"No, nobody dead," said the boy, as he laid his head on a sofa pillow, closed his eyes, and placed the picture inside his vest. "But I wish there was. I wish I was dead."

"How many times have I told you to put oil on cucumbers, and they wouldn't gripe you that way?" said Uncle Ike, as he drew a chair up beside the lounge and felt of the boy's pulse, and took his handkerchief and wiped the perspiration off his forehead, and finally took the picture out of his bosom and looked at it.



"She is a nice, warm-looking girl, but you might have the picture on your stomach a week, and it wouldn't draw that colic out of you," and Uncle Ike gazed with some admiration on the picture of the beautiful girl, whose high forehead, bright eyes, and beautiful chin, showed that she had the making of a rare and radiant woman.

"'Tain't colic, and I haven't et no cucumbers," said the boy, as he rolled his eyes up toward the roof of his head. "It's love, that's what it is, and I am miserable, and Aunt Almira said you had been in love over six hundred times, and could tell me what to do."

"Well, I like your Aunt Almira's nerve," said Uncle Ike, as he looked half pleased at the accusation. "Of course, I have had some encounters with the fair sex, but I have never entirely collapsed, the way you have. What's the symptoms? Don't the girl love you?"

"Yes! Gosh, she idolizes me," said the boy, sitting up, and getting a little color in his face.

"Oh, then you don't love her," said Uncle Ike, probing into the wound.

"It's false," said the boy, getting on his feet and standing before the old man in indignation. "I love the very ground she walks on. Say, when I walk a few blocks with her, and can't see her again for a week, I go around the other six days and look at the boards she walked on, and it makes me mad to see anybody else walking where she did. I want to get rich enough to buy all the houses we have walked by, and the street cars we have rode in. Love her? Say, you don't know anything about love, Uncle Ike. The love you used to have was old style, and didn't strike in."

"Oh, I don't know," said Uncle Ike, "its all about the same. Was the same in Bible times, and will be the same hundreds of years hence, when we conquer the Philippines. Same old thing. Nobody invents any new symptoms in the love industry. There may be new languages to express it in, but it is just plain, every-day love. But if you both love each other, what is the use of all this colic?"

"Why, you see, she has to dissemble. That's what she says. She can't go with me all the time, and when I see her with anybody else it seems as though it would kill me. I know she does not smile at anybody else the way she does at me, but the condum fools might think she did, and love her. I know if one of those ducks should squeeze her hand, she would be mad, and cuff him, but I could squeeze her hand till her fingers cracked, and she would enjoy it."

"I see," said Uncle Ike, smoking right along. "You are like a man who owns the most beautiful diamond in the world, and is not allowed for some reason to be known as its owner, but is allowed to wear it only two hours a week, and then other people are allowed to wear it. You know it is yours, and yet when it is in the possession of others, you don't dare go and claim it, and they wear it as though they own it, and people see it in their possession and admire it, as it sparkles and throws rays of sunshine, and think how lucky is the man who wears it. Isn't that about your idea? She is yours, body and soul, but has not been delivered to you, eh?"

"Sure! That's it, exactly. What shall I do, Uncle Ike?"

"Shut up!" said the old man; "that is what you want to do. Brace up; you have no cause to worry. I can tell by that face of hers. When she is going with other boys, as she must, she is thinking of you all the time, and wishing your red head was in place of that of the kid who is buying ice-cream soda for her. When she walks about the streets she is thinking of when you were with her at the same place. And when you are permitted to pass an hour with her she will convince you in a minute that you are all the world to her, and that the other ducks are not in it. I can tell by her eyes, boy, and her mouth, and her whole face, that she is a thoroughbred."

"Well, I swan, Uncle Ike, you are better than a doctor," and the red-headed boy began to hug the old man, and dance around, and kick high, and he took the picture and looked at it, and said: "Nobody but a chump would doubt that girl," and the boy suddenly became himself again, reassured as to the position he held in the mind of his girl, by a few words of kindly advice at the right time, when the boy was on the verge of suicide. He laughed and pinched himself to be sure he was awake, and then took on a serious look and said: "Uncle Ike, do you think it will take two hundred years, honestly, to subjugate the Filipinos, and tame them, so that they will eat out of our hands?"

"Well, we ought to do it in half the time the Spaniards have been trying and failed," said the old man, as he slapped a mosquito that was eating him. "There, you see that mosquito is dead. No doubt about that, is there? But what effect does the death of that mosquito have on the nine or ten million of his race that are out here in the woods? This one simply got through the screen, and bucked up against a sure thing, and his bravery, or gall, got him killed, and I may think I am a hero because I killed him. But let me take my gun and go out in the woods, or on the marsh, where there are a million mosquitos to one of me, and what kind of a life will they let me lead? I should have to be slapping and kicking all the time, and couldn't attend to my shooting. It is just so with those Filipinos. They will stay in the jungles and breed, and enjoy the malaria and the rainy season, and a few will go around the camps and sing their songs, and keep the soldiers awake, and bite and poison them, and shoot and stab, and when the soldiers chase them they will go farther into the jungle, harass the flanks of the boys that are discouraged, and when another year is gone there will be more Filipinos than there are now, better armed, and hating the Americans worse than ever.. We may take towns, hold them if we have troops enough, and start a new graveyard at every place we try to hold, and when we give it up and go away, the human mosquitos will return buzzing and biting, and they will dig up the remains of some mother's boy, just to get the gold filling out of his teeth. If the war keeps on a few hundred years, instead of one large cemetery at Manila, that can be watched and kept a sacred spot, we shall have hundreds of small graveyards all over the archipelago, where the boys in blue that are buried will find it mighty lonesome when we take the living soldiers away. No, boy, it will not take two hundred years to subdue the Filipinos. That is, we will not be working at the job that long, because we are not built that way. If we find we have got into a hornet's nest, and that the hornets don't have any honey, anyway, and that we don't need hornets in our regular business, somebody in authority will be apt to know when we have got enough, and we will probably shake the dice with some nation that is so addicted to gambling that it had as soon shake dice for hornets as anything, and we will let them play loaded dice on us, and shake sixes, and we will turn up deuces and trays, and let them win the condemned mess of hornets that didn't give honey, and that have nothing but stings, and wish whoever wins the hornets much joy. Understand me, boy, I am not saying anything against the policy of our administration, if it has got one, and I will hold up my hands and root for the army as long as it is in the game, and will encourage the President all I can to do what he thinks is right, but I shall always feel that Spain sold him a gold brick for 20,000,000 plunks, and that he has not yet found out that it is made of brass. I know the tobacco trust, and the cordage trust, and lots of other trusts that are interested, are trying to make him believe that the gold brick he bought is good stuff, and that he must protect it, or some other nation will get it away from him, but you wait until that Scotch-Irish blood of the President begins to boil, when he finds out that he has been bunkoed, and he will get those trust magnates together some day, and he will get pale around the gills, and mad as a wet hen, and he will say that he has heard about all the funeral dirges on the longdistance telephone from Manila that he wants to hear, and that the wails of the mourning mothers of the dying boys are keeping him awake nights, and that he has got about enough, trying to put bells on the Filipino wildcats, and that they can take the whole Philippine archipelago and go plum to hades with it, for he is going to stop the death rate, and get those boys home and set them to plowing corn."

"Oh, Uncle Ike, don't get excited. I only wanted to change the subject from my own troubles to the troubles of our country," and he went out singing, "There's Only One Girl in All This World for Me," while Uncle Ike took off his collar and wiped the perspiration off his neck, and fanned himself awhile, and then lit his pipe, smoked a spell, and finally said: "Well, it is none of my condum business, anyway, I s'pose."



CHAPTER XI.

Uncle Ike was sitting in his room with a bath robe on, and his great, big, bare feet in a tub of hot water, in which some dry mustard had been sifted, and on a table beside him was a pitcher of hot lemonade, which he was trying to drink, as it got cool enough to go down his neck without scorching his throat. His head was hot, and he had evidently taken a severe cold, and occasionally he would groan, when he moved his body, and place his hand to the small of his back. His pipe and tobacco were far away on the mantel, though he could smell them, and the odor so satisfying to him when he was well, almost made him sick, and when the red-headed boy came in the room the first thing the old man said was:

"Take that dum pipe and terbacker out of the room, and put it in the woodshed. Your Uncle Ike ain't enjoyin' his terbacker very well," and the old fellow made up a face, and looked as though he was on a steamboat excursion in rough weather. The boy took the pipe by the tail, and the tobacco paper in his other hand, and went out, and soon returned with a heavy blanket coat on, a pair of felt boots, and a toboggan knit-cap, and a pair of yarn mittens on, though it was late in July, and the weather was quite hot. Uncle Ike looked at him in wonder, as though he was not sure but it was winter, and he was so ill as not to know that summer and fall had passed without his knowing it.

"What you got them sliding-down-hill clothes on for, in July?" said the old man, as he put one puckered-up bare foot on the other, in the water, and sozzled them around in the mustard in the bottom of the tub. "You will have me sunstruck yet, if you wear those clothes around here. What is up, anyway?"



