“Say, Uncle Ike, don't you think the Fourth of July is sort of played out?” asked the red-headed boy, as he came to Uncle Ike's room on the morning of the 5th, by appointment, to demonstrate to the old man that he had not been quite killed by the celebration of the great day. “It seems to me we don't have half as many accidents and fires as we used to,” and the boy counted off to the uncle the dozen injuries he had received by burns, and dug into his eye with a soiled handkerchief in search of some gravel from a torpedo.
“Oh, I don't know,” said Uncle Ike, as he lighted the old pipe and began to look over the boy's injuries. “The Fourth is carrying on business at the old stand, apparently. Your injuries are in the right places, on the left hand, principally, and the gravel is in the left eye. That is right. Always keep the right hand and the right eye in good shape, so you can sight a gun and pull a trigger, either in shooting ducks or Filipinos. You see, our country is growing, and we are celebrating the Fourth from Alaska to Porto Rico, and from London to Luzon, so we can't celebrate so very much in any one place. I expect by another Fourth Queen Victoria will be yelling for the glorious Fourth, Emperor William will be touching off dynamite firecrackers, Russia will be eating Roman candies, and Aguinaldo will be touching off nigger-chasers and drinking red lemonade. This is a great country, boy, and don't you forget it.”
“Well, you may be right,” said the boy, as he poured some witch-hazel on a rag around his thumb, “but it looks to me as though the troops in the Philippines will be climbing aboard transports protected by the fleet, with Aguinaldo slaughtering the boys in the hospitals and looting Manila, if the President does not get a move onto himself and send another army out there to be victorious some more. The way it is now, we shall not have troops enough there to bury the dead. The boys have been debating at school the Philippine question, and it was decided unanimously that the President is up against a tough proposition, and if he does not stop looking at the political side of that war and send troops enough to eat up those shirtless soldiers, who can live on six grains of rice and two grains of quinine a day, we are going to be whipped out of our boots. That's what us boys think.”
“Well, you boys don't want to think too much, or you are liable to have brain fever,” said the old man, as he realized that there was mutiny brewing among the school children. “What you fellows want the President to do? Haven't we whipped the negroes everywhere, and taken village after village, and burned them, and—and—chased them—and——”
“Sure!” said the boy, as he saw that his uncle was at a loss to defend the policy of his government. “We have had regular foot races with them, and burned the huts of the helpless, and taken villages, and then didn't have troops to hold them, and when we went out of a village on one street, the niggers came in on another, and shot into our pants. We swim rivers and take towns with as brave work as ever was done, and become so exhausted we have to lay down in the mud and have a fit, and the niggers climb trees like monkeys, eat cocoanuts and chatter at us. Say, Uncle Ike, do you know us boys are getting tired of this business, and we are getting up a petition to the President to get a trained nurse to put Alger to sleep and run the war department herself.”
We Are Going to Have the Petition 071
“We are going to have the petition signed by seven million American boys. Why, if those niggers could go off in the woods and shoot at a mark for a week, and get so they could hit anything, our boys would all be dead in a month. The trouble is the niggers just pull up a gun and touch it off like a girl does a firecracker. She lights the tip end of the tail of a firecracker, and throws it, and you forget all about it, and when her firecracker has ceased to interest you, and you don't know where it is, it goes off in your coat collar, or down the waistband of your pants. A Filipino shoots the way a trained monkey touches off a syphon of seltzer water. He knows it will squirt if he touches the thumbpiece, but it is as liable to hit him in the face, or wet his feet as anything. Some day those niggers will learn how to shoot, and when Funston attempts to swim a river he will get a bullet through the head, and Lawton and MacArthur, who stand up in plain sight and let them practice will wish they hadn't. We boys have decided to support the President until he conquers those people, if that is what he is trying to do, but, by gosh, if he does not wake up and quit looking pleasant, and seeming to hope that Filipino shower is going to blow over, we feel that he will wake up some morning and find that a nigger tornado has struck his brave boys at Manila, and they will be in the cyclone cellars waiting for somebody to come and dig them out. Don't you think so, Uncle Ike?”
