Peck"s Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy.
by George W. Peck.
To the Typical American Boy,
The boy who is not so awfully good, along at first, but just good enough; the boy who does not cry when he gets hurt, and goes into all the dangerous games there are going, and goes in to win; the boy who loves his girl with the same earnestness that he plays football, and who takes the hard knocks of work and play until he becomes hardened to anything that may come to him in after life; the boy who will investigate everything in the way of machinery, even if he gets his fingers pinched, and learns how to make the machine that pinched him; the boy who, by study, experience, and mixing up with the world, knows a little about everything that he will have to deal with when he grows up--the all-around boy, that makes the all-around man, ready for anything, from praying for his country"s prosperity to fighting for its honor; the boy who grows up qualified to lead anything, from the german at a dance to an army in battle; the boy who can take up a collection in church, or take up an artery on a man injured in a railroad accident, without losing his nerve; the boy who can ask a blessing if called upon to do so, or ask a girl"s ugly father for the hand of his daughter in marriage, without choking up; the boy who grows up to be a man whom all men respect, all women love, and whom everybody wants to see President of the United States, this book is respectfully dedicated by
The Author.
CHAPTER I.
"Here, Uncle Ike, let me give you a nice piece of paper, twisted up beautifully, to light your pipe," said the red-headed boy, as Uncle Ike, with his long clay pipe, filled with ill-smelling tobacco, was feeling in his vest pocket for a match. "I should think nice white paper would be sweeter to light a pipe with than a greasy old match scratched on your pants," and the boy lighted a taper and handed it to the old man.
"No, don"t try any new tricks on me," said Uncle Ike, as he brought out a match, from his vest pocket, picked off the shoddy that had collected on it in the bottom of his pocket, and hitched his leg around so he could scratch it on his trousers leg. "I have tried lighting my pipe with paper, and the odor of the paper kills the flavor of this 10-cent tobacco. Now, the brimstone on a match, added to the friction of the trousers leg, helps the flavor of the tobacco," and he drew the match across his trousers, and lighted his pipe, and as the smoke began to fill the room his good old face lighted up as though he had partaken of a rich wine. "I like to get a little accustomed to brimstone here on this earth, so, if I get on the wrong road when I die, and go where brimstone is the only fuel, I won"t appear to the neighbors down there as though I was a tenderfoot. Wherever I go, I always want to appear as though it wasn"t my first trip away from home. Ah, children," said the old man, as he blew smoke enough out of his mouth to call out a fire department, and laughed till the windows rattled, "there is lots of fun in this old world, if your pipe don"t go out. Don"t miss any fun, because when you die you don"t know whether there is any fun going on or not."
"I believe, Uncle Ike, that you would have fun anywhere," said the boy, as he thought of the funny stories the old man had told him for many years, and listened to the laugh that acted as punctuation marks to all of Uncle Ike"s remarks. "I would hate to trust you at a funeral. Did you ever laugh at a funeral, Uncle?"
"I came mighty near it once," said the old man, as he put his little finger in the pipe and pressed down the ashes, and let the smoke out again like the chimney of a factory.
"O, my! why don"t they make you use a smoke consumer on that pipe, or cause you to use smokeless tobacco?" said the boy, as he coughed till the tears came to his eyes. "It looks in this room like burning a tar barrel when Dewey sunk the Spanish fleet. But tell us about your funny funeral."
"O, it wasn"t so funny," said the old man, as he stroked the stubble on his chin, and a twinkle came all around his eyes. "It was only my thoughts that come near breaking up the funeral. There was an old friend of mine years ago, a newspaper man, who was the most genial and loving soul I ever knew, but he stuttered so you couldn"t help laughing to hear him. He could write the most beautiful things without stuttering, but when he began to talk, and the talk would not come, and he stammered, and puckered up his dear face, and finally got the words out, chewed up into little pieces, with hyphens between the syllables, you had to laugh or die. We were great friends, and used to smoke and tell stories together, and pa.s.s evenings that I can now recall as the sweetest of my life. There were many things in which we were alike. We smoked the same kind of tobacco, in clay pipes, and lived on the same street, and, after an evening of pleasure, whichever of us was the least wearied with the day"s work and night of enjoyment walked home with the other. We used to talk about the hereafter, and promised each other to see that the one that died first should not have a funeral sermon that would give us taffy. It was my friend"s idea that, if the minister spread it on too thick, he would raise up in the coffin and protest. He was not what you would call a good Christian, as the world goes, but I would trust him to argue with St. Peter about getting inside the gate, because, if his stutter ever got St. Peter to laughing, my friend would surely get in.
