"Well, you kids can borrow more trouble about this poor old country of ours than the men who own it can borrow. Astor! Why, boy, his deserting his country will have about as much effect as it would for that man working in the street to pack up his household goods and move to Indiana. Do you suppose this state would tip up sideways if he should quit running that sc.r.a.per and move out of the state? Not much. The Astors have been rich so long that they are un-American. It is not the natural condition of an American to be rich. When a man gets too rich, he is worried as to what to do with his money. There is no great enjoyment that the very rich can have in this country that the poor cannot have a little of. The first thing a very rich man acquires is a bad stomach. He becomes too lazy to' take exercise, and lets a hired man take exercise for him. He looks at his money, and thinks of his stomach.

In Astor's case there was nothing in this country that he could enjoy, not even sleep. n.o.body respected him any more than they did every other honest man. Only a few toadies would act toward him as though he was a world's wonder, on account of his wealth. People with souls, and health, and good nature, in the West, got rich as he, and went to New York, and knew how to spend money and have fun, and do good with it; and Astor couldn't understand it. He wanted to be considered the only, but he never had learned how to blow in money to make others happy. If he gave to the poor, an agent did it for him, and squeezed it, and made a memorandum and showed it to him once a year, and he frowned, and his stomach ached, and he took a pill, and sighed. I suppose two girls from California, daughters of an old Roman of the mines and the railroads, who died too soon, a senator with a soul, taught Astor how to do good with money, and maybe scared him out of the country. Those girls seemed to, know where there was a chance for suffering among the poor, and they kept people in their employ on the run to get to places before the bread was all gone, until half a million of the people that only knew there was an Astor by the signs on buildings for rent, knew these Fair girls by sight, and worshiped them as they pa.s.sed. The girls are married now, but they give just the same, and wherever they are in the world there is the crowd, and there is the love of those who believe them angels. Astor could not find any one to love him for any good he ever did that did not have rent or interest as the object, and he went away where a man is respected in a half-way manner, in proportion to the money he spends on royalty, in imitating royalty, and he will run a race there, and get tired of it; and some day, if he lives, he will come back to this country in the steerage, as his ancestors did, and take out his first papers and vote, and maybe he will be happy. The only way for a rich man to be very happy is to find avenues for getting his congested wealth off his mind, where it will cause some one who is poor and suffering to look up to him, and say that riches have not spoiled him. But to inherit money and go through life letting it acc.u.mulate, and not finding any avenue where it can leak out and be caught in the ap.r.o.n of a needy soul, is tough. No, you boys need not worry about the desertion of Astor. If we have a war with Great Britain, you would find Astor taking a night trip across the channel, and France would draw him in the lottery. One foreigner who landed in this country the day Astor sailed away, will be of more value in peace or war than Astor could be if he had remained."

"Gosh!" said the boy, as he got up out of Uncle Ike's lap, "if you are not a comfort! Between that porous plaster, and Astor's going to England, and my girl at the seash.o.r.e, I was about down with nervous prostration, but I am all right now," and the redheaded boy went out to round up the gang and tell them the country was all safe enough, as long as they had Uncle Ike to run it.

CHAPTER XIV.

"Well, you are a sight!" said Uncle Ike, as the red-headed boy came in the room, all out of breath, his shirt unb.u.t.toned and his hair wet and dripping, and his face so clean that it was noticeable. "Why don't you make your toilet before you come into a gentleman's room? Where you been, anyway?"

"Been in swimming at the old swimming hole," said the boy, as he finished b.u.t.toning his shirt, and sat down to put on his shoes and stockings, which he had carried in his hat. "Had more fun than a barrel of monkeys. Stole the clothes of a boy, and left him a paper flour sack to go home in. Wait a minute and you will see him go by," and the boy rushed to the window and yelled to Uncle Ike to come and see the fun.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Nothing on but a flour sack 119]

Presently a boy came down the street from toward the river with nothing on but a flour sack. He had cut holes in the bottom to put his feet through, and pulled it up to his body, and the upper part covered his chest to the arms, which were bare and sunburned, and the boy was marching along the street as unconcerned as possible, while all who saw him were laughing.

"What did you do that for?" said Uncle Ike, as he called to the boy to come in.

"Just for a joke," said the red-headed boy, laughing, and jollying the boy dressed in the flour sack, as he came in at Uncle Ike's invitation.

