Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy Part 9

"Like hades," said the boy, "only the man who told me about it said she kept tavern like h----l, but I wouldn't say that in the presence of my dear old uncle,", and the boy slipped out ahead of a slipper that was kicked at him by the laughing old man.

So in the afternoon Uncle Ike, the red-headed boy and two chums appeared at the gate, the old man plunked down two dollars with a chuckle, asked if he could smoke his pipe in there, and was told that he could smoke a factory chimney if he wanted to, and they went in and got seats on the bleachers, and as they sat down the old man said it was almost exactly like the bull ring in Mexico. The boys explained to him that the red ribbons were university colors and the yellow belonged to Beloit, and he must choose which side he would root for. As the red matched his flannel underwear and his flushed face, he said he was for the university, and then the boys explained the game, about carrying the ball, getting touchdowns, kicking goal, and half-back and quarter-back, and when the teams came in and the crowd yelled, Uncle Ike felt hurt, because it made so much noise, and people acted crazy. Uncle Ike looked the players over, and he said that big fellow from Beloit was John L. Sullivan in disguise, and wanted him ruled off. The play began, the ball shot out behind the crowd, a man grabbed it and started to run, when someone grabbed him by the legs and he went down, with the whole crowd on top of him. Uncle Ike raised up on his feet and waved his pipe, and when one of the men did not get up and they brought water and tried to bring him back to life, he shouted: "That is murder. I saw that fellow with the black socks strike him with a hatchet. Police!" but someone behind him yelled to him to sit down, and the red-headed boy pulled his coat tail, he sat down, and the game went on, but Uncle Ike was mad, because the dead boy was playing as lively as anybody.

Then a man got the ball and started on a run down the field, with the whole crowd after him, and finally they got him down and Uncle Ike stood up again and said: "Stop the game. I saw a fellow trip him up, and pound him with a billy, and stab him. Say, boys, he's dead, sure. Where's the police? Ain't there no ambulance here? Kill the umpire!" he shouted, remembering that he was an old baseball fan.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Where's the police 195]

"Oh, don't worry, Uncle Ike, they are all right," said the boy, waving a long piece of red ribbon, as the two bands tried to play a "Hot Time"

and a waltz at the same time. "Now watch the kangaroo kick off," and as he kicked the ball the whole length of the field the old man simply sat still and said:

"Gee whiz, but that was a corker. U-rah-u-rah!" and the only way to stop him was to feed him peanuts.

From an enemy of football the old man was rapidly becoming its friend.

When the men came together at first, and went down in a heap, legs flying in all directions, and noises like heavy blows coming to him, he would swear he saw a man strike another with a mallet, but later in the game he said it served the man right, and he ought to have been hit with an ax, and before the game was over he was so interested that he got down off the bleachers, leaned over the railing and yelled at the''

combatants to eat 'em up, and when the game was over he rushed into the field, hugging the players, and saying that it was the greatest thing that ever was, and offering to act as one of the bearers to the funeral, if anybody had been killed, and when the boys got him out of the grounds he took up the whole sidewalk, waving his ribbons, tied on his cane, shouting the university yell till he frothed at the mouth, and on the way home he took the boys into a store and bought them a new football, and insisted that they come into the front yard and play a game every morning, and offered to have the shrubbery cut down to give them room.

As they got home, and the other boys had gone away, the red-headed boy said:

"Uncle Ike, you have disgraced the whole family. You went to the football game under protest, a quiet, inoffensive citizen, ostensibly to take care of us boys, and the first jump out of the box you got crazy, and we had a terrible time to get you home. I don't suppose you remember what you did do out there. Do you remember of putting your arm around a strange lady, and hugging her, and telling her to yell? Her husband is looking for you with a gun. Do you remember of grabbing a young woman sitting in front of you, just as they made a touchdown, pulling her head over into your lap, and patting her cheeks with your great big hands, and telling her she ought to marry a football player? Her brother is coming up street now with a baseball club. I suppose you have no recollection of jumping up and sitting down in the lap of a woman in the seat behind you, throwing your arms around her, and telling her she was a darling, and squeezing her till you broke her corset. She says you offered her marriage, and her lawyer will be here in the morning to find out what you are going to do about it. I think you better be examined by doctors to see if you are not getting nutty, and let them send you to a sanitarium," and the boy sighed, and looked at the old man as though his heart was broken.

"Say, did I do any of those things?" asked Uncle Ike, as he got up and looked out of the window, and then locked the door, and acted frightened. "Well, I'll be dumbed! I recollect the woman in front of me, and the one behind, but I pledge you my word that I did not know that I hugged anybody. I am willing to apologize, but I'll be condemned if I marry any of 'em, and I'm not crazy. That confounded game got me all mixed up, and I may have acted different from what I would ordinarily, but it was not my intention to propose to any female."

