I had a fit, and yelled “Allah,” and came down with my whole weight on the paper bag, and of all the stampedes you ever saw, that was the worst.

  You know what a noise it makes to bust a paper bag. Well, this was the toughest old bag I ever busted, and it sounded like a cannon fired down cellar somewhere, and the air was full of dust, and before I could get up the sultan had tipped over the table and run yelling into another room, praying to “Allah,” and all the staff had lit out for tall timber, and there was nobody left but dad and the unique and myself, and the unique took dad by the arm and started for the door, and we were fired out.

  As I went out of the room I looked around, and there was a Turk’s head sticking out of every door to see how many had been killed by the bomb, and as we got out doors, dad said “Now we have to get out of Turkey before night, or we die. Me for Egypt, boy, if we can catch a boat before we are drawn and quartered.” So here goes for Cairo, Egypt.

  Yours only,

&nbs
p; Hennery.

  CHAPTER XXIV.

  The Bad Boy and His Dad Arrive in Cairo—At the Hotel They Meet Some Egyptian Princesses—Dan Rides a Camel to the Pyramids and Meets with Difficulties.

  Cairo, Egypt.—

  My Dear Old Irish Vegetable: Gee, but you ought to see dad and I right now at a hotel, waiting for a chance at a room, when a bride and groom get ready to vacate it, and go somewhere else. This hotel is full of married people who look scared whenever there is a new arrival, and I came pretty near creating a panic by going into the parlor of the hotel, where a dozen couples were sitting around making goo-goo eyes at each other, and getting behind a screen and, in a disguised voice, shouting, “I know all! Prepare to defend yourself!”

  The women turned pale and some said, “At last! At last!” while others got faint in the head, and some fell on the bosoms of their husbands and said: “Don’t shoot!” You see, most of these wives had husbands somewhere else that might be looking for them. I have warned dad not to be seen conversing with a woman, or he may be shot by a husband who is on her trail, or by the husband she has with her.

  Well, sir, of all the trips we have had anywhere, the trip from Constantinople here was the limit. For two or three days we were on dinky steamboats with Arabs, Turks, negroes and all nationalities camping on deck, full of fleas, and with cholera germs on them big enough to pick like blueberries, and all of the passengers were dirty and eat things that would make a dog in America go mad. The dog biscuit that are fed to American dogs would pass as a delicate confection on the menu of any steamboat we struck, and I had rather lie down in a barn yard with a wet dog for a pillow and a cast-off blanket from a smallpox hospital for a bed, than to occupy the bridal chamber of any steamboat we struck.

  And then the ride across the desert by rail to reach Cairo was the worst in the world. Passengers in rags, going to Mecca, or some other place of worship, eating cheese a thousand years old made from old goat’s milk, and dug from the Pyramids too late to save it, was what surrounded us, and the sand storm blew through the cars laden with germs of the plague, and stuck to us so tight you couldn’t get it off with sandpaper, and when we got here all we have had to do is to bathe the dirt off in layers.

  It takes nine baths to get down to American epidermis, and the last bath has a jackplane to go with it, and a thing they scale fish with. But we are all right now, with rooms in the hotel, and rested, and when we go home we are going to be salted down and given chloroform and shipped as mummies. Dad insists that he will never cross a desert or an ocean again, and I don’t know what is to become of us. Anyway, we are going to enjoy ourselves until we are killed off.

  The first two days we just looked about Cairo, and saw the congress of nations, for there is nothing just like this town anywhere. There are people from all quarters of the globe, the most outlandish and the most up-to-date. This place is an asylum for fakirs and robbers, a place where defaulters, bribers, murderers, swindlers and elopers are safe, as there seems to be no extradition treaty that cannot be overcome by paying money to the officials. I found that out the first day, and told dad we should have no standing in the society of Egypt unless the people thought he had committed some gigantic crime and fled his country.

  Dad wanted to know how it would strike me if it was noised about the hotel that he had robbed a national bank, but I, told him there would be nothing uncommon or noticeable about robbing a bank, as half the tourists were bank defaulters, so he would have to be accused of something startling, so we decided that dad should be charged with being the principal thing in the Standard Oil Company, and that he had underground pipe lines running under several states, gathering oil away from the people who owned it, and that at the present time he was worth a billion dollars, and his income was $9,000,000 every little while, and, by ginger, you ought to see the people bow down to him. Say, common bank robbers and defaulters just fell over themselves to get acquainted with dad, and to carry out the joke, I put some kerosene oil on dad’s handkerchief, and that clinched it, for everybody loves the smell of a perfume that represents a billion dollars.