"Well, that is a good enough joke for two," said Uncle Ike. "Now take off your clothes and change with this boy, and put on the flour sack yourself," and he superintended the change, until the other boy had on a full suit of clothes, and the red-headed boy had on the flour sack. "Now I want you to go to the grocery and get me a paper of tobacco."

"O, gosh, I don't want to go out in the street with this flour sack on.

Some dog will chase me, and the people will make fun of me," said the boy, with an entirely new view of a practical joke.

"But you go all the same," said Uncle Ike, taking down a leather strap that he sharpened his razor on, and driving the boy outdoors. "Bring back this boy's clothes, also," and he sat down and waited for the boy to return. He came back after awhile with the tobacco and the clothes, followed by a lot of other boys, and after the two had changed clothes, and all had enjoyed a good laugh, Uncle Ike said: "Boys, playing practical jokes is a good deal like jumping on a man when he is down.

You will notice that the weaker boy always has the joke played on him.

Boys always combine against the weak boy. The boy that can whip any of you never has to wear a flour sack home from the swimming hole, does he?

Any joke that you can take turns at having played on you is fair, but when you combine against the weak, you become a monopoly, or a trust.

When I was a boy we used to tie the clothes of the biggest and meanest boy in knots, and if he couldn't take a joke we all turned in and mauled him. After this, if there is to be any jokes, let the biggest boy take his turn first, and then I don't care how soon the others take their dose, but this trust business has got to be broke up," and Uncle Ike patted the boys, on the head and said they could go and have all the fun they wanted to.

"Speaking of trusts, Uncle Ike, I thought you said, a spell ago, that the trusts would be brought up with a round turn," said the red-headed boy, reading, as he glanced at a heading in a morning paper, "but here is an article says that a thousand million billion dollars have been invested in trusts in New Jersey, and the manager of one of the biggest trusts says n.o.body can do anything to stop them. He says: 'What are you going to do about it?'"

"Well," said Uncle Ike, as he filled the air with strong tobacco smoke, and his eyes snapped like they did when he was mad, "you wait. I am older than you are. I remember when old Bill Tweed, the great robber of New York, who had stolen millions of dollars from the city, and was in his greatest power, became arrogant, and asked the people what they were going to do about it. When people think they are invincible they always ask what anybody is going to do about it. When a bully steps on the foot of a quiet and inoffensive man, purposely to get into a row, he looks at his victim in an impudent manner and says, 'What are you going to do about it?' and the victim gets up deliberately and thrashes the ground with the bully. The people got mad at Tweed when he said that, and they chased him over the world, and landed him in the penitentiary, where he died. That will be the fate of some of these trust magnates. The foundation of the trust is corruption. Its trade mark was uttered years ago by a great railroad man who said, 'The public be d----d.' That expression is in the mind of every man connected with a trust. He turns the thumbscrews on the public, raises prices, and if they complain, he says, 'What are you going to do about it?' and if anybody says the public cannot stand it, they say 'the public be blessed,' or the other thing. Now, wait. The public will be making laws, and the first law that is made will be one that sends a man to the penitentiary who robs through a trust. If three men combine to rob it is a conspiracy. If a hundred or a thousand combine to rob seventy million people, it is treason. You wait, boys, and you will hear a noise one of these days when the people speak, and you will hear trust magnates who fail to get across the ocean before the tornado of public indignation strikes, begging for mercy. Now, gosh blast you, run away. You have got me to talking again," and Uncle Ike lighted his pipe and shut up like a clam, while the boys went out looking for trouble.

Uncle Ike had been dozing and smoking, and fixing his fishing tackle, and oiling his gun, and whistling, and trying to sing, all alone, for an hour, after the boys had gone out to have fun, and when he saw them coming in the gate, two of them carrying a big striped watermelon, and the others watching that it did not fall on the ground, he was rather glad the boys had come back, and he opened the door and went out on the porch and met them.

"S-h-h!" said the red-headed boy, as Uncle Ike thumped the melon with his hard old middle finger, to see if it was ripe. "Don't say a word.

Let's get it inside the house, quick, and you carve it, Uncle," and they brought it in and laid it on the table, and the boys looked down the street as though they were expecting some one.