"A lot of us boys are going to the Klondike," said the red-headed boy, as he took a big hunting knife out of a sheath, "and I came in to see if you would grubstake me. We have been reading about the millions of dollars in gold nuggets and dust, that is being brought out, and we are going to have some of the gold. Want your corns cut?" said the boy, as he sharpened the knife on Uncle Ike's boot that lay on the floor.

"You ducks have been reading about the gold that has been brought out, but you forgot to read about the corpses that stayed in the Klondike, didn't you?" said the old man as he took a drink of the hot lemonade, and pulled the bathrobe around his hind legs. "You tell the boys you are not going, and that Uncle Ike will not grubstake you. Tell them you have found out that for every dollar in gold that comes out of the mines, a hundred dollars is spent to find it. Tell them that not one man in a hundred that goes there ever sees anything yellow, except the janders. Tell them that seven out of ten men either freeze to death, or die of disease, or starve to death, and that every trail in Alaska is marked with graves of just such fools as you boys. Tell them that they can make more money selling picture books at a blind asylum, or tin trumpets at a deaf and dumb school, than they could by digging gold in the Klondike, and that you are going to stay home. Now take off that uniform and get down on your knees and rub my feet dry," and the old man drew one foot out of the tub and rested it on the edge, while the boy took a Turkish towel that looked like a piece of tripe, and began polishing the foot, like a bootblack.

"Gosh, but one of your feet would make about six the size of my girl's feet," said the boy, as he fixed the old man up, and helped him onto a lounge, where he stretched out and went to sleep. For an hour the boy watched the old man, and listened to his snore, and finally he got a gutta-percha bug out of his fishing tackle, and when Uncle Ike woke up and began to stretch the boy said: "Uncle Ike, I have saved your life. This kissing bug was just ready to pounce, on you, and poison you, when I grabbed it and killed it. See!" and he held up the bug.

"Yes, I see," said Uncle Ike, as he rubbed his eyes, and looked at the kissing bug. "You examine it close, right by the tail, and you will find a trout hook. I used to catch a great many trout with that bug," and Uncle Ike got up and stretched his limbs, and found that his cold was gone, and he was well enough, and he dressed himself and began to act natural, and after the boy had looked him over, and marveled at the sudden cure, he said:

"Uncle Ike, you have deceived me. I thought you was on your last legs, and I was going to have a serious talk with you. Heretofore, when I have tried to talk serious with you, you have turned everything into fun, but now I want a serious opinion from you. What would you think of my going out on a farm and learning to be a farmer? I ride by farms and see farmers and boys at work, or lying in the shade, or drinking out of a jug, or sitting on loads of hay, or riding a horse plowing corn, and it seems to me they have an easy life, and they must make money; and if I can't enlist to fight Filipinos, nor go to the Klondike, I want to be a farmer. What do you think, Uncle Ike?" and the boy looked up into the old man's face appealingly.

"Well, bring back that pipe and terbacker, and I will tell you all about farming, for I was brung up on a farm till I was busted." The boy brought in the smoke consumer, and after the old man had puffed a few times, and found it did not make him sick, he continued: "In the first place, you are getting too old to learn farming. When city people have a call to farm it, they buy a farm, put up a windmill, get plumbers out from town, put in a bathtub with hot and cold water, and buy some carriages with high backs, and go in for enjoyment, regardless of the price of country produce. They put in hammocks and lawn tennis, and the young people wear knickerbockers and white canvas dresses, and roll their pants up, and all that. There is no money in farming that way. Now, you have got your city habits formed; you don't get up in the morning till after 7, and you have to take a bath, and have fresh underclothes frequently. You would want to lay in the shade too much and ride on the hay. Did it ever occur to you that before you could ride on the hay it has to be cut, and cured, and cocked up, and raked around? It takes a whole lot of backaches to get a load of hay ready for you to ride on. Now, you are going on 20 years old. If you had been born on a farm, you would be just about ready to quit it and come to town to learn something else. You would have a stomach full of farming, for you would have worked about twelve years, day and night; your hands would be muscular, and you would have callouses inside of them. You go out on a farm now, at your age, and when you get the first blister on your hands you want to send for a doctor, and you throw up the job and come back on my hands. Suppose you started out next Monday morning to learn to be a farmer. Let me make out a programme for you. You would go to bed Sunday night at 9 o'clock, and lay awake thinking of the glory of a farmer's life, and at 3 a. m. you would go to sleep, and at 4 you would hear the door to the attic open, and a voice that would sound like an auctioneer would yell to you to come down and get to work. You couldn't argue the case with the farmer, as you do with me when I try to get you up early to go fishing; and you would get up and put on a pair of cowhide shoes, brown overalls, a hickory shirt with bed-ticking suspenders, and you would go out into a barnyard that smelled like fury, and milk nine or fifteen cows on an empty stomach; and while another hired man was taking the milk to a creamery, you would see that it was not daylight yet, but you would go in the kitchen and eat a slice of pork, and hurry about it, and then you would curry off the horses, and help hitch the team to a reaper; and just as it was getting light enough to see things, you would go out to a wheat field, and, after the old man had cut two or three swaths around the field, several of you would turn in to bind up the bundles. They would show you how, and then they would see that you did your share of work.

"You would hustle for about four hours, and you would be so hungry it wouldn't be safe for a dog to come around you, and you would drink warm water out of a jug till your stomach ached, and you would wonder if it was not almost supper time, and if you looked at your watch you would find it was only about 9 o'clock in the morning, with three more solid hours of work before dinner time. When the horn blew for dinner you would just be able to climb on one of the horses to ride to the house, and the harness would take the skin off your elbows. When you got to the house you would want to lay down and die, but you would have to pull water up in buckets to water the horses, and go up in the hay mow and throw down hay and carry oats to them, and when you went in to dinner you would feel as though you could eat a ten course banquet, but you would find that it was washing day, and they didn't do any cooking, and you would eat a bowl of bread and milk, and chew about a bushel of young onions, and when you were filled up and wanted to lie down and go to sleep, and die, the old man would tell you to hustle out and hitch up that team, and you would be so lame you couldn't ride on top of a hard farm harness, and you would walk to the field, your heavy shoes wearing the skin off your ankles, and the old machine would begin to stutter and rattle, and you would go to work binding bundles at 1 o'clock and work till dark, because it looked as though it was going to rain, and when you got the chores done, milked the cows, bedded down the horses, carried in wood to the kitchen and a few things like that, and they told you supper was ready, you would say you would rather go to bed than eat, and you would go up in the attic and fall on the bed, and go to sleep and dream of your Uncle Ike. Do you know where I would find you next? You would come into town on an early freight train Tuesday morning, and show up about breakfast time, and you would hunt the bathtub, and if any man ever talked farming to you again, you would be sassy to him. No, boy, the city man or boy is not intended for a farmer, but the farmer boy is intended for the city, when he gets enough of the farm. About so much farming has got to be done, but it will be done by those who are brought up to it, and who know that every minute has got to be used to produce something, that the appetite must be satisfied easily and cheaply, and that everything on the farm must be of marketable value, and nothing must be bought that can be dispensed with, and that everybody must work or give a good reason for not working. The pleasure of farming is largely in anticipation. The big crops and big prices are always coming next year. You would be about as good at farming as I would at preaching," and Uncle Ike gradually ceased speaking, like an old clock that is running down, and ticking slower and slower, and then he fell asleep in his chair, and the red-headed boy sat and thought of what had been said, and looked at his hands as though he expected to find a blister, and smelled of them to see if he had actually been milking cows, and then he rolled over on the lounge and went to sleep, and the two snored a match.



CHAPTER XII.



"Uncle Ike, I heard a rumor about you yesterday that tickled me almost to death," said the red-headed boy, as he came into the old gentleman's room while he was shaving, and the boy took the lather brush and worked it up and down in the cup until the lather run over the side, and he had lather enough on hand to shave half the men in town.

"What was it?" said the old man, as he puckered his mouth on one side, and opened it so he could shave around the corner of his mouth. "Nothing disreputable, is it; nothing to bring disgrace on the family?" and he wiped the razor on a piece of newspaper, and stropped it on his hand, as he looked in the mirror to see if there were any new wrinkles in his face.

"Well, I don't know as it would disgrace us so very much, if you looked out for yourself, and didn't steal," said the boy, as he began to sharpen his knife on Uncle Ike's razor strop. "There is a rumor among the boys that you may be nominated for President, and a lot of us boys got together and took a vote, when we were in swimming, and you were elected unanimously. I am to be the boss who deals out the offices, and all the boys are going to have a soft snap. Before the thing goes any further the boys wanted me to see you, and have you promise that anything I promised should be good, see?"

"Uncle Ike, I heard a rumor about you yesterday that tickled me most to death."

"Well, you are a dum nice lot of politicians, to work up this boom for me, without my consent," and the old man put up his razor, and began to wash the lather off his face, and while he was rubbing his red and laughing face with a towel, he said: "If I am elected President, and I want you to understand that I have not yet consented to take the nomination, I would, the first thing I did, have all my relatives either sent to jail, or confined in various asylums of one kind or another. I think I would send you to a home for the feeble-minded."

"What's the matter with relatives?" said the boy, as he took the razor, and searched around on his lip for some hairs, and finally got hold of one, and the razor pulled it so hard the tears came in his eyes; "seems to me a President with all his relatives in jail would be looked upon as a disgrace to society."