"But say, Uncle Ike, what did you think of the game as a means of building up muscle, pluck, push, get there, and general usefulness?"

asked the boy.

"Greatest thing I ever saw," said Uncle Ike, as he looked out of the window, to see if any females he might have hugged in his excitement were out there waiting for him. "Say, I saw young fellows in that game that I used to know, who would cry if taken across their father's knee, and beg for mercy, and they would rush into the most dangerous position, and if knocked silly they would smile, never groan, and suck a swallow of water out of a sponge, and go in for another knockdown. That game will make men of the weak boys, and cause them to be afraid of nothing that walks. The boy who pushes, and tackles, and runs through a wilderness of other boys who are trying to down him, and get his pigskin away, will become the pushing business man who will go through the line of business progress, and make a touchdown in his enterprise, and he will kick a commercial or professional goal, over the heads of all compet.i.tors. Life is only a football game, after all. Every man in business who is worth his salt is a pusher, a shover, a tackier, a punter, or half-back, and the unsuccessful ones are the ones who carry the water to bring the business players to, when they become overheated, and do the yelling and hurrahing when the pushing business man in the football game of life makes a touchdown. It is these rough players that become the rough riders when war comes to the country, and they rush the ball up San Juan hill in the face of the Spanish tacklers, and the interference of barbed wire and other things. War is a football game also, and the recruiting officers are not looking for the weak sisters who can't push and shove, and fight, and fall over each other, and when wounded laugh and say it is nothing serious. A country that has a majority of its boys growing up to fight on the football field for fun, has no cause to fear any war that may come to it, for if they will fight like that in good nature, to uphold the colors of their college, what will they do to uphold 'Old Glory,' which comprises the dearest colors in all the world? Yes, boy, you can go on playing football, and if you are injured your Uncle Ike will pay all the expenses, and sit up nights with you, but you better not take me to any more games, for the first thing you know I will be bringing home here more wives than that Utah congressman has got. Now, go rest up, and next week I will take you to see President McKinley, at the hotel here, and you will see him throw his arms around me and say, 'h.e.l.lo, Uncle Ike!' I used to know him when he wasn't President," and Uncle Ike dismissed the boy, and sat by the window till dark, looking out to see if anybody was coming to claim his hand in marriage, and wondering if he did make as big a fool of himself at the football game as the boys said he did.

CHAPTER XXIII.

It was Sunday afternoon, and Uncle Ike had been to church with the red-headed boy, and they had listened to a sermon on patriotism, and the minister had expressed himself on the subject of the Philippines, and the duty the President owed to civilization to keep on killing those negroes until they learned better than to kick at having a strange race of people boss them around, and Uncle Ike had walked home along the bank of the lake, and breathed the free air that was his because his ancestors had conquered it from England, and he couldn't help having a little sympathy for those Filipinos who had been bought from a country that didn't own them, by a country that had no use for them, and wished it could get rid of them honorably, without hurting the political party that was acting as overseer over them. He didn't want to seem disloyal to a country that he loved and had fought to preserve, but when he thought of those poor, ignorant people, trying to learn what freedom meant, and what there was in it for them, studying the const.i.tution of the United States to find out how to be good and great, and dodging bullets, he felt as though he wished he knew just what the Savior of Man would do in the matter if He had been elected President. He had left the red-headed boy at Sunday-school, and now they were both back home, waiting for the dinner bell to ring. The boy was studying some pamphlet he had brought home, and looking mighty serious.

"Any great problem been presented to you at Sunday-school that you are unable to solve?" said Uncle Ike, as he walked by the boy and tried to stroke the corrugated lines out of his forehead, and patted him on the head. "For if there is anything you are in doubt about, all you got to do is to let your Uncle Ike be umpire, and he will straighten it out for you."

"Thank you, awfully," said the boy, as he dropped his book, walked up to the old man, and looked him squarely in the face. "You are the man I have been looking for. Uncle Ike, suppose a man should haul off, without provocation, and smash you on the side of the face, a regular stinger, that would jar your head until you could see stars, what would you do?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: I would give him one on the nose with my left hand 203]

"Oh, say, that is an easy one," said the old man, as he filled the pipe and lighted it, and threw the match in the grate. "Do you know what I would do? I would give him one on the nose with my left hand, and when he was off his guard I would paste him one under the ear, or on the point of the jaw, and then I would stand over him and count ten, and if he came to, I would give him some more, and when he had got enough, I would say to him: 'Now, when you feel that way again, and want to enjoy yourself, you come right to me, for I don't have any too much exercise, anyway.' But why do you ask? You knew all the time what I would do if a man hit me," and the old man walked around the room as though he would like to see someone hit him.

