“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 foo
ls 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:
The Peck's Bad Boy Megapack Page 72