"Well, I wouldn't care," said the old man, as he struggled to make a fourteen-inch collar button on to a sixteen-inch shirt, and nearly choked himself before he found out he had got the boy's collar by mistake. "I have watched this President business a good many years, and have concluded that the most of the trouble a President has is through fool relatives. Look at Grant. You couldn't throw a stone in Washington without hitting a relative, and they got into more scrapes, and dragged Grant into more disgrace, and fool schemes, than anything. There wasn't offices enough for all of them, and some had to live in other ways, which didn't help Ulysses very much. Harrison never had any pleasure until he had an operation performed on his son to remove his talking utensils. That boy would be interviewed and jollied, and he would tell more things that were not so, about pa's policy, than the President could stand. But a brother is the worst relative a President can have, if he is a half-way lawyer. A President cannot kill a brother that is older than he is, and can't prevent his being retained, and can't keep his brother's fingers out of all the contracts, and his being attorney for contractors, and can't tell him to keep away from the White House, and don't dare to tell his brother not to go around looking wise, as though he was running the whole administration. No, sir; there ought to be a law that when a man is elected President, all male relatives that are old enough to talk, should have their mouths sewed up, and be compelled to put on gloves that are fastened with a time lock, so they couldn't get their hands into anything that would bring disgrace on the chief magistrate. Now, if you boys want me for President, with this understanding, that you shall all keep away from me after the 4th of March, and never let anybody know that you ever heard of me, and that you will never write me even a postal card, why, you can go ahead with your boom," and the old man tied his necktie so it looked like a scrambled egg, and he and the boy went in to breakfast, the boy opening the outside door and whistling a weird whistle, which brought three boys up on the porch, when he said to them:

"By the way, that presidential boom for Uncle Ike is off. Don't let the gang do another thing. He is a lobster," and the boys went out into the world looking for another candidate, followed by a dog that jumped up and down in front of them as though he could lead them to a presidential candidate or a wood-chuck hole mighty quick.

"Speaking of dogs," said Uncle Ike, as he and the boy sat down to breakfast, and the other boys went out on the street to wait for the red-headed boy to finish eating, "where you boys going?"

"Just going to follow the dog," said the warm-haired proposition, as he kicked because the melon was not ripe. "Did you ever drown out a gopher, Uncle Ike?"

"Bet your life," said Uncle Ike, as he dished out enough food for the boy to have fed an orphan asylum. "Oh, I had a dog once that knew more than an alderman. Do you know, boy, that a dog is the best thing a boy can associate with? A boy never does anything very mean, if he has a dog that loves him. Many a time I have been just about ready to do a mean trick, when the dog would sit down in front of me, and look up into my eyes in an appealing way, and raise up one ear at a time and drop it, and raise the other, and he would jump up on me and lick my hand, and seem to say, 'Don't,' and, by gosh! I didn't. Say, if a mean boy has a dog that loves him, the dog is better than he is, and the boy is careful about doing mean things, for fear he will shame the dog. I don't suppose a dog will get to heaven, but, if his master goes to heaven, the dog is mighty likely to lay down on the outside of the pearly gates, and just starve to death, waiting to hear the familiar whistle of his master, who is enjoying himself inside. Now, let's go out on the porch while I smoke;" and the old man led the way, and lighted up the old churn, and puffed away a while, and the boy was in a hurry to get away with the other boys; and finally the boys came up on the porch, and the dog went up to Uncle Ike and licked his hand, as though he knew the old man was a friend of dogs and boys. "What's this scar on his nose? Woodchuck bite him?"

"Yes, sir," said one of the boys. "And this one on the under lip?" said the old man. "Looks like a gopher had took a bite out of that lip."

"That's what it was," said another boy, and they all laughed to think that a dignified old man like Uncle Ike could tell all about the scars on a cheap dog. "Well, boys, I won't detain you if you are going out to exercise the dog on woodchucks or gophers. But let me tell you this," and he puffed quite a little while on the pipe, and seemed to be harking away back to the bark of the dog friend of his boyhood, and the boys could almost see the dirt flying out of an old-time woodchuck hole as the dog of Uncle Ike's memory was digging and biting at roots, and snarling at a woodchuck that was safe enough away down below the ground. "Let me tell you something. You want to play fair with the dog. A dog has got more sense than some men. He can tell a loafer, after one wood-chuck hunt. The boy who gets interested when the clog is digging out a woodchuck, gets down on his knees and pushes the dirt away, and pats the dog, and encourages him, and when he comes to a root, takes his knife and cuts it away, is the thoroughbred that the dog will tie to; but the boy who sits in the shade and sicks the dog on, and don't help, but bets they don't get the woodchuck, and when the dog and his working partner pulls the woodchuck out, gets up out of the shade and begins to talk about how we got the woodchuck, is the loafer. He is the kind of fellow who will encourage others to enlist and go to war, in later life, while he stays home and kicks about the way the war is conducted, and shaves mortgages on the homes of soldiers, and forecloses them. That kind of a boy will be the one who will lie in the shade when he grows up, and not work in the sun. Didn't you ever see a dog half-way down a woodchuck hole, kicking dirt into the bosom of the boy's pants who is backing him, suddenly back out of the hole, wag his tail and wink his eyes, full of dirt, at the boy who is working the hole with him, and then run out his tongue and loll, and look at the fellows who are sitting around waiting for the last act, in the shade, and say to them, as plain as a dog can talk, 'You fellows make me tired. Why don't you get some style about you, and come in on this game on the ground floor?' and then he gets rested a little, and you say, 'dig him out,' and he swallows a big sigh at their laziness, and goes down in the hole and digs and growls so the lazy boys think he has forgotten that they are deadheads in the enterprise, but the dog does not forget."

"Well, I swow, if your Uncle Ike ain't away up in G on woodchuck hunting," said one of the neighbor boys as they all sat around the old man, with their eyes wide open. "How about drowning out a gopher?"

"Same thing, exactly," said Uncle Ike, as he filled up the pipe again, and lit it, and run a broom straw through the stem, to give it air. "The dog watches the hole, and keeps tab on the boys who carry water. You have got to keep the water going down the gopher hole, and you got to work like sixty. Gophers know better than to have holes too near the water, and the dog knows what boy flunks after he carries one pail of water, and says, 'Oh, darn a gopher anyway; I hain't lost no gopher,' and goes and sits down and lets the other boys carry water. The dog knows that the boy who keeps carrying water and pouring it in the hole is the thoroughbred, and that the quitter has got a streak of yellow in him. When the hole is filled up with water, and the gopher comes to the surface, and the dog grabs for it, and the boy who took off his clothes and carried water also grabs, and either the dog or the boy gets bit, usually the boy, the dog knows that the boy who worked with him on that gopher hole has got the making of a good business man in him. A business or professional career, boys, is just like digging out a woodchuck, or drowning out a gopher, and the fellows who help the dog when they are boys, are the ones who are mighty apt to get the business woodchuck when they grow up. I will bet you ten dollars that if you pick out the most successful business man in town, and go look at his left thumb nail, you will find a scar on it where a half-drowned gopher bit him, because he was at the hole at the right time. Now, go and have fun, and be sure and play fair with the dog," and Uncle Ike took down a broom and shook it at them as they scattered down the street, the dog barking joyously.

"I speak for carrying the water to drown out the gopher!" yelled the red-headed boy.

"Me, too!" shouted the other boys in chorus, as they disappeared from sight, and Uncle Ike listened until they were out of hearing, and then he limped down to the gate and looked up the road toward the country, but all he could see was a cloud of dust with a dog in it, and he walked back to the house sadly, and as he lifted the lame leg upon the porch, and took his hat, he said:

"Blamed if I don't hitch up the mare and drive out there where those boys have gone. I'll bet I know woodchuck holes and gopher holes them kids never would find if they had a whole passel of dogs," and he went out to the barn and pretty soon Aunt Almira heard him yell, "Whoa, gosh darn ye, take in that bit!" and she put on her sunbonnet and went out to the barn to see if he had actually gone crazy.



CHAPTER XIII.

"What you scratching yourself on the chest for?" said Uncle Ike, as the red-headed boy stood with one hand inside his vest, digging as though his life depended on his doing a good job. "Is there anything the matter with you that soap and water will not cure?" and the old man punched the boy in the ribs with a great big, hard thumb, as big as a banana.

"Uncle Ike, how long will a porous plaster stay on, and isn't there any way to stop its itching? I have had one on for seventeen days and nights, and it seems to be getting worse all the time," said the boy, as he dug away at his chest.

"Good heavens, take it off quick!" said Uncle Ike, as he laid his lighted pipe down on the table, on a nice, clean cloth, and the ashes and fire spilled out, and burned a hole in it. "You will die of mortification. Those plasters are only intended to be used as posters for a day or two. What in the name of common sense have you worn it seventeen days for? Let's rip it off."

"No, I have got to wear it eighteen days more," said the boy, with a look of resignation. "Now, don't laugh, Uncle Ike, will you? You see my girl has gone to the seashore to be gone five weeks, and she gave me a tintype and told me to wear it next my heart till she got back, and I thought I could get it nearer my heart by putting it right against the skin, and putting a porous plaster over it, and by gum, I can feel her on my heart every minute. Now don't laugh, Uncle."