"That's what I feared," said the boy, as the twinkles played around his eyes. "You see, among the verses in the Sunday-school lesson was this one, 'If they smite you on one cheek, turn the other cheek, also,' and I thought I would like to get the opinion of an expert as to how to go about it, to turn the other cheek the right way."

"Say, here, you don't take advantage of an old man that way," said Uncle Ike, as the boy began laughing. "When you ask questions like that you want to read the verse first, and give a man a chance. 'Course, if they smite you on one cheek, you want to do just what the Bible says. Some of you kids make me tired," and the old man wished dinner was ready, so they could change the subject.

"I told my teacher I didn't see how a fellow could turn the other cheek, also, and maintain his standing in society, but she said it was the way to do, and then the Sunday-school superintendent came along, and she asked him about it. He belongs to the athletic club of the Y. M. C. A., and I have seen him box with soft gloves, and he said it was right to turn the other cheek, but I noticed he smiled, and then the minister visited our cla.s.s, and the teacher asked him to impress on us boys the idea of turning the other cheek. He looked pious, and said you must turn the other cheek when smote, as it showed a meek and forgiving disposition, but I know the minister is a boxer, also, and I heard that he almost jarred the head off a tramp last summer for sa.s.sing him, so I am worried as to what it is best to do, in a case of smoting. The teacher, you know her, the pretty girl that let you hold her hand so long at the picnic, when you was introduced to her, and you told her you used to know her mother when she was a girl, and used to go with her, and all that rot, she told me I better talk it over with you, Uncle Ike, and see what you thought about it. So you honestly think it is best for a boy to grow up letting people get in the habit of smiting, so to see him turn his other cheek, and get another bat on that cheek, eh? Don't you think a boy that takes that kind of medicine, without making up a face, ought to say, 'Thank you, ever so much,' and always wear pinafores, and stay in the kindergarten, and if he ever grows up and goes into business he better become a he-milliner, or a manicure, say?

It's up to you, now, Uncle Ike, and I am ready to listen, and to follow your advice, and be a boy or a girl, just as you say, but I don't know any girl in my set that would let anybody smite her much, without pulling hair a little, at least."

Uncle Ike had been thinking pretty hard, as the boy talked, had let his pipe go out, and his face had taken on a serious look, a look also of pride as he listened to the boy, but he was trying to think how to steer him right on that turning the other cheek also business. He fumbled for the tobacco bag, and as he emptied some tobacco into the pipe, his hand was unsteady, and he spilled a good deal on the floor, and he had to scratch two or three matches on his pants before he could get one that wouldn't break off, or go out. Finally he got the pipe lighted, and he puffed a long time, and looked at himself in the big mirror over the mantel, to see if he was looking his best, and finally he said:

"I'll tell you, my boy, I don't think they are turning the other cheek also when smote, as much as they used to. The theory is all right, and if everybody would do so, there would not be any trouble, and all would be peace. I suppose that verse in the Bible was written when the Jews were trying to get along without having sc.r.a.ps all the time. There were people there, Jew-baiters, I suppose, who just laid for them, and knowing them to be opposed to a fight, they would smash them, and on the advice of leaders they would turn the other cheek, and go home with a black eye. I don't suppose I could write a Bible half as good as the old one, but I think if that verse had been changed a little, so the Jews would have stood up for their rights, and everlastingly lambasted anybody that came around jarring them on the cheeks, and been brought up to fight their way through, from Jerusalem to France, things would have been different. But, as I say, things have changed a good deal since Bible times. I think, now, if I was a boy, growing up to take my place in the business world, I might try to forget that verse, or think of it as we do of the Golden Rule, or the 'love one another' verse. You may try as hard as you like and you can't love your neighbor as yourself, unless he, or she, as the case may be, is a lovable person, and loves back. There can be no arbitrary rules that will bind you against what you think is right. Suppose your neighbor is a horsethief, or a liar, who belongs to another political party, and backbites, and steals your wood, and kicks your dog, and puts up jobs on you, how you going to love that neighbor as yourself? Two or three thousand years ago maybe these things would have been all right, when they didn't have any newspapers, and trolley cars, and there was no business except selling fish, and no money but coppers. I'll tell you how I shall bring up my boys, when I have any, and that is to keep their cheeks away from the smoter who smotes. Be on your guard, and if a boy tries to smite you on one cheek, you duck, and side-step, and smile at him, and keep your hands up so if he makes a feint to smite you on one cheek, just stand him off, and maybe he will think that you are onto his smiting on the cheek business yourself, and are no chicken, that is going to keep cheeks for other people to smite, and he may quit, and you can laugh over it, and consider the incident closed. But if he gets gay, and it seems to be his day to smite cheeks, and he acts as though he had picked you out for a soft mark, and rushes in to do you up, if I ever hear of your running, or putting your hands down, and letting him biff you, one, two, on both cheeks, and you come home here crying, with the nosebleed, and your eye blacked, and you haven't done a thing to that cheek smiter, I will warm your jacket so you will think there is a hornets' nest in it, hear me?" and the old man looked cross and sa.s.sy. "No, sir; you just let him search for your cheeks, and if he won't quit, you finally give him your left in the neck, and side-step, and keep out of his way, and if he wants more, find a place where there is an opening, and jab him until he quits looking for cheeks to smite, and other cheeks to turn also. I don't know as it is right, but turning the other cheek also has gone out of style, and n.o.body is doing it that has got any gravel in their crop.