Well, he died, and I was one of the bearers at the funeral, with seven others of his old friends; and when the minister was picturing the virtues of the deceased which he never possessed, one of the bouquets on the coffin rolled off on the floor, and I thought of what my friend had said about calling the minister down, and in my imagination I could see the old fellow raising up in the coffin and stuttering, and puckering up his face there on that solemn occasion, and for about ten seconds it seemed as though I would split with laughter; but I held it in, and we got the good old genius buried all right, but it was a terrible strain on my vest b.u.t.tons," and the old smoker lighted another match on his trousers and started the pipe, which had grown cold as he talked of the stuttering remains.
"O, say, Uncle Ike," said the boy, as he shuddered a little at the idea of a stuttering corpse talking back at a minister, "speaking of heaven, do you think the men that furnished embalmed beef to the soldiers and made them sick in Cuba will get to heaven when they die?"
"That depends a good deal on whether a political pull is any good over there," said Uncle Ike, as he reached for the yellow paper of tobacco and filled up the clay pipe again. "_I think a soldier is the n.o.blest work of G.o.d_. A young man who has got everything just as he wants it at home, parents who love him, and perhaps a girl who believes he is the dearest man that ever wore a choker collar; who hears that his country needs help, and gives up his spring mattress, his happy home, his evenings with the dearest girl in the world, gives up baking powder biscuits and strawberry shortcake, and enlists to go to Cuba, and sleeps on the ground in the mud, gets malaria, and fights on his knees when he is too weak to stand up, deserves something better than decayed meat, and I believe the people who furnished that stuff for the boys are going right straight to h.e.l.l when they die," and a look of revenge and horror and indignation came over the old man"s face that the boy had not seen before in all the years he had known his uncle. "No, sir," said he; "the smell of that canned beef will stick to the garments of those who prepared it and those who furnished it to those boys; and if one of them got into heaven by crawling under the canvas, every angel there would hold her nose and make up a face, and they would send for the devil with his pitchfork to" throw him out. The verdict of no board of investigation is going to be received as a pa.s.sport to heaven."
[Ill.u.s.tration: A dog biscuit would have been mince pie 011]
"Why, a dog biscuit would have been mince pie to the soldiers in comparison to the stuff the rich beef packers furnished to those young n.o.blemen with the kyack uniforms on. To make a little more money, men who have millions of dollars to burn, bilked a weak and overworked set of officials with incipient paresis and locomotor ataxia in their walk and conversation, and sawed on to them stuff that self-respecting pigs could not have digested without taking pepsin tablets; and with that embalmed and canned outrage on humanity in their stomachs those brave men charged in the face of an enemy, and were hungry heroes, loaded with decayed beef from a country that produces the finest food in the world.
Tramps, begging at the back gates of American homes, were living on the fat of the land; dogs could gnaw fresh and sweet meat off of bones thrown away, and laugh at our soldiers carrying Old Glory to victory up hills sh.e.l.led and bulleted and barbed-wire fenced. A bullet from a Spanish gun, entering the stomach of an American soldier, turned black when it came in contact with the embalmed beef there, and poisoned the brave soldier, and made him die, with thoughts of home, and mother, and sweetheart, and his lips closed for the last time, silent as to his wrongs, uncomplaining as to the murder committed by the millionaires at home. The business of packing meat ought to be combined with the undertaking business, so you could order your meat and your coffin from the same man. By cracky! Boy, I am so mad when I think of it, that I don"t want to go to heaven if those people go there. Go out, dears, for a minute, for I want to use language that you can"t find in the school books!" and Uncle Ike got up out of his chair, pale with anger, and smashed his pipe on the stone hearth, and a tear rolled down his cheek.
"Why, Uncle Ike, I didn"t mean to make you cry," said the red-headed boy, as he backed out of the room, frightened at the old man.