"Well, I guess not," said Uncle Ike, as he put out the fire on the table-cloth, and smoked a little while to settle his thoughts. "Here, this plaster has got to be removed before the fatal day of her return, or you will be holding down a job as a red-headed angel. Now, open your shirt," and the old man reached in and got a corner of the plaster, and gave a jerk that caused every hair on the boy's head to raise up and crack like a whiplash, while the tintype of the girl, covered with crude India rubber and medicated glue, dropped on the floor, and the boy turned pale and yelled bloody murder. "Now, don't ever do that again. A picture in your inside pocket is near enough to the heart for all practical purposes. Next, you will be swallowing her picture in the hope that it will lodge near your heart. Now I got something serious to talk with you about. One of the park policemen was here this morning looking for you. He said some of you boys just raised merry hades at the park concert last night. What did you do?"

"Just flushed quails," said the boy, as he buttoned his shirt, and gave the sore spot a parting dig. "We played we were hunting quail, and we had more fun than you ever saw."

"There are no quail in the park," said Uncle Ike, as he looked curiously at the boy through the smoke.

"Here, this plaster has got to be removed before the fatal day of her return," and puffed until his cheeks sank in, and the tears came to his eyes. "What is this quail fable, anyway?"

"You see," said the boy, as he took a piece of ice out of the water pitcher and held it in his bosom, where the plaster came off, "when there is an evening concert at the park, the boys and girls go off in couples and sit under the trees in the dark, or on the grass, where no one can see them very well, and they take hold of hands and put their arms around each other, and all the time they are scared for fear they will be caught, and ordered to quit. Well, us boys go around in the dark, and when we see a couple in that way, one boy comes to a point, like a dog, another boy walks up to the couple and flushes them, and as they get up quick to go somewhere else, I blow up a paper bag and bust it, and they start off on a run. Say, Uncle Ike, it is fun. We chased one couple clear to the lake."

"You did, did you, you little imp?" said the old man, as his sympathies were aroused for the young people who were disturbed at a critical time. "Don't let me ever hear of your flushing any more couples, or I'll flush you the first time I catch you with your girl. How would you like to be flushed? The parks are the only places many young people have to talk love to each other, and it is cruel to disturb them by bursting paper bags in their vicinity. If I was mayor I would build a thousand little summer houses in the parks, just big enough for a poor young couple to sit in, and talk over the future, and I would set policemen to watch out that nobody disturbed them, and if one of you ducks come along, I would have you thrown in the lake. The idea of a boy who is in love the way you pretend to be, having no charity for others, makes me sick, I'll bet none of those you flushed last night had it so bad they had tintypes of the girls glued on their hearts with a porous plaster. Bah! you meddler!" and the old man stamped his foot on the floor, and the boy looked ashamed.

"Well, that's the last time I will mix in another fellow's love affair," said the boy, as he climbed up on Uncle Ike's knee.

"Now, I want to talk to you seriously," said the boy, as he looked up into Uncle Ike's round, smooth, red and smiling face. "Us boys have been reading about the serious condition of our country, when its wealthy citizens are leaving it and going abroad to live. Do you think, uncle, that William Waldorf Astor's deserting this country, and joining England, is going to cause this country to fail up in business? In case of war with England, do you think he would fight this country?"

"Well, you kids can borrow more trouble about this poor old country of ours than the men who own it can borrow. Astor! Why, boy, his deserting his country will have about as much effect as it would for that man working in the street to pack up his household goods and move to Indiana. Do you suppose this state would tip up sideways if he should quit running that scraper and move out of the state? Not much. The Astors have been rich so long that they are un-American. It is not the natural condition of an American to be rich. When a man gets too rich, he is worried as to what to do with his money. There is no great enjoyment that the very rich can have in this country that the poor cannot have a little of. The first thing a very rich man acquires is a bad stomach. He becomes too lazy to' take exercise, and lets a hired man take exercise for him. He looks at his money, and thinks of his stomach. In Astor's case there was nothing in this country that he could enjoy, not even sleep. Nobody respected him any more than they did every other honest man. Only a few toadies would act toward him as though he was a world's wonder, on account of his wealth. People with souls, and health, and good nature, in the West, got rich as he, and went to New York, and knew how to spend money and have fun, and do good with it; and Astor couldn't understand it. He wanted to be considered the only, but he never had learned how to blow in money to make others happy. If he gave to the poor, an agent did it for him, and squeezed it, and made a memorandum and showed it to him once a year, and he frowned, and his stomach ached, and he took a pill, and sighed. I suppose two girls from California, daughters of an old Roman of the mines and the railroads, who died too soon, a senator with a soul, taught Astor how to do good with money, and maybe scared him out of the country. Those girls seemed to, know where there was a chance for suffering among the poor, and they kept people in their employ on the run to get to places before the bread was all gone, until half a million of the people that only knew there was an Astor by the signs on buildings for rent, knew these Fair girls by sight, and worshiped them as they passed. The girls are married now, but they give just the same, and wherever they are in the world there is the crowd, and there is the love of those who believe them angels. Astor could not find any one to love him for any good he ever did that did not have rent or interest as the object, and he went away where a man is respected in a half-way manner, in proportion to the money he spends on royalty, in imitating royalty, and he will run a race there, and get tired of it; and some day, if he lives, he will come back to this country in the steerage, as his ancestors did, and take out his first papers and vote, and maybe he will be happy. The only way for a rich man to be very happy is to find avenues for getting his congested wealth off his mind, where it will cause some one who is poor and suffering to look up to him, and say that riches have not spoiled him. But to inherit money and go through life letting it accumulate, and not finding any avenue where it can leak out and be caught in the apron of a needy soul, is tough. No, you boys need not worry about the desertion of Astor. If we have a war with Great Britain, you would find Astor taking a night trip across the channel, and France would draw him in the lottery. One foreigner who landed in this country the day Astor sailed away, will be of more value in peace or war than Astor could be if he had remained."

"Gosh!" said the boy, as he got up out of Uncle Ike's lap, "if you are not a comfort! Between that porous plaster, and Astor's going to England, and my girl at the seashore, I was about down with nervous prostration, but I am all right now," and the redheaded boy went out to round up the gang and tell them the country was all safe enough, as long as they had Uncle Ike to run it.



CHAPTER XIV.

"Well, you are a sight!" said Uncle Ike, as the red-headed boy came in the room, all out of breath, his shirt unbuttoned and his hair wet and dripping, and his face so clean that it was noticeable. "Why don't you make your toilet before you come into a gentleman's room? Where you been, anyway?"

"Been in swimming at the old swimming hole," said the boy, as he finished buttoning his shirt, and sat down to put on his shoes and stockings, which he had carried in his hat. "Had more fun than a barrel of monkeys. Stole the clothes of a boy, and left him a paper flour sack to go home in. Wait a minute and you will see him go by," and the boy rushed to the window and yelled to Uncle Ike to come and see the fun.



Presently a boy came down the street from toward the river with nothing on but a flour sack. He had cut holes in the bottom to put his feet through, and pulled it up to his body, and the upper part covered his chest to the arms, which were bare and sunburned, and the boy was marching along the street as unconcerned as possible, while all who saw him were laughing.

"What did you do that for?" said Uncle Ike, as he called to the boy to come in.

"Just for a joke," said the red-headed boy, laughing, and jollying the boy dressed in the flour sack, as he came in at Uncle Ike's invitation.

"Well, that is a good enough joke for two," said Uncle Ike. "Now take off your clothes and change with this boy, and put on the flour sack yourself," and he superintended the change, until the other boy had on a full suit of clothes, and the red-headed boy had on the flour sack. "Now I want you to go to the grocery and get me a paper of tobacco."

"O, gosh, I don't want to go out in the street with this flour sack on. Some dog will chase me, and the people will make fun of me," said the boy, with an entirely new view of a practical joke.

"But you go all the same," said Uncle Ike, taking down a leather strap that he sharpened his razor on, and driving the boy outdoors. "Bring back this boy's clothes, also," and he sat down and waited for the boy to return. He came back after awhile with the tobacco and the clothes, followed by a lot of other boys, and after the two had changed clothes, and all had enjoyed a good laugh, Uncle Ike said: "Boys, playing practical jokes is a good deal like jumping on a man when he is down. You will notice that the weaker boy always has the joke played on him. Boys always combine against the weak boy. The boy that can whip any of you never has to wear a flour sack home from the swimming hole, does he? Any joke that you can take turns at having played on you is fair, but when you combine against the weak, you become a monopoly, or a trust. When I was a boy we used to tie the clothes of the biggest and meanest boy in knots, and if he couldn't take a joke we all turned in and mauled him. After this, if there is to be any jokes, let the biggest boy take his turn first, and then I don't care how soon the others take their dose, but this trust business has got to be broke up," and Uncle Ike patted the boys, on the head and said they could go and have all the fun they wanted to.

"Speaking of trusts, Uncle Ike, I thought you said, a spell ago, that the trusts would be brought up with a round turn," said the red-headed boy, reading, as he glanced at a heading in a morning paper, "but here is an article says that a thousand million billion dollars have been invested in trusts in New Jersey, and the manager of one of the biggest trusts says nobody can do anything to stop them. He says: 'What are you going to do about it?'"

