Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy Part 8

Yes, if I was in your place I would preach Mormonism, as your experience in taking things out of people's pockets, in the way of watches, would come handy, and you are so confounded freckled you would have to have wives sealed to you or they would not stay. A minister has got to be pretty condemned good-looking, nowadays, to hold a job in a fas.h.i.+onable church."

"But the minister business is easy, ain't it? They don't have to work, anyway," and the boy looked at Uncle Ike as though life expected an opinion that was sound.

"If you took a job preaching," said the old man, whirling around from the table, and sitting down in his old armchair, and lighting his pipe, "you wouldn't have any, soft snap. Do you know anything about what a minister has to do? Let's take one week out of the life of a regular minister. He starts in on Monday morning by having a woman call at the parsonage, a woman dressed poorly, and whose pained face makes his heart ache, and she tells him a tale of woe, and he goes to his wife and gets a basket of stuff out of the kitchen to give her, a kitchen not stocked any too well, and sends her home with immediate relief, and then goes out to hunt up the relief committee of his church to give the woman permanent relief. He comes back after a while and finds other callers, some to have him make a diagnosis of their souls, over which they are worrying, another to have him help get a son out of the police station, who used to belong to the Sunday-school, and one man wants him to preach a funeral sermon in the afternoon. He gets out of the police station in time for the funeral, and they make him go clear to the cemetery, and stop at the house with the mourners on the way back, and he gets a cold dinner that night, and has to call on several sick friends that evening, and one of them is so nearly gone that he remains with him to the last, and gets home at midnight. The other days of the week are the same, only more so, and in addition he has to run a prayer meeting, several society meetings, a sociable, settle a quarrel in the choir, and bring two members of the church together who have not spoken to each other for months, attend a ministers' meeting and map out a plan of campaign against the old boy, run out into the country to preach a little for a neighboring preacher who is sick, or off on a vacation, attend a missionary meeting, marry a few couples, and prepare two sermons for Sunday forenoon and evening, sermons that are new, and on texts that have not been preached on before. One night in the week he can get on his slippers and sit in the library, and the other nights he is running from one place to another to make a lot of other people happier, and he has more sickness at home than any man in his congregation, and he works harder than the man who digs in the sewer, and half the time the people kick on his salary and wonder why he doesn't do more, and say he looks so dressed up it can't be possible he has much to do, and when he gets worn down to the bone, and his cheeks are sunken, and his voice fails, and his step is not so active, they saw him off on to some country church that never did pay a minister enough to live on, and he never kicks, but just keeps on praying for them until he kicks the bucket, when he ought to give them a piece of his mind. How do you like it?"

"Say, Uncle Ike, I surrender. I don't want to preach. Where can a man enlist as a pirate? The pirate business appeals to me," and the boy got up and took his golf club to go out.

"Yes, you have many qualifications that would come in handy as a pirate, and I will use my influence to get you into politics, you young heathen," and the old man gave the red-headed boy a poke in the ribs with his big hard thumb, and they separated for the day, the old man to smoke and dream, and the boy to have fun and get tired and hungry.

CHAPTER XX.

Uncle Ike did not get up very early, on account of a little pain in one of his hind legs, as he expressed it, a rheumatic pain that he had almost come to believe, as the pension agent had often suggested, was caused by his service in the army thirty-five years ago. The pension agent, who desired to have the honor of securing a pension for the old man, had asked him to try and remember if he was not exposed to a sudden draft, some time in the army, which might have caused him to take cold, and thus sow the seeds of rheumatism in his system, which had lain dormant all these years and finally appeared in his legs. The old man had thought it over, and remembered hundreds of occasions when he was soaked through with icy water, and had slept on the wet ground, and gone hungry and taken cold, but he realized that he had taken no more colds in the army than he had at home, and he could not see how he could swear that a chill he received thirty-five years ago could have anything to do with his present aches, and though he knew thousands of the old boys were receiving pensions, that were no worse off than he was, he had told the pension agent that he need not apply for a pension for his pain in the knee. He said he felt that he might just as well apply for a pension on account of inheriting rheumatism from an uncle who fought in the Mexican war, and he would wait until the government did not insist on a veteran having such an abnormal memory about sneezing during the war, as a basis for pension claims, and when it got so a pension would come to a soldier by simply looking up his record, and examining his physical condition, he would take a pension. The old man had heard a peculiar clicking down in the sitting room, all the morning, while he was dressing, and he wondered what it was. As he limped into the sitting room, with his dressing-gown on, and began to round up his shaving utensils, preparatory to his morning shave, he found the red-headed boy in his night s.h.i.+rt, sitting at a table with an old telegraph instrument that looked as though it had been picked out of a sc.r.a.p-pile, and the boy was ticking away for dear life, his hair standing on end, his brow corrugated, and his eyes glaring.