"Well, never mind, boy; don"t worry about your Uncle Ike, because at my age, when a man gets mad clear through, he has to have vent, or bust,"
and the old fellow laughed as hearty as though he had never been mad in his life. "But I have a tender spot for soldiers who go to fight for their country, and when they are abused I feel that somebody is guilty of treason. I was a soldier in the war between the North and South, and have seen soldiers hungry, so hungry that they would take raw corn out of the nosebags of mules that were eating it, until a mule would begin to kick seven ways for Sunday when he saw a soldier coming; but it couldn"t be helped, because the government couldn"t keep up with the soldiers with rations, when they were on the jump night and day. But, do you know we had fun all the time we were hungry? There were Irish soldiers in my regiment who would keep you good natured when you were ready to die. The Irish soldier is so funny and so cheerful that he should have good pay. If I was going to raise a regiment, I would have one Irish soldier, at least, to every seven other soldiers, and my Irish boy would keep them all laughing by his wit, so they would stand any hardship. I have seen an Irish boy parch his corn that he had stolen from a mule, spread it out on a saddle blanket in four piles, go and ask three officers to dine with him, and, when they sat down on the ground to eat the parched corn, he wouldn"t let them begin the meal until he made a welcoming speech, and had the chaplain ask a blessing over the corn; and then he would go without his share, and tell funny stories until the guests would laugh until they almost choked. The Irish soldier is worth his weight in gold in any army, boy, and he is in all armies, on one side or the other, and generally on both sides. The only objection I have to an Irishman is that he smokes one of these short pipes," and the old man lit up his long clay pipe, and let the boy go out to think over the lesson of the morning.
CHAPTER II.
Uncle Ike sat and smoked his pipe in silence for a few minutes, blew the smoke out in clouds, and looked at it as though searching for something, and there was a serious look on his face, as though he was trying to fathom some mystery, while the redheaded boy was looking at himself in a hand mirror to see if the freckles on his nose were any smaller since he had been using some of his mother"s toilet powder to remove them.
Finally Uncle Ike put the bowl of the pipe to his nose and smelled of the burning tobacco, turned up his nose and snuffed, and said:
[Ill.u.s.tration: Something the matter with this "ere terbacker 017]
"There is something the matter with this "ere terbacker. I suppose the terbacker makers have got into a trust, and they don"t care how the stuff smells. Condemned if I ain"t half a mind to quit smoking and break up the trust."
"Oh, I forgot to tell you," said the red-headed boy, "that I fixed your tobacco for you so it would not smell so bad. I put some cinnamon bark and wiener skins in it."
"Well, of all things!" said Uncle Ike, as he emptied the tobacco out of the pipe by rapping it on the heel of his boot, and looked sick. "What in the name of heaven is wiener skins?"
"Why, it is the envelope that goes around a wiener sausage. Us boys were smoking cigarettes one day made of paper and dried dandelion leaves, and the boy at the butcher shop said if we would dry some wiener skin and cut it up and put it in the cigarette and smoke it, it would make the finest flavor, and make us strong. I tried it, and the cigarette smelled just like camping out and cooking over a camp-fire, and the next day I was so strong ma noticed it. I thought you were getting old, and I would make you strong and young again. Don"t you notice how different the smoke smells since I fixed the tobacco? I was going to put in some red pepper pods, but----"
"Here, hold on!" said Uncle Ike. "The butcher has got you mixed up. He was giving you a recipe for a Mexican pudding. But don"t you ever try any experiments on your Uncle Ike any more. I don"t want to be made strong any more on sausage skins. A gymnasium is good enough for me, and it don"t smell like burning a negro at the stake. I know anything would help the flavor of this terbacker, but I have got used to it, after about sixty years burning it under my nose, and, if the trust will not water the stock with baled hay or cut cabbage, I will try and pull through as it is. So you experiment on yourself, condemn you! I knew it was you that had disturbed my terbacker. I can tell by the freckles on your face when you have done anything wrong. A boy that is freckled has got to be square, or I am right on to him. When you are guilty, the freckles on your nose are changeable; one will be yellow, like saffron, and another freckle seems pale, and little drops of perspiration appear between the freckles; and then several small freckles will combine into one, like a trust, and you are given completely away. So remember, as long as you wear freckles, if you do anything crooked, there is a sign right on your face that tells the tale."
"Say, Uncle Ike, what is a trust?" asked the redheaded boy, anxious to turn the subject away from wiener skins and freckles. "What good does a trust do?"