"Well," said Uncle Ike, as he filled the air with strong tobacco smoke, and his eyes snapped like they did when he was mad, "you wait. I am older than you are. I remember when old Bill Tweed, the great robber of New York, who had stolen millions of dollars from the city, and was in his greatest power, became arrogant, and asked the people what they were going to do about it. When people think they are invincible they always ask what anybody is going to do about it. When a bully steps on the foot of a quiet and inoffensive man, purposely to get into a row, he looks at his victim in an impudent manner and says, 'What are you going to do about it?' and the victim gets up deliberately and thrashes the ground with the bully. The people got mad at Tweed when he said that, and they chased him over the world, and landed him in the penitentiary, where he died. That will be the fate of some of these trust magnates. The foundation of the trust is corruption. Its trade mark was uttered years ago by a great railroad man who said, 'The public be d——d.' That expression is in the mind of every man connected with a trust. He turns the thumbscrews on the public, raises prices, and if they complain, he says, 'What are you going to do about it?' and if anybody says the public cannot stand it, they say 'the public be blessed,' or the other thing. Now, wait. The public will be making laws, and the first law that is made will be one that sends a man to the penitentiary who robs through a trust. If three men combine to rob it is a conspiracy. If a hundred or a thousand combine to rob seventy million people, it is treason. You wait, boys, and you will hear a noise one of these days when the people speak, and you will hear trust magnates who fail to get across the ocean before the tornado of public indignation strikes, begging for mercy. Now, gosh blast you, run away. You have got me to talking again," and Uncle Ike lighted his pipe and shut up like a clam, while the boys went out looking for trouble.

Uncle Ike had been dozing and smoking, and fixing his fishing tackle, and oiling his gun, and whistling, and trying to sing, all alone, for an hour, after the boys had gone out to have fun, and when he saw them coming in the gate, two of them carrying a big striped watermelon, and the others watching that it did not fall on the ground, he was rather glad the boys had come back, and he opened the door and went out on the porch and met them.

"S-h-h!" said the red-headed boy, as Uncle Ike thumped the melon with his hard old middle finger, to see if it was ripe. "Don't say a word. Let's get it inside the house, quick, and you carve it, Uncle," and they brought it in and laid it on the table, and the boys looked down the street as though they were expecting some one.

"We never used to ask any questions when I was a boy, when a melon suddenly showed up, and nobody knew from whence it came," said Uncle Ike, as he put both hands on the melon and pressed down upon it, and listened to it crack. "Do you know, if a person takes potatoes, or baled hay, that does not belong to him, it is stealing, but if a melon elopes with a boy, or several boys, the melon is always considered guilty of contributory negligence," and the old man laughed and winked at the boys. "But a house is no place to eat a melon in, and a knife is not good enough to cut a melon. Now, you fetch that melon out in the garden, by the cucumber vines, and I will show you the conditions that should surround a melon barbecue," and the old man led the way to the garden, followed by the boys, and he got them seated around in the dirt, with the growing corn on one side, a patch of sunflowers on another, a crabapple tree on one side, giving a little shade where they sat, and the alley fence on the other. The boys were anxious to begin, and each produced a toad-stabber, but Uncle Ike told them to put away the knives, and said:

"The only way to eat a melon is to break it by putting your knee on it, and taking the chunks and running your face right down into it. A nigger is the only natural melon eater. There," said he, as he crushed the brittle melon rind into a dozen pieces, and spread it open, red, and juicy, and glorious. "Now 'fall in,' as we used to say in the army," and the boys each grabbed a piece and began to eat and drink out of the rind, the juice smearing their faces and running down on their shirt bosoms, and Uncle Ike taking a piece of the core in his hands and trying to eat as fast as the boys did, the red and sticky juice trickling through his fingers, and the pulp painting pictures around his dear old mouth, and up his cheeks to his ears, while he tried to tell them of a day during the war when he was on the skirmish line going through a melon patch, and how the order came to lie down, and every last soldier dropped beside a melon, broke it with his bayonet, and filled himself, while the bullets whistled, and how they were all sick afterwards, and had to go to the rear because the people who owned the melons had put croton oil in them.

"Gosh, but this is great!" said the red-headed boy, as he stopped eating long enough to loosen his belt.

"You bet!" said one of the other boys; "Uncle Ike is a James dandy," and he looked up and bowed to a boy with an apron on, who came into the garden with a piece of paper in his hand, which he handed to Uncle Ike.

"What is this, a telegram?" says Uncle Ike, as he takes it with his sticky fingers and feels for his glasses.

"No, it is the bill for the melon——50 cents," said the grocer's boy.

"Bunkoed, by gosh!" says Uncle Ike, as he looks around at the laughing boys who have played it on him.

"Don't ever ask where a melon comes from," said the red-headed boy.

"Sawed a gold brick on me, you young bunko-steerers," says Uncle Ike, as he wipes his hands on some mustard and feels in his pocket for the change; "but it was worth it, by ginger," and he pays for the melon, they all go in the house and wash the melon off their hands and faces, the old man lights his pipe and says: "Boys, come around here to-morrow and play this trick on Aunt Almira, and I'll set up the root beer."



CHAPTER XV.

"Say, where you been all day?" asked Uncle Ike of the red-headed boy, as he showed up late in the afternoon, chewing a gob of gum so big that it made his ear ache. "Here, I've been waiting all day for you, with so many things on my mind to tell you about that I have had to make memorandums," and the old man took out his knife and shaved some tobacco off a plug, rolled it in his hands and scraped it into the pipe, and lit up for a long talk.

"I been working," said the boy, as he took some pieces of chocolate out of his pocket and offered them to his uncle. "I am working for a syndicate, and have got a soft snap, with all the money I can spend," and the boy shook the pennies in his pocket so they sounded like emptying a collection plate.

"Working for a syndicate, a-hem!" said the old man. "A syndicate is a great thing, if you are the syndicate, but if you work for it you get left, that's all. Now tell me about it. What you doing for a syndicate, and who furnishes you the money to spend? Tell me, so I can see whether it is honest. Somehow I can't feel that a syndicate means any good to a boy."

"It is this way, Uncle Ike," said the boy, as he threw away his gum and took another stick out of his pocket, and chewed it until he fairly drooled, "you know these slot machines in the depots and hotels, where people put in a penny and pull out a knob and get a stick of gum or a chocolate, or some peppermint drops. Well, the syndicate wants a boy to go around and put in pennies, and get the prizes, when people are looking on, so as to get them interested, so they will put in pennies, see?"

"Sure! You are a sort of capper for a gum bunko game, eh? Rope in the people and get them next to a good thing," said Uncle Ike, looking at the boy over his glasses. "What particular talent does this new business bring to the front? Do you make speeches to the people, encouraging them to invest their hard-earned pennies in your great scheme for the amelioration of the condition of the down-trodden, or what do you do? Tell me how the thing works."

"Why, my work is all pantomime. The man who hired me said I had a face that was worth a fortune. I go up to a slot machine, and act as though I never saw such a thing before. Then I monkey around, and seem to be puzzled, and my face looks serious, and the people in the depot waiting for trains gather around and watch me, and when the jays are all ripe, ready to pick, I put a penny in the slot, draw out a stick of gum, put it in my mouth, and then I smile one of those broad smiles, like this, and the people begin to put in pennies, and they surround the machine, and money just flows in, until their train goes, when another crowd comes in and I work them on the chocolate slot, and just blow in pennies belonging to the syndicate that owns the machines. Oh, it's a great snap, Uncle Ike. You ought to go into it," and the boy threw away his gum and went to eating chocolate.

"Is that so? My face would be my fortune, too, would it?" said Uncle Ike, who was beginning to show that he was mad. "And what salary does the syndicate pay you for your valuable services as a piece of human fly paper?"

"O, they don't pay me any salary," said the boy, as he took out a handful of syndicate pennies and poured them from one hand into another, to show the old man that he had wealth. "I don't ask anything for my services. I just get pay in fun, and have all the gum, and chocolate, and lemon drops that I can eat. The man told me it would be an experience that would be valuable to me in after life, being in the eye of the public, leading the people. He said this would be the making of me, and open up a career that would astonish my friends. Don't you think so, Uncle? Can't you see a change in me since I went to work for the syndicate?"

"Well, I don't know but I do," said Uncle Ike, as he pondered over the remarks of the boy. "You begin to look more bilious, probably on account of the chocolate you have eaten, to deceive the people at the depot into the idea that it is good stuff. And perhaps this experience will be the opening of a career. If you can, by your actions, cause strangers to run up against a slot machine, I don't see why you couldn't, in time, be a pretty good capper for a three-card monte game, where you could pick out the right card, and the jay loses his money. If this is the kind of business you have selected for a career, it will not be long before you will be in demand as a bunko-steerer. You would be invaluable, with that innocent face of yours, in roping in strangers to a robbers' roost, where they would be fleeced and thrown down stairs on their necks. With about two days more experience on a slot machine, some gold-brick swindler will come along and raise the syndicate out on your salary, and put you on the road selling gold bricks. Starting in business as a fakir, you will rise to become a barker for a sideshow, graduate into bunko and gold bricks, and if you are not sent to the penitentiary, there is a great opening for you as a promoter of a trust in the air we breathe. We shall have to part company. My reputation is dear to me. I have never turned a jack from the bottom when I had one to go in seven-up, and to associate with a boy who will rope people to buy mouldy gum, and be an advance agent of prosperity as recorded on a slot machine, is too much, and I bid you good-bye. I have loved you, but it was because you were innocent and tried to do the fair thing, but—good-bye," and the old man laid down his pipe, picked up his hat and started for the door.

"Hold on, Uncle Ike," said the boy, taking the handful of pennies out of his pocket and laying them on the table, "I didn't know it was so bad. I won't do it any more. Come back, please."

"Well, I got to go downtown," said the old man, "and I will be back in an hour. In the meantime you write out a letter of resignation to the syndicate. Say that you find a diet of decayed chocolate and glucose candy is sapping the foundation of your manhood, and that your Uncle Ike has offered you a position on the staff of a gold-brick syndicate," and the old man went out, leaving the boy to write his resignation.

"Well, how is my decoy duck, and has he sent in his resignation?" said the old man, as he came in a little later and found writing material and pennies on the table, and the boy lying on the lounge looking pale and sick. "What is this? Sick the first time you have to resign an office? That won't do. You never will make a politician if you can't write out a resignation without having it go to your head," and the old man sat down by the boy and found that he was as sick as a horse, his face white, and cold perspiration on his upper lip among the red hairs, and on his brow among the freckles. The boy's bosom was heaving, and his stomach was clearly the seat of the disease, and suddenly the boy rushed out of the room, into, the bathroom, and there was a noise such as is frequently heard on steamboat excursions. The old man thought it was the chocolate and gum that had made the boy sick, until he looked at his pipe on the table, which was smoking, although he had been away an hour or more.



"Been trying to smoke the old man's pipe, eh?" said he, as the boy staggered out of the bathroom so weak he could hardly stand, "Well, that plug tobacco in the pipe is a little strong for a bunko-steerer, but I suppose you thought if you were going to be a business man, and leave me, you ought to take with you some of my bad habits. Let me fill the pipe with some of this mild switchman's delight, and you try that," and he brought the pipe near to the boy.

"Take it away, take it away," said a weak voice, coming from under a pillow on the lounge. "Oh, Uncle Ike, I will never touch a pipe again. You look so happy when you are smoking that I thought I would like to learn, so I lit the pipe, and drew on it, and the smoke wouldn't come, and I drew in my breath whole length, as I do when I dive off a spring board, and the whole inside of the pipe came into my mouth, and I swallowed the whole business, and pretty soon it felt as though a pin-wheel had been touched off inside of me, and the sparks flew out of my nose, and the smoke came out of my ears, and they turned on the water in my eyes, and my mouth puckered up and acted salivated, like I had eaten choke-cherries, and pretty soon the pin-wheel in my stomach began to run down, and I thought I was going to stop celebrating, when the pin-wheel seemed to touch off a nigger-chaser, and it went to fizzing all around inside of me, up into my lungs, and down around my liver, and it called at all my vital parts and registered its name, and when the nigger-chaser seemed to be dying it touched off an internal skyrocket, and s-i-z-boom—that was when I went in the bathroom, 'cause I was afraid of the stick. Say, Uncle Ike, does anyone ever die from smoking plug tobacco?"

"Oh, yes, about half of them die, when they smoke it the first time. When their eyes roll up, like yours, and they cease to be hungry, and feel as though they had rather lie clown than stand up, they don't last very long," and the old man looked serious, and reached for his pipe and a match, and said: "Any last message you want to send to anybody; any touching good-bye? If you do, whisper it to me, and I will write your dying statement."

"Don't light that dum pipe!" said the boy, rolling over and looking like a seasick ghost, as Uncle Ike was about to scratch a match on his trousers. "Here is the address of my girl. Write to her that I am dead. That I died thinking of her, and smelling of plug tobacco. Put it in that I died of appendicitis, or something fashionable, and say that eight doctors performed eight operations on me, but peritonitis had set in, and there was no use, but that they cut a swath in me big enough to drive an automobile through. I had rather she would think of me as dying a heroic death, than dying smoking plug tobacco. And, say, Uncle Ike, after you have written her, don't make a mistake and send my resignation to the syndicate to her. O, God! but it is hard to die so young," and the boy went to sleep on the lounge, and Uncle Ike went to taking the kinks out of a fish line, knowing that when the boy woke up he wouldn't be dead worth a cent. About half an hour later the boy rolled over, opened his big eyes, sat up, and stared around, and Uncle Ike said:

"Now, you go in the bath-room and wash your face in cold water, and you will be all right," and the boy did so, and came back with almost a smile on his face, and he looked at the papers on the table, and said:

"Uncle Ike, you didn't send that appendicitis story to my girl, did you? Gosh, but I am all right now, and I am not going to die."

"No, I didn't send it; but next time I will, by ginger," and the old man laughed. "Here, have a smoke on me," but the boy went out in the open air and kicked himself.



CHAPTER XVI.

It was a beautiful, hot, sunny morning, and after breakfast Uncle Ike came out on the porch in his shirt sleeves, and with a pair of old hunting shoes on, and his shirt sleeves rolled up, showing the sleeves of a red flannel undershirt, a kind he always wore, winter and summer. He leaned against the post of the porch, lit his pipe, and looked away toward the hazy, hot horizon, and thought of old days that had been brought to his mind the day before, when he saw the parade of a Wild West show. The old man was a '49er, who went across the plains for gold when the country was young, and the yells of the Indians had made him nervous, as they did half a century ago. He had staked the red-headed boy and several of his chums to go to the show, and was waiting for them to show up and report. He stepped down on the lawn and took up the nozzle of a sprinkler and turned it on a lilac bush, when suddenly there was a yell that was unmistakably that of a Comanche Indian; and he stopped and looked at the bush, and could plainly see a moccasin and a leg with buckskin fringe on it, and he knew the boys were laying for him, to scalp him and have fun with him; so he held the nozzle as his only protection against the bloodthirsty band of savages, headed by Chief Red Head, his nephew, but a bad Indian when off the reservation. From behind an evergreen tree down by the gate there came a blood-curdling yell, which was evidently from the throat of "Watermelon Jim," a neighbor's boy, while from the wild cucumber vine on the south porch came a noise like that of a pack of wolves breakfasting on a fawn.

"Surrender!" shouted a damp voice from behind the lilac bush, where the hose was turned. "Surrender, or we burn down your ranch over your head!" and a painted Indian, with red, short hair showing under the feather, crawled toward a rosebush, where it was dry.

"Never!" said Uncle Ike, as he bit the stem of his pipe, and smiled at the boys who were peeking out from behind the different hiding places. "Your Uncle Ike often dies, but he never surrenders," and he cocked the nozzle of the lawn sprinkler, and stood ready for the attack.

The red-headed Indian lit a parlor match and held it aloft, which was apparently a smoke signal, for an Indian behind the porch appeared and suddenly a swish was heard in the air, and a piece of clothesline with a noose in it came near going over Uncle Ike's head; so near that it broke his clay pipe, leaving the stem between his lips.

"Ah, ha! You will, will you? Vamoose!" said Uncle Ike, as he turned the hose on the Indian with the lasso, and drove him behind the porch with water dripping down his calico shirt, taking the color out. Then an Indian near the gate began to fire blank cartridges with a toy pistol and Uncle Ike put his elbow up in front of his face, as he said afterward, to save his beauty, and Uncle Ike started toward that Indian, dragging the hose, and shouting, "Take to the chaparral, condemn you, or I will drown you out like a gopher!"



For a moment there was an ominous silence. The Indians had withdrawn behind the currant bushes, but Uncle Ike knew enough of Indian warfare to know that the silence was only temporary. Suddenly there was a blazing and crackling, and a big smoke from the back of the house, and it seemed the redskins had set fire to the house, the hired girl yelled fire and murder, and came out with a pail of water, while the chief yelled "Charge!" and in a minute Uncle Ike was surrounded by the tribe, his legs tied with the clothesline, though he fought with the garden hose until there was not a dry rag on one of the boys or himself.

"Burn him at the stake!" shouted a little shrimp who carries papers every afternoon, after school, as he wiped the red paint off his cheek on to his bare arm, and shook water out of his trousers leg.

"No, let's hold him for a ransom," said the redheaded boy. "Aunt Almira will give us enough to buy a melon, and make us a pail of lemonade, if we let this gray-haired old settler off without scalping him."

"Chief, spare me, please," said Uncle Ike, as he sat up in a puddle of water on the battle ground, with his legs tied. "I am the mother of eleven orphan children. O, spare me! and don't walk on that pipe of mine on the grass there, with your moccasins. I will compromise this thing myself, and pay the ransom. Here is a dollar. Go and buy melons, and we will have a big feed right here. But what was the fire behind the house, and is it put out?"