“I say, boy,” said Uncle Ike, as he lighted up the pipe, after letting it go out while listening to the war talk of the excited boy, “do you think you could arrange your affairs so as to leave here by tomorrow evening and take the limited for Washington? Would you accept the vacancy in the office of secretary of war? I know this offer comes sudden to you, and that you will have no time to consult your debating society as to whether you ought to accept the position, but when you reflect that the country is in a critical situation, and needs a man of blood and iron to steer the craft through among the rocks, I feel that you cannot refuse. The ideas you express are so near like those that General Jackson would express if he were alive, that I feel the country would be blessed if you were in a position to brace up the President. Now go wash your face, and I will wire the President that you will be there day after tomorrow morning. But if you go there thinking, as many people seem to think, that the President's backbone is made of banana pulp, and that he is not alive to the situation, you will make a mistake. There are chumps like you all over this country that wonder why they have not been selected to run this country, who think the commander-in-chief is running ward politics instead of the affairs of the country. Of course, a President gets under obligations to different elements in a campaign, and finds it necessary to surround himself with a cabinet, a few members of which are not worth powder to blow them up, but if they were all weak and vicious on the make, and political ciphers, and the President himself is all right, the country will not go very far wrong. What you boys want to do is to debate less on questions you do not understand, and saw more wood. Let the grown people run things a while longer, and you boys prepare to take the burden a quarter of a century hence,” and the old man got up and put his arm around the boy and felt of his head to see if he could find any soft spot.
“Well, I was only joshin' any way, Uncle Ike,” said the boy, as he put both arms around the old man, and felt in his uncle's pistol pocket to discover something that was eatable. “But, Uncle Ike, I am serious now. I have got in love with a girl, and she is mashed on another boy, and I am having more trouble than McKinley. You know that quarter you gave me yesterday? I saved 20 cents of it to treat her to ice-cream soda; and when I went to find her, she was coming out of the drug store with the other boy, and I found out they had been sitting on stools at the soda fountain all the forenoon, drinking all the different kinds of soda, until he had to hold her down for fear she would go up like a balloon, from the soda bubbles that she had concealed about her person. I have not decided whether to kill my rival, or go and enlist and go to the Philippines and break her heart. What did you do under such circumstances, Uncle, when you used to get in love?”
“I used to take castor oil,” said Uncle Ike, as he looked at the forlorn-looking boy, “but you don't need to. Just you take off those tan shoes and put on black shoes, and change your luck. I never knew it to fail, when a boy first put on tan shoes and a high collar. He is bound to get in love before night. Take off those shoes, and you can go out in the world and look everybody in the face and never get in love. It is the same as being vaccinated,” and the old man looked sober and serious, and the boy went to work to change his shoes, with a bright hope for the future lighting up his face.
“Go away from me! Don't you come any nearer or I will smite you!” said Uncle Ike, as the redheaded boy came into the room with his red hair cut short with the clippers, a green neglige shirt, with a red necktie, a white collar, a tan belt with a nickel buckle, and short trousers with golf socks of a plaid pattern that were so loud they would turn out a fire department. “I am afraid of you. Who in the world got you to have your red hair shingled so it looks like red sand-paper? And who is your tailor? Have I got to go down to my grave with the thought that a nephew of mine would appear in daylight looking like that? Get me a piece of smoked glass, or I shall have cataracts on both eyes,” and the old man knocked the ashes and deceased tobacco out of his pipe on his boot heel, and dug the stuff out of the bottom of the pipe with a jack-knife.