"Well, a trust is one of these things," said Uncle Ike, as he opened a new paper of tobacco, and threw the old paper, that had been treated with foreign substances, into the fire, "one of these things that are for the benefit of the dear people. You have heard of selling a gold brick, haven"t you? The man who sells a gold brick has a bra.s.s brick made with a hole in it, in which he puts some gold, and he lets the jay who wants to invest in raw gold test it by putting acid on the place where the gold is filled in, and the jay finds that the brick is solid gold, and he buys it, after mortgaging his farm to raise the money. The man sells the gold brick cheap, because the jay is his friend, and when he has got out of the country the jay tries to sell his gold brick for eight hundred dollars, and he gets two dollars and eighty cents for it. That is one kind of a trust. The trust you mean is a combination of several factories, for instance. The promoter gets all the factories in one line of business to combine. They pay each factory proprietor more than his business is worth, and he is tickled, but they only pay him part money, and give him stock in the combine for the balance, and let him run his old business, now owned by others, at a good salary, and he gets the big head and buys a rubber-tired carriage, and sends his family to Europe. Then the trust closes down his factory and throws his men out of employment, lowers the price of goods to run out others who have not entered the trust, and the people who get goods cheap say a trust is the n.o.blest work of G.o.d. After the outsiders have been ruined, and the man who entered the trust in good faith has spent the money they gave him, and tries to sell the stock he received, it has gone down to seven cents on a dollar, and the trust buys it in, and he cables his family to come home in the steerage of a cattle ship. His old employees have gone to the poorhouse or to selling bananas with a cart, and the former manufacturer who was happy and prosperous has become poor and shabby, and he looks at his closed factory, with its broken windows, and he tries to get a position pushing a sc.r.a.per on the asphalt pavement, and if he fails he either jumps off the pier into the lake, or takes a gun and goes gunning for the trust promoter who ruined him. And after the factory man is drowned, or sent to the penitentiary for murder, the stock in the trust takes a bound and is away above par, and he hasn"t got any of it, and the poor compet.i.tors of the trust having been ruined and closed up, prices of the goods go up kiting, and the dear people who said a trust was the n.o.blest work of G.o.d say it is the dumbdest work of man, and they pa.s.s resolutions to down the trust, while the owners of the good stock in the trust stick out their fat stomachs, full of champagne and canvasback and terrapin, and laugh at the people till they nearly die of apoplexy, and drive bob-tailed horses that live better than the people, and carry blanketed dogs on velvet-cushioned carriages, that would turn up their noses at good wiener skins worse than I did when you loaded my tobacco, you little red-headed rascal," and Uncle Ike drew a long breath, and brought his fist down on the table in anger, as he got worked up over the wrongs of the people at the hands of the gold brick trusts.
"Gosh," said the red-headed boy, as his eyes kept opening wider and wider when he took in all Uncle Ike had said, "I should think the people would have the trusts arrested for breach of promise."
"What do you know about breach of promise?" said Uncle Ike, coloring up and looking foolish. "Who has been telling you about my being arrested once for breach of promise? If your mother has told you about that old trouble I had, I"ll leave this house and go board at a tavern."
"I never heard anything about it, Uncle Ike, so help me. I never heard that you was ever in love."
"I never was in love," said the old man, as he loaded up the pipe again, "except with my pipe. That affair was a clear case of a dog getting stuck on a man, and the owner of the dog thinking she was being loved.
You see I went to a summer resort years ago, and got acquainted with a widow. She was a sweet creature, but I never said a word to her about marriage. She had a pug dog, and I petted the dog, and called it to me, and, do you know, that dog got so he would follow me, and set on my lap, and come to my room, and whine, until I got scared. I talked with the widow some, and once I took her and the dog out boat riding, but I never gave her any cause to think that I was in love with her. But you ought to have seen that dog. He just doted on me. I encouraged it till all the guests at the hotel began to notice that I was very dear to the dog, and the widow looked on smilingly and encouraged the intimacy. Then I tried to drive the dog away from me, but he would curl up at my feet and look up at me in such a loving manner that I weakened. Then the widow began to hint at her desire to have someone that the dog could look up to and love, and it was getting too warm, and I left the summer resort, and was sued for breach of promise. Of course I didn"t know what the woman or the dog would swear to, so I settled for a thousand dollars. The next year I called at the summer resort, and found the dog stuck on another man, and I know just as well as can be that the widow paid her expenses each summer by that dog getting in love with men, and I have never looked at a woman twice since."
"Served them right," said the boy, who had an idea that Uncle Ike was right about everything. "I don"t take much stock in girls myself. I am mighty glad I haven"t got any sister. The boys that have got sisters are in hot water all the time, and have to go home with them from parties, and carry their rubbers to school when it rains, and fight for them if the other boys call them tomboys. Sisters are no good," and the red-headed boy looked smart, as though he had said something Uncle Ike would applaud.
"There, that will do," said Uncle Ike, as he put his hand in the boy"s hair to warm it. "Don"t let me ever hear you say a word against sisters again. You don"t know anything about sisters. They are great. Let me tell you a story. I know a man who is away up in public affairs, at the head of his profession in his county, and one the world will hear more about some of these days. He was just such a little shrimp as you are, when he was a boy. He got out of the high school, and was going to clerk in a feed store, when his sister took him one side, one Sunday, and told him she wanted him to go to college. He almost fainted away at the idea.