Don't let me ever catch you fighting, that is, bringing on a fight, but don't you ever let anybody use you to practice that verse on, because your minister or your Sunday-school superintendent wouldn't allow anybody to smite them without getting hurt."

"Well, I like that," said the boy, getting up and starting for the dining room. "I will do just as you say, Uncle Ike, and try to avoid trouble. But what shall I tell that blue-eyed teacher you advised me--the one, you know, that you was so sweet on at the picnic?"

"Oh, tell her I told you to try and grow up to be a regular thoroughbred, like your Uncle Ike, and only turn the other cheek to girls, see! And tell her I never squeezed anybody's hand at a picnic, unless they commenced it, by gosh!" and the old man took the red-headed boy in his arms and carried him bodily into the dining room, and there was a smile on his good old face that was good to look upon.

CHAPTER XXIV.

Uncle Ike had met with a misfortune that troubled him, and he was smoking and trying to think of some way to explain the affair. All his life he had been an all-around sport, and cluck shooting had been his hobby. He had prided himself that he could ride any boat that an Indian could, and bragged that he had never got his feet wet in his forty years as a duck shooter; but this morning he had gone out in a boat, before anybody was up about the house, and when he was not looking, a wave tipped the boat up on one side, filled it with water, and had gone down with him before he could say Jack Robinson, and he had floundered around in mud and water up to his armpits, singing "A life on the ocean wave,"

and yelling for somebody to come and tie him loose.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A life on the ocean wave 211]

A neighbor had come with a boat, and dragged him ash.o.r.e, and he had taken off his wet clothes, hung them on the fence to dry, put on some dry clothes, and he was smoking his pipe and wringing the water out of his wet pants, when the red-headed boy came out to inquire into the marine disaster.

"Getting your washing out pretty early in the morning, Uncle Ike," said the boy, as he lifted a wet sweater off the fence, and took some wet cartridges out of the pockets. "Is it healthy to go in swimming with so many clothes on? How did this thing happen, anyway?"

"Now, don't get gay," said Uncle Ike, "and I will tell you. It was blowing a hurricane, and the wind took the boat up in the air about ten feet, and it dove down head first, and what could I do but get out?

A cramp took me in the leg, and I stood on t'other leg, but I wasn't afraid. I didn't yell, but just said to a man who was about half a mile away, says I, 'Kindly a.s.sist me to land,' and he took me by the shirt collar and escorted me to the sh.o.r.e."

"I see," said the boy; "you whispered to him, when he was half a mile away, but did not yell for help. Oh, you're a mark, trying to make believe you are young enough to enjoy sport. Say, you ought to have a shawl strap on you, so your rescuer can have something to take hold of; and if I were in your place, I would get the dimensions of Noah's ark, and have one made to fit me. You better buy your ducks, and stay on land. But now that the Prodigal Uncle has got back, I am going out to kill a fatted calf, and we will have a calf banquet. Say, Uncle Ike, did you ever read about the Prodigal Son? We had it in our Sunday-school lesson last Sunday. They didn't do a thing to him, did they?"

"Yes, I have read about the Prodigal Son, and I give it to you straight--he was the greatest chump mentioned in the Bible, and sometimes I think you are a dead ringer for him!" and the old man laughed at the boy.

"Oh, I don't know," said the boy, as he poured some water out of Uncle Ike's rubber boots, that hung on the fence; "you and Noah size up about right. If you had been running that ark, you would have spilled the whole outfit, and n.o.body ever would have got ash.o.r.e. But that Prodigal Son makes me tired. He was a regular jay. He run away from home, and got in with a terrible crowd, and they pulled his leg for all the money he had. They steered him up against barrel houses, and filled him with liquor that would burn a hole in a copper kettle, got him mixed up with queer women, and he painted the towns red; and when his money was all gone, they kicked him out with a case of indigestion and a head on him that hurt so he could not wink without thinking there was an earthquake.

Say, Uncle Ike, do you know that fellow had some sense after all? When he found that all his new-found friends wanted was his money, and to help him spend it, and that they shook him when it was gone, he had a right to be disgusted with the world; and if he had been like some of our present day prodigals, he would have turned tramp, or held up a train, or stolen a horse and been lynched; but he just tumbled to himself and took the first job that came along, herding hogs, but he didn't live high. He worked for his board and furnished his own husks.

Do you know, I can't help thinking the man that hired Prod. to drive hogs was in a trust, and made all the money there was in the deal. But he was repaid for all his suffering. When he thought of the old folks at home, and drew his wages and started back, without clothes enough on him to wad a gun, thinking maybe they would stick up their noses and say he smelled bad, and quarantine him, and make him take a bath, but, instead of doing so, they just fell on his neck and wept, and set up a calf lunch for him, he must have thought the world was worth living in. Uncle Ike, were you ever a prodigal son?" and the boy turned over the wet clothes so the sun would dry the other side.

"Yes, sir, I have been a prodigal son, and every boy who goes away from home to make his own living is a prodigal son, in a way," and he and the boy sat down under a tree, the one to talk and the other to listen.

"When a boy decides to leave the old roof tree at home to go out into the world, it is most always against the wishes of his parents; but he argues with them, and finally prevails on them to let him go. It is what he amounts to after he gets away that makes him either a prodigal or a thoroughbred. If a boy goes into bad company, and thinks the world is made to spend unearned money in, instead of to earn money in and save it, it is only a matter of time when he comes back home a prodigal son, either alive and needing a doctor and a mother's care, or he comes in a box to be buried, his father to pay the express charges. On the other hand, if he gets a job, doing something, anything, masters the business, and becomes a valuable citizen, maybe in time at the head of his profession or business, some day he comes home to the old folks, and there are smiles instead of tears, a bra.s.s band instead of the singing by the funeral choir, and he pays the mortgage on the old homestead, instead of having his father pay express charges on the remains. That is the difference. All boys can be prodigals if they have the prodigal bacillus in their systems when they go out into the world; but if they have the get-there-Eli microbe concealed in their pajamas when they go away, they can laugh at the traps and nets that are thrown out to catch them, stand off the alleged friends who try to induce them to go into the red paint business, use the red liquor to rub on bruises and strained muscles on the outside, instead of taking it internally to build fires that never quench. Which kind of a prodigal nephew you want to be--one who comes home with a suit of clothes and a bank account, the glow of health on your cheek, and a love of life and all that goes with it; or a prodigal with a blanket, a haversack full of husks that the hogs won't eat, all the diseases that are going in the set you have moved in, and a desire to die on the doorstep of the old home before they can cook the calf? Which you want to be, boy?"

"I'll tell you, Uncle Ike," said the boy, laying his head in the old man's lap, as they sat under the tree; "I am going to be the kind of a prodigal who comes home with the good health, and the money, and the appet.i.te for calf; and when you are old, Uncle Ike, you sha'n't get wet any more, for I will buy you a duck boat that can't be tipped over with jackscrews, that you can't break with an ax, and that has air chambers in both ends, so it couldn't be sunk if loaded with railroad iron; and I will buy you a pump gun that will shoot ducks without your aiming it, and you shall have a picnic as long as you live. That is the kind of prodigal nephew I am going to be"; and the old man stroked the red hair on the head that lay in his lap, and the tears stole down his cheeks as he thought what a difference there was in prodigals. He thought of his own prodigal days, when he went out from the home roof tree to make his way in the world; how he worked on a farm from long before daylight in the morning, till all the rest had gone to bed, and his back ached so he could not sleep; how he jumped the farm when he found his wages decreased as the work became harder and the weather colder, and he went into the city and worked at many different trades, and finally became a printer, and grew up to be an editor, made money and went back home a grown man, with a moustache that actually had to be combed; and how the girls that would not speak to him when he was a dirty, freckled boy, wanted to give parties in his honor, and how he shook them; and now he regretted, old bachelor that he was, that he had not allowed them to entertain him, so he might have picked out the best one of them for his wife; and he sighed, and got up and wrung some more water out of his wet clothes hanging on the fence, and wondered how in the world he could have allowed himself to be tipped over in a boat, and if he actually did make a fool of himself when he was there in the water, wishing he hadn't gone hunting at all.