  All the women wanted to dance with dad in the hotel dance, and because they thought I must be heir to all the oil billions, they wanted to hold me on their laps, and stroke my hair, as though I was it. I guess we are going to have everything our own way here, and if dad does not get eloped with by some Egyptian princess, I shall be mistaken. The Egyptians are pretty near being negroes, and wear bangles in their ears, and earrings on their arms. You take it in the dark, and let a princess put her arms around you, and sort of squeeze you, and you can’t tell but what she is white, only there is an odor about them like “Araby the blessed,” but in the light they are only negroes, a little bleached, with red paint on their cheeks. If I was going to marry an Egyptian woman, I would take her to Norway, or up towards the north pole, where it is night all day, and you wouldn’t realize that you were married to a colored woman. To be around among these Egyptians is a good deal like having a pass behind the scenes at the play of Ben Hur in New York, only here the dark and dangerous women are the real thing, instead of being white girls with black paint on.

  We have just got back from the pyramids, and dad is being treated for spinal meningitis, on account of riding a camel. I never tried harder to get dad to go anywhere on the cars than I did to get him to go to the pyramids by rail, as a millionaire should, but he said he was going to break a camel to the saddle, and then buy him and take him home for a side show. So we went down to the camel garage and hired a camel for dad, and four camels for the arabs and things he wanted for an escort, and a jackass for me. There were automobiles and carriages, and trolleys, and everything that we could have hired, and been comfortable for the ten-mile ride, but dad was mashed on the camel, and he got it.

  Well, sir, it was not one of these world’s fair camels that lay down for you to get on, and then got up on the installment plan, and chuck you forward and aft, but a proud Egyptian camel that stands up straight and makes you climb up on a stepladder.

  Dad got along up the camel’s ribs, when the-stepladder fell, and he grabbed hold of the hair on the two humps, and the humps were loose and they lopped over on the side, and it must have hurt the camel’s feelings to have his humps pulled down, so he reached around his head and took a mouthful out of the seat of dad’s pants, and dad yelled to the camel to let go, and the Arabs amputated the camel from dad’s trousers, and pushed dad up on top with a bamboo pole with a crotch in it, and when dad got settled between the humps he said, “Let ’er go,” and we started.

  Dad could have had a camel with a platform on top, and an awning, but he insisted on taking his camel raw, and he sat there between those humps, his trousers worked up towards his knees, showing his red socks and blue drawers, and his face got pale from sea sickness, and the red, white and blue colors made me think of a fourth of July at home. We went out of town like a wild west show, and dad seemed happy, except that every time an automobile went whizzing along, dad’s camel got the jumps and waltzed sideways out into the sandy desert, and chewed at dad’s socks, so part of the time dad had to draw up his legs and sit on one hump and put his shoes on the other hump. The Arabs on the other camels would ride up alongside and steer dad’s camel back into the road, by sticking sharp sticks into the camel, and the animal would yawn and groan and make up faces at me on my jackass, and finally dad wanted to change works with me and ride my jackass, but I told him we had left the stepladder back at Cairo, so dad hung to his mountainous steed, but the dust blew so you couldn’t see, and it was getting monotonous when the queerest thing happened.

  You have heard that camels can fill up with water and go for a week without asking for any more. Well, I guess the week was up, and it was time to load the camels with water, for as we came to the Nile every last camel made a rush for the river, and they went in like a yoke of oxen on a stampede, and waded in clear up to the humps, and began to drink, and dad yelled for a life preserver and pulled his feet u
p on top and sat there like a frog on a pond lily leaf.

  My jackass only stepped his feet in the edge, and dad wanted me to swim my jackass out to the camel and let him fall off onto the jack, but I knew dad would sink my jack in a minute, and I wouldn’t go in the river. Well, the camels drank about an hour, with dad sitting there meditating, and then the dragomen got them out, and we started off for the pyramids, which were in plain sight like the pictures you have seen, with palm trees along the Nile, and Arabs camping on the bank, and it looked as though everything was going to be all right, when suddenly dad’s camel stopped dead still and wouldn’t move a foot, and all the rest of the camels stopped, closed their eyes and went to sleep, and the Arabs went to sleep, and dad and the jackass and I were apparently the only animals in Egypt that were awake.

  Dad kicked his camel in the ribs, but it wouldn’t budge. He asked me if I could’t think up some way to start the procession, and I stopped my jackass and thought a minute, and told dad I had it. I had bought some giant fire crackers and roman candles at Cairo, with which I was going to fire a salute on top of the biggest pyramid, to celebrate for old America, and I told dad what I had got, and I thought if I got off my jackass and fired a salute there in the desert it would wake them up.

  Dad said, “all right, let ’er go, but do it sort of easy, at first, so not to overdo it,” and I got my artillery ready. Say, you can’t fire off fireworks easy, you got to touch a match to ’em and dodge and take your chances. Well, I scratched a match and lit the giant fire cracker, and put it under the hind legs of dad’s camel, and when it got to fizzing I lit my roman candle, and as the fire cracker exploded like a 16-inch gun, my roman candle began to spout balls of fire, and I aimed one at each camel, and the whole push started on a stampede for the pyramids, the camels groaning, the Arabs praying to Allah, dad yelling to stop ‘er, and my jackass led the bunch, and I was left in the desert to pick up the hats.