[Ill.u.s.tration: What dum foolishness you got on hand now 177]

"What dum foolishness you got on hand now?" asked the old man, as he set a cup of hot water on the mantel, and began to mix up the lather. "What you ticking away on that contrivance for, and looking wise?"

"This is a telegraph office," said the boy, as he stopped operations long enough to draw his cold bare feet up under him, and pulled his night s.h.i.+rt down to cover his knees. "I am learning to telegraph, and am going into training for president of a railroad. Did you see in the papers the other day that Mr. Earling was elected president of a railroad, and did you know that he started in as a telegraph operator and a poor boy, with hair the color of tow? They used to call him Tow-Head."

"Yes, I read about that," said Uncle Ike, as he looked in the gla.s.s to see if the lather was all right on his face, and began to strop his razor. "I knew that boy when he was telegraphing. But he knew what all those sounds meant. You just keep ticking away, and don't know one tick from another."

"Yes, I do," said the boy, as he smashed away at the key. "That long sound, and the short one, and the one about half as long as the long one--that spells d-a-m, dam."

"Well, what do you commence your education spelling out cuss words for?"

asked the old man, as he raked the razor down one side of his face, pulling his mouth around to one side so it looked like the mouth of a red-horse fish. "Anybody would think you were in training for one of these railroad superintendents who swear at the men so their hair will stand, and then swear at them because they don't get their hair cut.

The railroad presidents and general managers nowadays don't swear a blue streak, and keep the men guessing whether they will get discharged for talking back. This man Earling never swore a half a string in his life, and in thirty years of railroading he never spoke a cross word to a living soul, and his brow was never corrugated as much as yours has been spelling out that word dam. Got any idea what railroad you will be president of?" and the old man wiped his razor, stropped it on the palm of his hand, put it in a case, and went to a washbowl to wash the soap off his face.

"Well, I thought I would start in on some narrow-gauge railroad, and work up gradually for a year or two, and finally take charge of one of those Eastern roads, where I can have a private car, and travel all over the country for nothing. As quick as I get this telegraph business down fine I shall apply for a position of train dispatcher, and then jump right along up. Uncle Ike, you will never have to pay a cent on my railroad. I will have a caboose fixed up for you, with guns and dogs, and you can hunt and fish all your life, with a n.i.g.g.e.r to cook for you, and a porter to put on your bait, and another n.i.g.g.e.r chambermaid to make up your bed, and I will wire them from the general office to sidetrack you, and pick you up, and all that."

"Is that so?" said the old man, as he stood rubbing his face with a crash towel till it shone like a boiled lobster. "You are hurrying your railroad career mighty fast, and if you are not careful you will replace Chauncey Depew before you get long pants on. Now, you go get your clothes on and come to breakfast, and after breakfast I will tell you something." The boy dropped the key, after ticking to the imaginary general office not to disturb him with any messages for half an hour, as he was going to be busy on an important matter, and he went to his room and soon appeared at the breakfast table, and after the breakfast was over, and the old man had lighted his pipe, the boy said:

"Now, Uncle Ike, tell me all you know about railroading in one easy lesson, for I have to go to a directors' meeting at ten, and then we are going out to look over the right of way," and the boy ticked off a message to have his special car ready at eleven-thirty, stocked for a trip over the line.

"I see you are getting well along in your railroad career, and like nine out of ten boys who want to be railroad men, you are beginning at the private car instead of the gravel train, issuing general orders instead of working in the ranks," and the old man smoked up and thought a long time, and continued: "The successful railroad man begins at the bottom, and learns the first lesson well. Do you know how long this man Earling has been getting where he is today? Thirty-five years. More than the average age of man. The successful railroad man, if he begins telegraphing, gets so he can send or receive anything, with his eyes shut, and never makes a mistake. After a long time he gets a measly country station, where he does all kinds of work, and he is satisfied.