"The ransom is agreed to," said the red-headed boy, as he took off his string of feathers, and gave a yell, hitting his lips with the back of his hand so it would "gargle," "and the fire is out. We put some kerosene on an empty beer case, that was all." So Uncle Ike handed over the dollar, and was released, while a boy who had washed his paint off was sent to a grocery after a melon. Then they wiped the mud off Uncle Ike, and all went upon the porch, a new pipe of peace was provided, and they talked about the Wild West show of the night before, while Uncle Ike did the most of the smoking of the pipe of peace, though he wiped the stem once and handed it to the red-headed chief to take a whiff, but the chief, after his experience with plug tobacco cholera a few days before, declined with thanks.

"What interested you most at the show?" said Uncle Ike, puffing away, as he sat on the floor of the porch, and leaned his back against one of the posts. "When you go to a show you always want to get your mind on something that makes an impression on you."

"Well, sir," said the boy who had worked the lasso on Uncle Ike, "the way these Mexicans handled the lariat struck me the hardest, only they look so darned lazy. They just wait for a horse to get in the right place, and then pull up. I would like to see them chase something, and catch it by the leg, that was trying to get away. But the Cossacks! O, my! couldn't they ride, standing up, or dragging on the ground with one foot in the stirrup. Gosh! if Russia turned about a million of those Cossacks loose on China, they wouldn't do a thing to John Chinaman."

"The Indians got me," said another boy, as he took off a moccasin and hung it up in the sun to dry, after his fight to the death with Uncle Ike's waterworks. "I would like to be an Indian, or a squaw, and never have anything to do but travel with a show, and yell. They just have a soft snap, dressing up in feathers, and paint, and buckskin, and living on the fat of the land, and yelling ki-yi! in a falsetto voice."

"Oh, I don't know," said the red-headed boy, "what struck me as the most exciting was the battle of San Juan hill. Say, did you see our boys just walk right up to the Spaniards, in the face of a perfect hailstorm of blank cartridges, with a gatling gun stuttering smokeless powder, and the boys in blue firing volleys, and the rough riders walking on foot, and the Spaniards just falling back, and pretty soon we went right over them, and down came the Spanish flag, and then the Stars and Stripes went up, and there was where I yelled so the roof ripped. But what made me cry was to see Old Glory and the British flag get together, every little while, and float side by side, and seem to be grown together as one flag, and everybody seemed glad. What you think about things, Uncle Ike? Don't sit there and smoke up, all the time, but tell us what you think about the American and British flags waving together so much lately. Are you in favor of an alliance? Do you want to be an assistant Englishman, Uncle Ike?"

"Well, I don't want to be quoted much on this business," said Uncle Ike, as he looked around at the boys, who were listening intently. "I have watched the course of England and all the countries, for over, fifty years, in their relations with this country, and the only friendship England ever showed to us was in the last war. They did us good, no doubt, and I trust I am grateful, as becomes a good citizen. It was like a big boy and little boy fighting. The big boy can whip if he is not interfered with, but a lot of boys are standing around, ready to mix in to help the little fellow. They are ready to trip up the big fellow, so the little one can jump on him, and they are getting ready to throw stones at him, and kick him on the shins. Then a big bully that they are all afraid to tackle, comes along and says: 'This little fellow picked on the big fellow, and kept nagging him till he had to fight or run. Now the little fool has got to take his medicine, and you fellows mustn't mix in, or you got me to fight. Just keep hands off, that's all.' That's all there was to it, but it came in mighty handy, and we appreciate it, but there is too much grand stand play about an alliance. In other wars with England, Germans and French and Poles have fought with us, and for us, and yet we have never felt like having an alliance with them. Do you ever take much stock in Russia, boys? Don't ever forget Russia. During our war between the North and South, we were once in a tight place. England and other countries were about to recognize the Southern Confederacy, and England was doing everything possible to break us up, furnishing privateers, and harboring confederate gunboats, and making it warm for us. Boys, your Uncle Abraham Lincoln was perspiring a good deal those days. They say he couldn't wear a collar, he sweat so. It was believed that England and several other countries were going to simultaneously recognize the Confederacy, and maybe turn in and fight us. Warships from other countries were hovering around our southern coast, and our soldiers were feeling pretty blue, the cabinet never smiled, and nobody laughed out loud except Uncle Abe, and even his laugh seemed to have a hollow, croupy sound. One day, when the strain was the greatest, and everybody felt as though there was a funeral in the family, and there were funerals in most families, a flock of warships flying the flag of Russia, steamed by Sandy Hook, and up to New York, saluted the forts and the Stars and Stripes all along up to the Battery. It seemed as though those battleships never would stop coming. They lined up all around New York, and their guns pointed toward the sea, and every Russian on board acted as though he was loaded for bear. The news went to Washington that night, and they say Uncle Abe had night sweats. The next morning a Russian admiral, who had gone over to Washington on a night train, called to pay his respects to the President, and presented him with a document in the Russian language, which had to be interpreted by the Russian minister. When it was interpreted they say old Abe danced a highland fling, and hugged the Russians and danced all hands around. That document has never been published, but it was to the effect that the Russian fleet was at the disposal of the President of the United States, to fight any country on the face of God's green earth that attempted to mix in. See? It was not long before other nations discovered that Russia had sent her fleet to stay, and every Russian on every vessel acted as though he was spoiling for a fight, and seemed to say to the world, 'Come on, condemn you!' And nobody ever came along to fight. And Uncle Abe began to be in a laughing mood, and you know the rest, if you have read up about the war. Nobody has ever suggested an alliance with Russia, and yet we are under more obligations to that old Czar than to anybody. In fact, we don't want an alliance with anybody. We want the friendship of all. If I have any more love for one country than another, I do not know which it is, only when I see a Russian, even one of those Cossacks that rode so well, I feel like taking him by the hand and telling him, when he goes home, to go up to the Winter palace and give my love to the Czar, because I always have before me the picture of that Russian fleet in New York harbor, when things were hot. England has done a similar favor during this last war, and if we had another war, and the newspapers would quit nagging him, you would find the young emperor of Germany doing something for us equally as good. So, boys, don't get stuck on one country, but give them all a chance to be good to us."

"Gosh, Uncle Ike, I never heard anything about that Russian fleet," said the red-headed boy. "England can go plum to thunder. I thought England was the only country that was ever even polite to us."

"Come on, boys, let's go and play Cossack," said one of the Indians, and they went rolling over the picket fence on their stomachs, leaving Uncle Ike to go and put on some dry clothes.



CHAPTER XVII.

Uncle Ike had been having twinges of rheumatism in one of his legs ever since he had the scrap with the Indians, and turned the hose on them and got wet himself, and he sat out on the porch one morning with a blanket over his leg trying to warm it up, smoking his pipe in silence, and wondering why the good Lord arranged things so a good man should grow old, and have pains. The red-headed boy and quite a flock of kids of about his age were sitting on the sidewalk, outside the fence, arguing something in loud voices, and finally he heard them agree to leave it to Uncle Ike, and then they piled over the fence and came up to the porch, and the red-headed boy was the spokesman.

He said: "Say, Uncle Ike, us boys have got a bet and you are to decide it. Isn't it true that the people of Cuba, Porto Rico and the Philippines are gamblers, and hasn't our government fought them to a standstill to send people there to induce them to stop gambling and to attend to business? Isn't gambling a sin, and is it not our duty as a nation, to teach these ignorant people the wickedness of gambling, bull fighting, cock fighting, and all that?" and the boys sat all around Uncle Ike, waiting for a decision to be handed down, as they say in court.

The old man rapped the bowl of his pipe on the arm of the rocking chair, blew through the stem, made up a face when he got some of the nicotine on his tongue, took a piece off the broom and run through it, blew again, reached for the tobacco bag, filled it up, lighted it, smoked a minute or two in silence, while five pairs of big boys' eyes watched him as though he was a chief justice. He wiggled around a little, to ease his leg, knitted his brow as the pain shot through his leg, almost said damn; then the pain let up, his face cleared off, a smile came over it, he looked at the little statesmen around him, and finally said:

"Well, boys, you must not grow up with the idea that our own beloved country has no faults. Just love it, with all its faults; fight for it, if necessary, but don't get daffy over it. In the countries you speak of, everybody gambles more or less. In this country only a small proportion gamble, and yet the element of chance is something that is very attractive to most people here at home. The other evening your Aunt Almira brought home a beautiful goblet she won at a progressive euchre party of neighbors. How much more of a sin is it for the Cuban woman to win five dollars at monte, and buy a goblet? It is scarcely three years since tickets in Havana lotteries were publicly sold in this country. There is more money lost and won on draw poker in one day in New York than is lost and won in Havana on monte and roulette. You can find almost any gambling game in Chicago or Milwaukee that you can find in the Philippines; and while we do not have bull fighting, we have prize fighting every night in the week, far more brutal. It is the gambling instinct in men and women that keeps the stock exchanges going, and industrial stocks, manipulated by those who control the prices, is tinhorn gambling, as much as pulling faro cards from a silver box in a brace game, where the dealer gets a rake-off, the same as the commission man, who deals the cards in stock or wheat. I don't know whether it is the object of our government to attempt to show the people of these new possessions the wickedness of gambling, and cock fighting, and all that; but if it is, thousands of men who have become bankrupt from gambling here at home could be sent there as object lessons; but the chances are they would put up a job to skin the natives out of their last dollar on some game they did not understand. If gambling is a sin, let he who is without sin throw the first stone into a Porto Rican cock fight. Let the senator who never played draw poker be the first to introduce a resolution to stop gambling in Manila. Let the army general that never sat up all night at a faro bank issue the first order against monte and roulette in Havana. Let the men who furnished embalmed beef for widows' sons, issue edicts against making fresh meat out of live bulls. I can't decide your bet. You better call it a draw," and the old man looked at the boys as though he wanted to change the subject.