“Well, I had to have my hair cut, because the boys at the picnic filled my hair with burdock burrs, and it couldn't be combed out,” said the boy, as he took a match and scratched it on top of his head, and lit it, while the uncle sniffed at the burned hair. “Aunt Almira cut my hair first with a pair of dull shears, to get the burrs out, and then a barber cut off all there was left, with these horse-clippers, and I feel like a dog that has had his hindquarters clipped to make a lion of him. Aunt Almira says I have got a great head. Say, Uncle Ike, did you ever examine the bumps on my head? I was at a phrenology lecture once, and the feeler could tell all that was going on in a man's head just by the bumps. Feel of mine, Uncle, and tell my fortune,” and the red-headed boy came up to the old man for examination.
“I am no phrenologist,” said Uncle Ike, as he smoked up and got the boy to coughing, “but there are some bumps I know the names of,” and he felt all around the boy's head, and looked wise. “This place where there is a dent in your head is where the bump of veneration will grow, later, if you get in the habit of letting old people have a show, and get up and offer them your chair, and run errands for them without expecting them to pay you. This place on the back of your head, where there is a bump as big as a hickory nut, is what we call the hat rack bump, because you can hang your hat on it. The barber ought to have cut a couple of slices off that bump with his lawn mower. Here is a bump that shows that you are color blind. Be careful, or you will marry a negro girl by mistake. As a precaution, when you begin to get in love serious, bring the girl to me that I may see if she is white. Here is a soft bump that indicates that you will steal———-”
Bump That Indicates That You Will Steal 077
“Oh, come off,” said the boy, laughing, and removing his head from the investigation. “That is where I was struck by a golf ball. You are no phrenologist. I know what you are, Uncle Ike; you are a fakir. But, say, I was sick last night, after we had that green watermelon for dinner, and Aunt Almira said I was troubled with sewer gas, and she gave me the peppermint test. Do you think peppermint will detect sewer gas, Uncle Ike?”
“I know what you want, boy, you want to get me mad,” said Uncle Ike, as he threw his pipe into the grate because it wouldn't draw, and took a new one and filled it. “There is no greater fraud on the earth than this peppermint test for sewer gas. I had a house to rent, years ago, and was ruined by peppermint. When a tenant had anything the matter, from grip to corns, the doctor would look wise, snuff around, and say he detected sewer gas, and they would call in a health officer and he would put a little peppermint oil in somewhere, and go into another room, and when he smelled the peppermint he would say it was sewer gas, and send for a plumber, and they would begin to plumb, and I had to pay. I had nine tenants in two years, and every disease they had was laid to sewer gas, and I had to ease up on the rent or stand a lawsuit. When one family had triplets, and tried to stand me off on the rent on account of sewer gas, I became a walking delegate, and struck, and turned the house into a livery stable, and now, do you know, every time I go to collect rent I am afraid a horse has got sick, and the livery man will lay it to sewer gas. Why, boy, peppermint oil will go through an asphalt pavement. You might put peppermint oil on top of the Egyptian pyramids and you could smell it in fifteen minutes in Cairo. If anybody ever talks to you about sewer gas and peppermint test, call them a liar and charge it to me,” and the old man was so mad the boy's hair began to curl.
“Here, Uncle Ike, what you staring out of the window so for, with your eyes sot, like a dying horse, and your body as rigid as a statue?” and the boy rushed up to the window and looked out to see what had come over the old man.
“Hush, keep still, and don't scare her away,” said Uncle Ike, as he held up his hand and motioned the boy to keep still.
“By gosh, if it isn't a woman, Uncle Ike, that has paralyzed you, and you always said you didn't care for them any more,” said the red-headed boy, as he looked out the window and saw a blonde-haired young woman standing on the corner waiting for a street car, and glancing up at Uncle Ike through the frowsy hair that was loosely flying about her forehead. “And she is a blonde, too, and blondes have gone out of style. Didn't you read in the papers that the shows won't hire blondes any more, and that nothing but brunettes are in it? It must be pretty tough on a blonde to get her hair all fixed fluffy, after years of patient coloring, and then find she has gone out of style, and no op'ry will hire her to shed blonde hair on the coats of the chorus fellows. Oh, Uncle Ike, come away from the window or you will be stolen,” and the boy dragged the old man away from the window, handed him his pipe, and said, “Smoke up and try to forget it.”