He goes to work to increase the business of that station, to clean up around the depot, and please all the customers, as though he was going to live there all his life. He never thinks he is going to be a high official, but just makes the best of the present. Some day he is awfully surprised to be given a better station, and he hates to leave, and maybe sheds a tear as he parts with the friends he has made there. But he goes to his new place and improves it, and gets in with a new, pus.h.i.+ng cla.s.s of people, and begins to grow. He maybe works there ten years, and his work shows so the officials recognize it, and he never makes a mistake in his telegraphing, and some day they call him into headquarters during a rush, to help the train dispatcher, and then he has to move into the city and watch trains on thousands of miles of road, to see that they don't get together, as train dispatcher. He thinks that position is good enough, and he hopes they will let him alone in it, but some day he a.s.sists the superintendent, and he is so well posted they are all surprised. They wonder how that station agent got to knowing all the men on the road, and how much a train of freight cars weigh, and how many cents per mile each loaded car earns for the company, and what cars ought to go to the shops for repairs, and how many new cars will have to be bought to handle the crops on his division. The 'old man,' as the president is always called, gets to leaning on this always good-natured, promoted, station agent, who is so modest he wouldn't offer a suggestion unless asked his opinion, and when asked gives it so intelligently that you could set your watch by it, as the boys say. He is always sober, never sleepy, and whether figuring on the wheat crop of Dakota to a carload, or wearing rubber boots and dining on sausage and bread for a couple of days fixing up a washout, he is always calm and smiling, and every man works as though his own house was afire, till the washout is repaired and the first train pulls over. When the rich, fat, gouty directors come around, once a year, to take an account of stock, and see the property at work, they see the modest man, and by and by he is taken off his feet by a promotion that almost makes him dizzy. Other railroads see that he is all wool, and they try to steal him away, but he says he has got used to his old man, and he knows every spike in the system, and there are gray hairs beginning to come around his ears, and he guesses he will not go away and have to make new acquaintances, and he remains with the road where he learned to tick, as you are ticking, and one day he is at the head of it. But if you examine into the head of the man who gets up from station agent to president, you will find that there is brain there and no cut feed. Another station agent might get the bighead the first time he was promoted, and they would have to promote him backward, on that account, but it would be because there was excelsior in his head, instead of brain, and he would be mad and jealous, and say mean things about those who got promoted, and stayed promoted. Now, let me give you a pointer. Don't train for general manager or president of a road. Train for the thing you are going to get first, whether it is operator or brakeman, and when you have mastered the details of that place, learn something about the next above. It is like going up a ladder; you have got to go up one step at a time, and get your foot on the step so it will stay, then go up another step. If you attempt to step from the ground to the top of the ladder, you are going to split your pants from Genesis to Revelations, and come down on your neck, and show your nakedness to those who have watched you try to climb too fast, and they will laugh at you. Now, go on with your condum ticking, but tick out something besides d--a--m, dam," and the old man went out to see if there had been any frost the night before, with an idea that if there was he would shoot a few teal duck, and cure his rheumatism that way, instead of putting on liniment.

CHAPTER XXI.

Uncle Ike was out in the front yard in the early morning, in his s.h.i.+rt sleeves, with no collar on, an old pair of rubber boots to keep the dew from wetting his feet, and he was helping the Indian summer haze all he could, by smoking the clay pipe and blowing the smoke up among the red and yellow leaves of autumn, and as he kicked the beautiful leaves on the lawn into piles he thought what foolish people they were who claimed last week that winter had come, because it was a little chilly, when he could have told them, by half a century's experience, that the most beautiful part of the year was to come, the Indian summer, the lazy days when you want to shoot snipe, and eat grapes, and have appendicitis.

The red-headed boy came out yawning, half awake, and raised his arms and stretched until it seemed that he would break his back.

"You remind me of Indian summer," said the old man, as he stepped on the boy's bare foot with his soft rubber boot.

"Oh, I don't know," said the boy, as he let out a secret school society yell at some boys across the street, which brought them all over-into the yard, as though there was a dog fight on. "Uncle Ike, you remind me of Father Time, after he has been to a barber and got shaved, with your smooth old laughing face. Why do I remind you of Indian summer?"

"Well, your red hair resembles the frosted leaf of the maple tree, your brown freckles look like the dead and dying leaves of the oak, your unwashed chalky face looks like the leaves of the ash, your sparkling eyes like the dewy diamonds on the gra.s.s, and your sleepy look as you just come from your bed makes me think of the hazy atmosphere that the Indians loved so well. What all you boys around here for so early in the morning, anyway, disturbing your Uncle Ike when he wants to think?" and he grabbed half a dozen boys and piled them up in a heap on the gra.s.s, and put one of his big rubber boots on the top one, and held them down, squirming like a lot of angleworms in a tomato can.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Squirming like a lot of angleworms 185]

The red-headed boy took Uncle Ike by the suspenders and pulled him off the boys, and then they all grabbed his legs and threw him down and sat on him, breaking his pipe, and pulling off his rubber boots and making him yell, "Enough!" before they would let him up, but he laughed and spanked them with a leg of a rubber boot, and finally they all sat down on the porch, panting, and Uncle Ike was the youngest boy in the gang, apparently.

"Come to order," said the red-headed boy, and every boy took off his hat, and braced back against the side of the house, and Uncle Ike looked on, wondering what was coming next. "We have met, gentlemen," said the red-headed boy, "to make arrangements to nominate Dewey for President.

We have watched the manner in which the people have received him at New York and Was.h.i.+ngton; have noticed his modesty and level-headedness, and us boys, Uncle Ike, have decided that Dewey shall be the next President.

If any person has got anything to say why he should not be President, let him speak now, or forever after hold his peace. It is up to you, Uncle Ike, and this a.s.semblage would like to hear a few casual remarks from you, before breakfast, on this subject. Now, boys, hurrah for Uncle Ike, the jolliest old sc.r.a.pper in the business. Now, give the yell, 'Who are we! who are we! we are the kids for old Dewe-e--siz! boom! yah!'"

and the boys yelled until Uncle Ike had to respond.

"Well, you condum heathen can settle more public questions here on this porch than all the political parties," said the old man, as he fixed a broken suspender with a nail, and came up to the boys with one rubber boot in his hand, and reached for a new pipe on the window sill, loaded it, and lit it for a talk. "You ought to have better sense than to think of Dewey placing himself in the hands of the politicians, and going into politics, where he will have to be cat-hauled by all the disreputable critters in the country. Look at Grant! When he got out of the war he was just like Dewey, and would be alive today if he had not got into the hands of the politicians. Dewey can sit down in Was.h.i.+ngton as he is, and have more power for good than any President, and he will be proud of himself and his country. If he went into politics he would be betrayed, and made responsible for all the stealing and mistakes of those under him, and in a little while he would hate himself, and would like to get all the politicians into a Spanish s.h.i.+p and turn the Olympia loose on them."

"Yes, but n.o.body could say anything against Dewey," said the red-headed boy, interrupting Uncle Ike. "All he would have to do would be to appoint a cabinet of admirals, and give all the other offices to the mids.h.i.+pmen and jackies, and send army officers abroad as ministers and things. The people would lynch a man that said anything against Dewey."

"They couldn't say anything against, him, could they?" said Uncle Ike, pulling on the rubber boot. "Well, you are an amateur in politics. Do you know what they would do if Dewey were nominated? They would prove that he murdered a man in Vermont in 1852, in cold blood, and produce the corpse. They would swear that he was the inventor of the wooden nutmeg, and that he had six wives living, and that he was in cahoots with Aguinaldo, and that he didn't sink the Spanish fleet, but that it got waterlogged and went down without a shot being fired. They would claim that he was the originator of the process of boiling maple roots and putting the juice into glucose, and selling it for pure Vermont maple syrup. They would claim that the reception he received at the hands of the American people was a put-up job; that he paid all the expenses himself, out of money he stole from the government, and that all the cheering was done by hired claquers, who were all promised an office when he was elected. And then if he was elected, every man that knew him before he went to Manila would claim to have been the making of him, and want to be in the cabinet, and every man that has shook hands with him since, would expect the best office at his disposal, and if they didn't get the offices they would prove that he was responsible for the embalmed beef scandal, and that he was in partners.h.i.+p with Capt.

Carter in robbing the government, and ought to be in jail. Oh, you can't tell me anything about politics, and if I could see Dewey I would tell him to say nothing but 'nixy' to every proposition to mix him up.

Now, all you boys come in to breakfast," and the old man tossed the boys toward the dining room door as though they were footb.a.l.l.s.

"Well, Uncle Ike, you have punctured our tire again. Every time we get a scheme to save the country, you come in with your condumed talky-talk, and throw us in the air. Guess you will have to take the nomination yourself, and run on a platform of seven words, 'Here's to the boys, G.o.d bless 'em,'" and the red-headed boy got under Uncle Ike's arm, and the gang went in to breakfast, Uncle Ike trying to argue against being nominated, and having to go to the White House with a lot of tough boys making life a burden to him, when he would have to get married, for no President is a success as a bachelor, as Cleveland found out. As Uncle Ike got the boys all around the table, he bent his head and reverently asked a blessing--something he had never done before in the presence of the red-headed boy, and when the meal was over and the boys had all gone away, except the warm-haired one, and Uncle Ike had begun to smoke again, the boy said to him:

"Uncle Ike, I did not know that you belonged to any church."

"Well, I don't," said Uncle Ike, as he got up and looked out of the window, and blew smoke at a fly that was buzzing on the gla.s.s.

"Then how could you ask a blessing, and expect that it will be heard? I supposed a person had to be initiated in a church, and be sworn in, and given the pa.s.sword, and take the degrees, before he was ordained to ask a blessing," said the boy.

"No, that is not necessary," the old man said. "Now, you haven't got much religion, and never jined, but you give thanks to the Lord quite often. When you are happy, and enjoying yourself, and smile and laugh, you are unconsciously thanking the Ruler for making things so comfortable. All pleasure is made possible by a higher power, and all you got to do is to feel grateful, same as you would to me if I gave you a dollar, and there you are. You just be square, and do business on the golden rule plan, and you have got a heap more religion than some people who are Matting about all the time. I just thought I would paralyze you kids by showing you that I was all wool, and wanted the Lord to keep tab on us, and know that we appreciated good health, and all that. Now, you go to school, and don't say anything to that blue-eyed teacher of yours that you have nominated me for President. I don't want to get girls after me, thinking they will be mistress of the White House," and the old man took his gun and went down into the marsh looking for snipe.

CHAPTER XXII.

Uncle Ike had been reading the morning paper, as he sat before the grate fire, in the sitting room, while the red-headed boy was using a slate and pencil trying to figure out something to make it match the answer as given in the arithmetic, and having guessed the answer right he was drawing a picture of Uncle Ike and his pipe, and occasionally wetting his finger in his mouth and rubbing out some feature of the old man that didn't suit. He had the old man pictured in a football costume of padded trousers, nose guard, ear guard, knee pads, and all the different things used in football, and when he showed the picture to Uncle Ike, that old citizen sighed, though he looked a bit pleased that he should be the study of so eminent an artist. Uncle Ike had been reading that there was to be a football game that afternoon, between the State university and Beloit college, and he wanted to go like a dog, but he had abused football so much that he was ashamed to speak of going.

"I hope you are not interested in that disreputable game," said Uncle Ike, knocking the ashes out of his pipe on the andirons of the fireplace. "I hope you don't want to go and see respectable boys maimed and killed, and knocked down and dragged out, and sandbagged, and brained. I have seen a bull fight in Mexico, but I never want to see anything as b.l.o.o.d.y as a football game," and the old man winked to himself, and filled the pipe.

"Oh, what you giving me?" said the boy, jumping up in indignation.

"Football is no worse than the old-fas.h.i.+oned pullaway you used to play.

I am going to see this game through a knothole in the fence I rented from a boy who has the knothole concession at the baseball park."

"No, you don't," said Uncle Ike, "you will go in the gate like a gentleman. No nephew of mine is going to grow up and be a knothole audience. You get two or three of your chums and come around here about 2 o'clock, and I will go with you, and stand between you and the sluggers, and see this game out. I don't want to go, and detest the game, but I will go to please you," and the old man looked wise and fatherly.

"Oh, you don't want to go, like the way the woman kept tavern in Michigan," said the boy, as he edged toward the door.

"How was it that the woman kept the hotel in Michigan?" he asked, looking mad.