Produced by David Widger
PECK'S UNCLE IKE AND THE RED HEADED BOY
By George W. Peck
Alexander Belford & Co. - 1899
[Illustration: cover]
[Illustration: frontispiece]
[Illustration: titlepage]
To the Typical American Boy,
The boy who is not so awfully good, along at first, but just good
enough; the boy who does not cry when he gets hurt, and goes into all
the dangerous games there are going, and goes in to win; the boy who
loves his girl with the same earnestness that he plays football, and
who takes the hard knocks of work and play until he becomes hardened
to anything that may come to him in after life; the boy who will
investigate everything in the way of machinery, even if he gets his
fingers pinched, and learns how to make the machine that pinched him;
the boy who, by study, experience, and mixing up with the world, knows
a little about everything that he will have to deal with when he
grows up--the all-around boy, that makes the all-around man, ready for
anything, from praying for his country's prosperity to fighting for its
honor; the boy who grows up qualified to lead anything, from the german
at a dance to an army in battle; the boy who can take up a collection
in church, or take up an artery on a man injured in a railroad accident,
without losing his nerve; the boy who can ask a blessing if called upon
to do so, or ask a girl's ugly father for the hand of his daughter in
marriage, without choking up; the boy who grows up to be a man whom all
men respect, all women love, and whom everybody wants to see President
of the United States, this book is respectfully dedicated by
The Author.
CHAPTER I.
“Here, Uncle Ike, let me give you a nice piece of paper, twisted up
beautifully, to light your pipe,” said the red-headed boy, as Uncle Ike,
with his long clay pipe, filled with ill-smelling tobacco, was feeling
in his vest pocket for a match. “I should think nice white paper would
be sweeter to light a pipe with than a greasy old match scratched on
your pants,” and the boy lighted a taper and handed it to the old man.
“No, don't try any new tricks on me,” said Uncle Ike, as he brought out
a match, from his vest pocket, picked off the shoddy that had collected
on it in the bottom of his pocket, and hitched his leg around so he
could scratch it on his trousers leg. “I have tried lighting my pipe
with paper, and the odor of the paper kills the flavor of this 10-cent
tobacco. Now, the brimstone on a match, added to the friction of the
trousers leg, helps the flavor of the tobacco,” and he drew the match
across his trousers, and lighted his pipe, and as the smoke began to
fill the room his good old face lighted up as though he had partaken
of a rich wine. “I like to get a little accustomed to brimstone here
on this earth, so, if I get on the wrong road when I die, and go where
brimstone is the only fuel, I won't appear to the neighbors down there
as though I was a tenderfoot. Wherever I go, I always want to appear as
though it wasn't my first trip away from home. Ah, children,” said the
old man, as he blew smoke enough out of his mouth to call out a fire
department, and laughed till the windows rattled, “there is lots of
fun in this old world, if your pipe don't go out. Don't miss any fun,
because when you die you don't know whether there is any fun going on or
not.”
“I believe, Uncle Ike, that you would have fun anywhere,” said the boy,
as he thought of the funny stories the old man had told him for many
years, and listened to the laugh that acted as punctuation marks to all
of Uncle Ike's remarks. “I would hate to trust you at a funeral. Did you
ever laugh at a funeral, Uncle?”
“I came mighty near it once,” said the old man, as he put his little
finger in the pipe and pressed down the ashes, and let the smoke out
again like the chimney of a factory.
“O, my! why don't they make you use a smoke consumer on that pipe, or
cause you to use smokeless tobacco?” said the boy, as he coughed till
the tears came to his eyes. “It looks in this room like burning a tar
barrel when Dewey sunk the Spanish fleet. But tell us about your funny
funeral.”
“O, it wasn't so funny,” said the old man, as he stroked the stubble
on his chin, and a twinkle came all around his eyes. “It was only my
thoughts that come near breaking up the funeral. There was an old friend
of mine years ago, a newspaper man, who was the most genial and loving
soul I ever knew, but he stuttered so you couldn't help laughing to hear
him. He could write the most beautiful things without stuttering, but
when he began to talk, and the talk would not come, and he stammered,
and puckered up his dear face, and finally got the words out, chewed up
into little pieces, with hyphens between the syllables, you had to
laugh or die. We were great friends, and used to smoke and tell stories
together, and pass evenings that I can now recall as the sweetest of my
life. There were many things in which we were alike. We smoked the same
kind of tobacco, in clay pipes, and lived on the same street, and, after
an evening of pleasure, whichever of us was the least wearied with the
day's work and night of enjoyment walked home with the other. We used
to talk about the hereafter, and promised each other to see that the
one that died first should not have a funeral sermon that would give us
taffy. It was my friend's idea that, if the minister spread it on too
thick, he would raise up in the coffin and protest. He was not what you
would call a good Christian, as the world goes, but I would trust him
to argue with St. Peter about getting inside the gate, because, if his
stutter ever got St. Peter to laughing, my friend would surely get in.
Well, he died, and I was one of the bearers at the funeral, with seven
others of his old friends; and when the minister was picturing the
virtues of the deceased which he never possessed, one of the bouquets on
the coffin rolled off on the floor, and I thought of what my friend had
said about calling the minister down, and in my imagination I could see
the old fellow raising up in the coffin and stuttering, and puckering
up his face there on that solemn occasion, and for about ten seconds it
seemed as though I would split with laughter; but I held it in, and we
got the good old genius buried all right, but it was a terrible strain
on my vest buttons,” and the old smoker lighted another match on his
trousers and started the pipe, which had grown cold as he talked of the
stuttering remains.
“O, say, Uncle Ike,” said the boy, as he shuddered a little at the idea
of a stuttering corpse talking back at a minister, “speaking of heaven,
do you think the men that furnished embalmed beef to the soldiers and
made them sick in Cuba will get to heaven when they die?”
“That depends a good deal on whether a political pull is any good
over there,” said Uncle Ike, as he reached for the yellow paper of
tobacco and filled up the clay pipe again. “_I think a soldier is the
noblest work of God_. A young man who has got everything just as he
wants it at home, parents who love him, and perhaps a girl who believes
he is the dearest man that ever wore a choker collar; who hears that his
country needs help, and gives up his spring mattress, his happy home,
his evenings with the dearest girl in the world, gives up baking powder
biscuits and strawberry shortcake, and enlists to go to Cuba, and sleeps
on the ground in the mud, gets malaria, and fights on his knees when he
is too weak to stand up, deserves something better than decayed meat,
and I believe the people who furnished that stuff for the boys are going
right straight to hell when they die,” and a look of revenge and horror
and indignation came over the old man's face that the boy had not seen
before in all the years he had known his uncle. “No, sir,” said he;
“the smell of that canned beef will stick to the garments of those who
prepared it and those who furnished it to those boys; and if one of them
got into heaven by crawling under the canvas, every angel there would
hold her nose and make up a face, and they would send for the devil
with his pitchfork to' throw him out. The verdict of no board of
investigation is going to be received as a passport to heaven.”
[Illustration: A dog biscuit would have been mince pie 011]
“Why, a dog biscuit would have been mince pie to the soldiers in
comparison to the stuff the rich beef packers furnished to those young
noblemen with the kyack uniforms on. To make a little more money, men
who have millions of dollars to burn, bilked a weak and overworked set
of officials with incipient paresis and locomotor ataxia in their walk
and conversation, and sawed on to them stuff that self-respecting pigs
could not have digested without taking pepsin tablets; and with that
embalmed and canned outrage on humanity in their stomachs those brave
men charged in the face of an enemy, and were hungry heroes, loaded with
decayed beef from a country that produces the finest food in the world.
Tramps, begging at the back gates of American homes, were living on
the fat of the land; dogs could gnaw fresh and sweet meat off of bones
thrown away, and laugh at our soldiers carrying Old Glory to victory
up hills shelled and bulleted and barbed-wire fenced. A bullet from a
Spanish gun, entering the stomach of an American soldier, turned black
when it came in contact with the embalmed beef there, and poisoned the
brave soldier, and made him die, with thoughts of home, and mother,
and sweetheart, and his lips closed for the last time, silent as to his
wrongs, uncomplaining as to the murder committed by the millionaires
at home. The business of packing meat ought to be combined with the
undertaking business, so you could order your meat and your coffin from
the same man. By cracky! Boy, I am so mad when I think of it, that I
don't want to go to heaven if those people go there. Go out, dears, for
a minute, for I want to use language that you can't find in the school
books!” and Uncle Ike got up out of his chair, pale with anger, and
smashed his pipe on the stone hearth, and a tear rolled down his cheek.
“Why, Uncle Ike, I didn't mean to make you cry,” said the red-headed
boy, as he backed out of the room, frightened at the old man.
“Well, never mind, boy; don't worry about your Uncle Ike, because at my
age, when a man gets mad clear through, he has to have vent, or bust,”
and the old fellow laughed as hearty as though he had never been mad
in his life. “But I have a tender spot for soldiers who go to fight for
their country, and when they are abused I feel that somebody is guilty
of treason. I was a soldier in the war between the North and South, and
have seen soldiers hungry, so hungry that they would take raw corn out
of the nosebags of mules that were eating it, until a mule would begin
to kick seven ways for Sunday when he saw a soldier coming; but it
couldn't be helped, because the government couldn't keep up with the
soldiers with rations, when they were on the jump night and day. But,
do you know we had fun all the time we were hungry? There were Irish
soldiers in my regiment who would keep you good natured when you were
ready to die. The Irish soldier is so funny and so cheerful that he
should have good pay. If I was going to raise a regiment, I would have
one Irish soldier, at least, to every seven other soldiers, and my Irish
boy would keep them all laughing by his wit, so they would stand any
hardship. I have seen an Irish boy parch his corn that he had stolen
from a mule, spread it out on a saddle blanket in four piles, go and ask
three officers to dine with him, and, when they sat down on the ground
to eat the parched corn, he wouldn't let them begin the meal until he
made a welcoming speech, and had the chaplain ask a blessing over the
corn; and then he would go without his share, and tell funny stories
until the guests would laugh until they almost choked. The Irish soldier
is worth his weight in gold in any army, boy, and he is in all
armies, on one side or the other, and generally on both sides. The only
objection I have to an Irishman is that he smokes one of these short
pipes,” and the old man lit up his long clay pipe, and let the boy go
out to think over the lesson of the morning.