There wasn"t much money in the family to burn on a boy"s education, and he knew it, and he asked where the money was to come from. This little sister of the poor boy said she would furnish the money. She knew that he would be one of the great men of the country, if he had a college education, and it was arranged for him to go to college, this little sister being his backer financially. She had a musical education, and began to look for chances to make money. She took scholars in music, and was so anxious to make money for this brother to blow in on an education that she fairly forced music into all her pupils, working night and day, often with her head ready to split open with pain, but every week she rounded up money enough to send to that brother at college, and for four years there never was a Monday morning that he did not get a postoffice order from that sweet girl, and every day a letter of encouragement, and advice, and when he graduated a pale girl stood below the platform with bright eyes and a feverish cheek, and when he came down off the platform with his diploma he grasped her in his arms and said, "Sister, darling," and kissed her in the presence of five thousand people, and she fainted. She had worked as no man works, for four years, and the result was a brother, a lawyer, a grand man, who loves that sister as though she was an angel from heaven. So, confound you, if I ever hear you say a word against sisters again, I will take you across my knee and you will think the millennium has come and struck you right on the pants," and Uncle Ike patted the boy on the cheek, and said they had better go out and catch a mess of fish.
CHAPTER III.
"Uncle Ike, did you ever take many degrees in secret societies?" asked the red-headed boy, as he saw the old gentleman reading an account of a man who was killed during initiation into a lodge, by being spanked with a clapboard on which cartridges had been placed.
"About a hundred degrees, I should think, without counting up," said Uncle Ike, as he thought over the different lodges he had belonged to in the past fifty years. "What set you to thinking about secret societies?"
"Oh, I thought I would join a few, and have some fun. I read every little while about some one being killed while being initiated, and it seems to me the death rate is about as great as it is in Cuba or the Philippines. Is there much fun in killing a man, Uncle Ike?"
"Well, not much for the man who is killed," said the old man, as he gave the grand hailing sign of distress for the boy to bring him his pipe and tobacco. "Accidents will happen, you know. It isn"t one man in ten thousand that gets killed being initiated."
"What do people join lodges for, anyway, when they are liable to croak?"
said the boy, as he pa.s.sed the ingredients for a fumigation to the uncle. "Don"t you think there ought to be laws against initiating, the same as clipping horses and cutting their tails off, or cutting off clogs" tails and ears? What do the lodges have those funny ceremonies for?"
"Well, a fool boy can ask more questions than the oldest man can answer," said Uncle Ike, as he hitched around in his chair, and looked mysterious, as he thought of the grips and pa.s.swords he once knew. "No, there is no occasion for laws against men going up against any game.
Most men join lodges because they think it is a good thing, and after they have taken a few degrees they want all there are, and after awhile the degrees keep getting harder, and they think of more to come, and by and by they get enough. In most lodges all men are on an equal footing, the prince and the pauper are all alike. Occasionally there is a man who thinks because he is rich or prominent in some way, that he is smarter than the ordinary man in a lodge. Then is the time that the rest try to teach him humility, and show him that he is only a poor mortal. It does some men good to have their diamonds removed, their good clothes replaced by the tattered garments of the tramp, and then let them look at themselves and see how little they amount to. In some lodges a man is taught a useful lesson by stripping him to the buff and taking a clapboard and letting a common laborer maul him until he finds out that he is not the whole business. If that were done occasionally by society you wouldn"t find so many men looking over the common people. It would take the starch out of some people to feel that if they put on too many airs they would be liable to have a boot hit them any time. Lodges sometimes make good men out of the worst material. In some lodges the Prince of Wales would have to walk turkey right beside a well-digger, and it would do the prince good and not hurt the well-digger. But if I was in your place I would not join a lodge yet. Try the Salvation Army first," and Uncle Ike got up and went to the window, and listened to the bugle and ba.s.s drum and tambourine of the army as it pa.s.sed on its nightly round.
"That Salvation army makes me tired," said the red-headed boy, as he reached for his putty blower. "Going around the streets palming that noise off on the public for music, and scaring horses, and taking up a collection, and singing out of tune. Say, I"ll bet I can blow a chunk of putty into that girl"s bonnet and make her jump like a box car in a collision," and the boy opened the window and was taking aim at the tambourine girl"s bonnet when Uncle Ike reached out and took the putty blower away from him and said: