ery man, woman and child we have met makes
a living out of the tourists, and nobody that I have seen works at any
other business.

[Illustration: Wanted to turn in a fire alarm 201]

We woke up the first morning and dad looked out the window and saw
Vesuvius belching forth flame and lava and stone fences, and wanted to
turn in a fire alarm, but I told him that that fire had been raging
ever since the Christian era, and was not one of these incendiary barn
burnings, but he opened the window and yelled fire, and the porters and
chambermaids came running to our room, with buckets of water, and
wanted to know where the fire was. Dad pointed out of the window towards
Vesuvius and said: "Some hired girl has been starting a fire with
kerosene, in that shanty on the knoll out there, and the whole ranch
will burn if you don't turn out the fire department, you gosh blasted
lazy devils. Get a move on and help carry out the furniture."

Well, they calmed dad, and then I had to go to work and post dad up
on the geography he had forgotten, and finally he remembered seeing a
picture of a volcano or burning mountain in his geography 50 years ago,
but he told me he never believed there was a volcano in the world, but
that he always thought they put those pictures in geographies to make
them sell. How a man can attain the prominence and position in the
business world that dad has, and not know any more than he does, is what
beats me.

Of course, you know, having kept a grocery since the war, and having had
opportunities to study history, by the pictures on the soap boxes and
insurance calendars, that Nero, the Roman tyrant, after Rome was burned,
while he fiddled for a dance in a barn, got so accustomed to fire and
brimstone that he retired to Naples and touched off Vesuvius, just so
he could look at it. But Vesuvius, about 2,000 years ago, got to burning
way down in its bowels, and the fire got beyond control, and I suppose
now the fire is away down in the center of the earth, and you know when
you get down in the earth below the crust, on which we live and raise
potatoes, everything is melted, like iron in a foundry, and Vesuvius is
the spigot through which the fluid comes to the surface. You see, don't
you?

Just imagine that this earth is a barrel of beer, which you can
understand better than anything else, and it is being shaken up by being
hauled around on wagons and cars, and is straining to get out, then a
bartender drives