“Forget nothing,” said the old man, as he lit the torch and a smile came over his good-natured face. “Don't you worry about blonde girls going out of style. These bleached ones, who never were the real thing, may go back to their natural, beautiful brunetticism, and when they realize how foolish they have been, trying to bunko nature, they will be happier than ever, but the natural blonde will never go out of style. She is a joy forever. Do you know, when a man gets in love with a girl he couldn't tell what the color of her hair was, to save him? He knows all about her eyes, and her hands, and her face, but unless he finds a hair on his coat he can't tell what is the color of the hair of his beloved. Love is like smoking. You may smoke in the dark, and if your pipe goes out you smoke right along and don't know the difference. You sit up with a girl in the dark and you can't see her, and she may go to sleep, but love keeps smoking right along and never seems to go out. When I was wounded at the battle of Pea Ridge, and was taken to a young ladies' seminary to be doctored and nursed back to life——”
“Oh, do quit, Uncle Ike! If you had been taken wounded to a young ladies' seminary, say in 1863, thirty-six years ago, you would have been there yet, and your wound would still be paining you, and the girls who saved your life would be grown up to be gray-haired old women,” and the boy jollied the old man until he blushed. “You must have known a man named Ananias in the army. Say, Uncle Ike, you know you wanted me to learn a trade, and I have decided that I would like to learn the trade of a bishop. I read of the death of a bishop the other day who was worth half a million dollars, and now you must tell me how to become a bishop, like Newman,” and the boy laughed as though he had got the old man in a tight place.
“Well,” said Uncle Ike, after stopping to think a moment, “you might do worse. Do you know, boy, that Bishop Newman, who died recently, did learn a trade? Well, he did. When he was a boy, he seemed to be a no-account sort of a duck, some like you. His parents were poor, and lived in the slums of New York. His hair was some the color of yours, and he loafed around, and made fun of his old uncle, no doubt, the same as you do. He had to do something to help earn the bread and beer for the family, and so he went to work stripping tobacco in a factory near his home. Somehow he got vaccinated with a desire to learn something, and after he had stripped tobacco, and snuffed it, and got some sense in his head, he began to learn to read. A girl stripper taught him first to read the labels on packages of tobacco, and taught him to spell. Then he got a taste for education, and became the smarty of the factory, and the boys who could not read called him 'snuff,' because his hair and freckles were the color of Scotch snuff. Some white man connected with the factory saw that the little rat had stuff in him, and he helped him to get an education, and he stripped tobacco daytimes and studied nights, and became a preacher, and finally a bishop. So, you smarty, if you want to learn the trade of a bishop, strip the wrapper off that package of tobacco and fill my pipe. Who knows but Bishop Newman stripped the very tobacco I am smoking now?” and the old man puffed and laughed at the boy.
“Gosh! it smells old enough to have been stripped when the bishop was a boy,” said the red-headed boy, and then he dodged behind a table, while Uncle Ike tried to catch him and teach him how to be a bishop.
Uncle Ike stood with his pipe in his left hand, his thumb pressing the tobacco down tight, and with a match in his right hand, just ready to scratch it on his leg, when he froze stiff in that position, and never moved for five minutes, as he watched the red-headed boy, who had walked into the room listlessly, his eyes staring at a picture he held in his hand, his face so pale that the freckles looked large and dark, his lips white as chalk, his cheeks sunken, his fingers gripping the picture, a faded and forlorn pansy in his buttonhole, and his short clipped hair standing up straight in rows like red beet tops in a vegetable garden.
“Anybody very dead?” said Uncle Ike, as he drew the match across the cloth, put it to his pipe, and began to swell out his cheeks and puff, keeping his eye on the boy, through the smoke, who had taken his eyes from the picture, drawn a deep sigh, and sat down on the lounge, as though he never expected to get up again.
“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 085
“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.”
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 093
“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.
I Heard a Rumor About You Yesterday 101
“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.