"Say, boys, Uncle Ike knows more than any man in the world," said the red-headed boy, "but he argues too much. Let's go and play shinny and call it golf," and they went off on a gallop, leaving Uncle Ike with his lame leg and his pipe.

Uncle Ike sat and thought for an hour or more, on the porch, occasionally moving his rheumatic leg so it hurt him worse than it did before he moved it, and then he wondered what in the deuce he had moved it for. He thought of his experience as a gambler, since the boys had talked about gambling. He thought of the time he went to a State fair, when he was a boy, right fresh off the farm, with his white shirt his mother had sat up the night before to iron for him, his ready-made black frock-coat that the sun had faded out on the shoulders, the old brown slouch hat he had traded another one for with a lightning rod peddler, his shoes blacked with stove blacking, instead of being greased, as usual. He thought how a gambler at the State fair picked him out for a greeny before he had fairly got through the gate, and wondered how the gambler could have known he was so green without being told, and yet he carried a sign of greenness, from the faded and sunburned hair of his head to the sole of his stove-blacking shoes. He thought how the gambler got him to bet that he could find the pea in the shell, and how he had been so confident that he could find it that he had bet his whole month's wages, and when the gambler had taken it, and wound it around a wad he had, and put it in his vest pocket, he remembered, here sitting on the porch with his rheumatic leg, how mad he was when the gambler who had ruined him, shouted, "Next gentleman, now! Roll up, tumble up, any way to get up!" As he sat there waiting for the boys to come back and be company for him, he thought how destitute he was when the gambler had taken his money, how he was twenty miles from home, with only 20 cents in his pocket, and he sat down on a chicken coop, and ate 10 cents' worth of the hardest-hearted pie that ever was, and the tears came to his eyes, and the great crowd at the fair all mixed up with the horses and cattle, and he wandered about like a crazy person, all the afternoon, and at night started to walk home, with the balance of his wealth invested in gingerbread that stuck in his throat as he walked along the road in the dust, and he drank at all the wells he passed, until before he got home the peaches he had eaten before he gambled, combined with the corrugated iron pie, and the gingerbread and the various waters, gave him a case of cholera morbus big enough for a grown person, and when he got home along toward morning he wanted to die, and rather thought he would. Then he began to wonder if that gambler ever prospered, and whether he wound up his career in the penitentiary, or in politics, when he saw a big dust down the road, where the boys had gone, and presently the whole crowd came on a run, barefooted, and the first to arrive hit Uncle Ike on the arm and said, "Tag; you're it," and they all laid down on the grass and panted, and accused each other of shoving, and not running fair. After they had got so they could breathe easy, and each had taken a lot of green apples out of his shirt, and were biting into them and looking sorry they did so, the red-headed boy said:

"Uncle Ike, we have been talking it over, and have decided that some day you are to take us down to Pullman, the town founded by George Pullman. We have read a book about the town, and all about the philanthropist who laid it out, and made a little Utopia—I think that's the word—for the laboring men in his employ, where they have little brick houses made to fit a family, with gas and water. The book says he was a regular father to them, and we want to see a place where everybody is happy and contented. Will you take us there some time, Uncle Ike? Isn't Pullman the greatest and happiest man in the world?"

"Look a here," said Uncle Ike, as he got up and tried his lame leg, and found the pain was gone, and walked down on the lawn where the boys were rolling in the grass, and sat down on a lawn chair; "when you read a book of fairy stories, you want to look at the date. That book was written a dozen years ago to advertise Pullman cars. It is out of date."

"Well, isn't the town there, and are not the laboring people happy, and singing praises to the great and good Mr. Pullman, and showering blessings on his family, and helping to make a heaven upon earth of the town he built for them?"

"I thought you boys were up to the times," said the old man, as he lighted up his pipe, and crossed his legs so the lame one was on top, "but you are back numbers. You read too much algebra, English history and fables. Why, Pullman has been dead for years, both the man and the town. I guess I'll have to educate you a little in American history, that you don't get in the ward school. Pullman was a carpenter who worked with a jack plane, and a saw, and things. It is said he took advantage of some ideas another man forgot to patent, got the ideas patented, and the result was the sleeping car. He made money by the barrel, and when the callouses and blood blisters were off his hands, and they became soft, he began to blow in money, and made people acquainted with the fact that he was too rich for words. He still looked like a carpenter, but smelled like a rose garden, for he learned to take a bath every few minutes and perfume himself, so the old-fashioned perspiration that had been so healthy for him would not be noticed. He hunted dollars as a pointer dog hunts chickens, and finally he got so much money he could not count it, and he hired men who were good at figures to count it for him. Then his brain took a day off and studied out Pullman, and he built it on the prairie. His idea was all right, only that he couldn't get over the idea that he must have a big percentage on his outlay, in rents. He wanted his men to be happy, but he wanted them to pay big prices. Another thing he wanted was for them not to think, but to let him do all the thinking. For a few years they were happy, but they kept getting in debt; he cut down on wages, but kept rents up, and the price of gas and water never went down. If they did not like it they could go somewhere else, and leave some of the furniture to square up, if they were behind in rent, but usually the bookkeeper took it out of the wages. Then they traded at his stores, attended his theater, and he got most all the velvet. They stood it as long as possible, and asked for more wages, and more work, and his agents—Pullman was never there himself, he had an island in the St. Lawrence, and residences everywhere except at his Utopia—told them to hush up and go to work, and be mighty quick about it, or he would fire them bodily out of the town. Then they struck, and wanted to arbitrate, but Pullman telegraphed that there was nothing to arbitrate, and then the Utopia became a Tophet, which it had resembled for some time. Everything was closed up, men saw their children hungry, and they were moved away by charity to new places, where they might get some work. The cold-blooded proposition that is not popular with American citizens was that if men would get on their knees, apologize, and beg, the authorities would see what could be done for them. Men became desperate, troops were sent to guard the premises and to jab with bayonets these happy workmen that did not move along fast enough. Pullman himself stayed at his island, or at the seashore, and the men who had dared to think without a dog license were growing thinner, and by and by nearly all were gone; others took their places, but the old town was not what it used to be. Workmen preferred to live miles away, in attics, or anywhere, in preference to the Pullman cottages. Then, one morning Pullman died, quick action, at his house and millionaire neighbors buried him. Few flowers were sent by the old laborers. His boys, twins, had developed a partiality for jags, and having been cut off with little money in his will, they have wandered around, from one drunk cure to another, marrying occasionally, and otherwise enjoying themselves, until their poor mother was almost crazy, and the Pullman works are run by men who happened to be in on the ground floor, but who don't care much about the laboring man. No, sir," said the old man, warming up to the subject, "I will not take you kids to Pullman. I had rather take you to a cemetery, or visit the homes of the cliff dwellers of Mexico. Now, go wash up for dinner. You get me to talking, and I forget all about, my rheumatism, and my dinner, and everything," and the old man started for the house, and the boys looked at each other as though they had learned something not in the school books.



CHAPTER XVIII.

It was the first cool and bracing morning since the extreme heat of the summer, and Uncle Ike had begun to feel like going duck shooting. He could almost smell duck feathers in the air, and he had put on an old dead-grass colored sweater, with a high collar that rubbed against his unshaven neck, and he had got out his gun to wipe it for the hundredth time since he laid it away at the close of the last season. He looked it over and petted it, and finally sat down in a rocking chair, with the gun between his knees and a few cartridges in his hand that he had found in the pocket of his sweater; and he got to thinking of the days that he had passed, in the last half century, shooting ducks, and hoping that the clock of time could be turned back, in his case, and that he might be permitted to enjoy many years more of the sport that had given' him so much enjoyment, and contributed so greatly to his health and hardness of muscle. He was cocking the old gun and letting down the hammers in a contemplative mood, and occasionally aiming at a fly on the opposite wall, as though it was a cluck, when, the door opened and the red-headed boy, accompanied by eight other boys, armed to the teeth with such weapons as they could find, marched in and formed a line on the opposite side of the room, and at the command, "Present arms!" given by the red-headed captain, they saluted Uncle Ike. He arose from the rocking chair, placed his shotgun at a "carry," and acknowledged the salute, and said:

"If that horse pistol that No. 2 soldier has got pointed at my stomach is loaded, I want to declare that this war is over, and you can go to the cook and get your discharges, and fill out your blanks for pensions. But now, what does this all mean? Why this martial array? Why do you break in on a peaceful man this way, a man who does not believe in shedding human gore, so early in the morning?"



"Uncle Ike," said the red-headed boy, stepping one pace to the front, and saluting with a piece of lath, "we came to offer you the position of colonel of our regiment. We have thought over all the men who have been suggested as leaders, and have concluded that you are the jim dandy, and we want you to accept."