"We never used to ask any questions when I was a boy, when a melon suddenly showed up, and n.o.body knew from whence it came," said Uncle Ike, as he put both hands on the melon and pressed down upon it, and listened to it crack. "Do you know, if a person takes potatoes, or baled hay, that does not belong to him, it is stealing, but if a melon elopes with a boy, or several boys, the melon is always considered guilty of contributory negligence," and the old man laughed and winked at the boys. "But a house is no place to eat a melon in, and a knife is not good enough to cut a melon. Now, you fetch that melon out in the garden, by the cuc.u.mber vines, and I will show you the conditions that should surround a melon barbecue," and the old man led the way to the garden, followed by the boys, and he got them seated around in the dirt, with the growing corn on one side, a patch of sunflowers on another, a crabapple tree on one side, giving a little shade where they sat, and the alley fence on the other. The boys were anxious to begin, and each produced a toad-stabber, but Uncle Ike told them to put away the knives, and said:

"The only way to eat a melon is to break it by putting your knee on it, and taking the chunks and running your face right down into it. A n.i.g.g.e.r is the only natural melon eater. There," said he, as he crushed the brittle melon rind into a dozen pieces, and spread it open, red, and juicy, and glorious. "Now 'fall in,' as we used to say in the army,"

and the boys each grabbed a piece and began to eat and drink out of the rind, the juice smearing their faces and running down on their shirt bosoms, and Uncle Ike taking a piece of the core in his hands and trying to eat as fast as the boys did, the red and sticky juice trickling through his fingers, and the pulp painting pictures around his dear old mouth, and up his cheeks to his ears, while he tried to tell them of a day during the war when he was on the skirmish line going through a melon patch, and how the order came to lie down, and every last soldier dropped beside a melon, broke it with his bayonet, and filled himself, while the bullets whistled, and how they were all sick afterwards, and had to go to the rear because the people who owned the melons had put croton oil in them.

"Gosh, but this is great!" said the red-headed boy, as he stopped eating long enough to loosen his belt.

"You bet!" said one of the other boys; "Uncle Ike is a James dandy,"

and he looked up and bowed to a boy with an ap.r.o.n on, who came into the garden with a piece of paper in his hand, which he handed to Uncle Ike.

"What is this, a telegram?" says Uncle Ike, as he takes it with his sticky fingers and feels for his gla.s.ses.

"No, it is the bill for the melon----50 cents," said the grocer's boy.

"Bunkoed, by gosh!" says Uncle Ike, as he looks around at the laughing boys who have played it on him.

"Don't ever ask where a melon comes from," said the red-headed boy.

"Sawed a gold brick on me, you young bunko-steerers," says Uncle Ike, as he wipes his hands on some mustard and feels in his pocket for the change; "but it was worth it, by ginger," and he pays for the melon, they all go in the house and wash the melon off their hands and faces, the old man lights his pipe and says: "Boys, come around here to-morrow and play this trick on Aunt Almira, and I'll set up the root beer."

CHAPTER XV.

"Say, where you been all day?" asked Uncle Ike of the red-headed boy, as he showed up late in the afternoon, chewing a gob of gum so big that it made his ear ache. "Here, I've been waiting all day for you, with so many things on my mind to tell you about that I have had to make memorandums," and the old man took out his knife and shaved some tobacco off a plug, rolled it in his hands and sc.r.a.ped it into the pipe, and lit up for a long talk.

"I been working," said the boy, as he took some pieces of chocolate out of his pocket and offered them to his uncle. "I am working for a syndicate, and have got a soft snap, with all the money I can spend,"

and the boy shook the pennies in his pocket so they sounded like emptying a collection plate.

"Working for a syndicate, a-hem!" said the old man. "A syndicate is a great thing, if you are the syndicate, but if you work for it you get left, that's all. Now tell me about it. What you doing for a syndicate, and who furnishes you the money to spend? Tell me, so I can see whether it is honest. Somehow I can't feel that a syndicate means any good to a boy."

"It is this way, Uncle Ike," said the boy, as he threw away his gum and took another stick out of his pocket, and chewed it until he fairly drooled, "you know these slot machines in the depots and hotels, where people put in a penny and pull out a k.n.o.b and get a stick of gum or a chocolate, or some peppermint drops. Well, the syndicate wants a boy to go around and put in pennies, and get the prizes, when people are looking on, so as to get them interested, so they will put in pennies, see?"

"Sure! You are a sort of capper for a gum bunko game, eh? Rope in the people and get them next to a good thing," said Uncle Ike, looking at the boy over his gla.s.ses. "What particular talent does this new business bring to the front? Do you make speeches to the people, encouraging them to invest their hard-earned pennies in your great scheme for the amelioration of the condition of the down-trodden, or what do you do?

Tell me how the thing works."

"Why, my work is all pantomime. The man who hired me said I had a face that was worth a fortune. I go up to a slot machine, and act as though I never saw such a thing before. Then I monkey around, and seem to be puzzled, and my face looks serious, and the people in the depot waiting for trains gather around and watch me, and when the jays are all ripe, ready to pick, I put a penny in the slot, draw out a stick of gum, put it in my mouth, and then I smile one of those broad smiles, like this, and the people begin to put in pennies, and they surround the machine, and money just flows in, until their train goes, when another crowd comes in and I work them on the chocolate slot, and just blow in pennies belonging to the syndicate that owns the machines. Oh, it's a great snap, Uncle Ike. You ought to go into it," and the boy threw away his gum and went to eating chocolate.

"Is that so? My face would be my fortune, too, would it?" said Uncle Ike, who was beginning to show that he was mad. "And what salary does the syndicate pay you for your valuable services as a piece of human fly paper?"

"O, they don't pay me any salary," said the boy, as he took out a handful of syndicate pennies and poured them from one hand into another, to show the old man that he had wealth. "I don't ask anything for my services. I just get pay in fun, and have all the gum, and chocolate, and lemon drops that I can eat. The man told me it would be an experience that would be valuable to me in after life, being in the eye of the public, leading the people. He said this would be the making of me, and open up a career that would astonish my friends. Don't you think so, Uncle? Can't you see a change in me since I went to work for the syndicate?"

"Well, I don't know but I do," said Uncle Ike, as he pondered over the remarks of the boy. "You begin to look more bilious, probably on account of the chocolate you have eaten, to deceive the people at the depot into the idea that it is good stuff. And perhaps this experience will be the opening of a career. If you can, by your actions, cause strangers to run up against a slot machine, I don't see why you couldn't, in time, be a pretty good capper for a three-card monte game, where you could pick out the right card, and the jay loses his money. If this is the kind of business you have selected for a career, it will not be long before you will be in demand as a bunko-steerer. You would be invaluable, with that innocent face of yours, in roping in strangers to a robbers' roost, where they would be fleeced and thrown down stairs on their necks.

With about two days more experience on a slot machine, some gold-brick swindler will come along and raise the syndicate out on your salary, and put you on the road selling gold bricks. Starting in business as a fakir, you will rise to become a barker for a sideshow, graduate into bunko and gold bricks, and if you are not sent to the penitentiary, there is a great opening for you as a promoter of a trust in the air we breathe. We shall have to part company. My reputation is dear to me.

I have never turned a jack from the bottom when I had one to go in seven-up, and to a.s.sociate with a boy who will rope people to buy mouldy gum, and be an advance agent of prosperity as recorded on a slot machine, is too much, and I bid you good-bye. I have loved you, but it was because you were innocent and tried to do the fair thing, but--good-bye," and the old man laid down his pipe, picked up his hat and started for the door.

"Hold on, Uncle Ike," said the boy, taking the handful of pennies out of his pocket and laying them on the table, "I didn't know it was so bad. I won't do it any more. Come back, please."

"Well, I got to go downtown," said the old man, "and I will be back in an hour. In the meantime you write out a letter of resignation to the syndicate. Say that you find a diet of decayed chocolate and glucose candy is sapping the foundation of your manhood, and that your Uncle Ike has offered you a position on the staff of a gold-brick syndicate," and the old man went out, leaving the boy to write his resignation.

"Well, how is my decoy duck, and has he sent in his resignation?" said the old man, as he came in a little later and found writing material and pennies on the table, and the boy lying on the lounge looking pale and sick. "What is this? Sick the first time you have to resign an office?

That won't do. You never will make a politician if you can't write out a resignation without having it go to your head," and the old man sat down by the boy and found that he was as sick as a horse, his face white, and cold perspiration on his upper lip among the red hairs, and on his brow among the freckles. The boy's bosom was heaving, and his stomach was clearly the seat of the disease, and suddenly the boy rushed out of the room, into, the bathroom, and there was a noise such as is frequently heard on steamboat excursions. The old man thought it was the chocolate and gum that had made the boy sick, until he looked at his pipe on the table, which was smoking, although he had been away an hour or more.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Been trying to smoke the old man's pipe, eh 129]

"Been trying to smoke the old man's pipe, eh?" said he, as the boy staggered out of the bathroom so weak he could hardly stand, "Well, that plug tobacco in the pipe is a little strong for a bunko-steerer, but I suppose you thought if you were going to be a business man, and leave me, you ought to take with you some of my bad habits. Let me fill the pipe with some of this mild switchman's delight, and you try that," and he brought the pipe near to the boy.