Uncle Ike sat and smoked his pipe in silence for a few minutes, blew the
smoke out in clouds, and looked at it as though searching for something,
and there was a serious look on his face, as though he was trying to
fathom some mystery, while the redheaded boy was looking at himself in a
hand mirror to see if the freckles on his nose were any smaller since
he had been using some of his mother's toilet powder to remove them.
Finally Uncle Ike put the bowl of the pipe to his nose and smelled of
the burning tobacco, turned up his nose and snuffed, and said:
[Illustration: Something the matter with this 'ere terbacker 017]
“There is something the matter with this 'ere terbacker. I suppose the
terbacker makers have got into a trust, and they don't care how the
stuff smells. Condemned if I ain't half a mind to quit smoking and break
up the trust.”
“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” said the red-headed boy, “that I fixed your
tobacco for you so it would not smell so bad. I put some cinnamon bark
and wiener skins in it.”
“Well, of all things!” said Uncle Ike, as he emptied the tobacco out of
the pipe by rapping it on the heel of his boot, and looked sick. “What
in the name of heaven is wiener skins?”
“Why, it is the envelope that goes around a wiener sausage. Us boys were
smoking cigarettes one day made of paper and dried dandelion leaves, and
the boy at the butcher shop said if we would dry some wiener skin and
cut it up and put it in the cigarette and smoke it, it would make the
finest flavor, and make us strong. I tried it, and the cigarette smelled
just like camping out and cooking over a camp-fire, and the next day I
was so strong ma noticed it. I thought you were getting old, and I would
make you strong and young again. Don't you notice how different the
smoke smells since I fixed the tobacco? I was going to put in some red
pepper pods, but----”
“Here, hold on!” said Uncle Ike. “The butcher has got you mixed up. He
was giving you a recipe for a Mexican pudding. But don't you ever try
any experiments on your Uncle Ike any more. I don't want to be made
strong any more on sausage skins. A gymnasium is good enough for me, and
it don't smell like burning a negro at the stake. I know anything would
help the flavor of this terbacker, but I have got used to it, after
about sixty years burning it under my nose, and, if the trust will
not water the stock with baled hay or cut cabbage, I will try and pull
through as it is. So you experiment on yourself, condemn you! I knew it
was you that had disturbed my terbacker. I can tell by the freckles on
your face when you have done anything wrong. A boy that is freckled
has got to be square, or I am right on to him. When you are guilty, the
freckles on your nose are changeable; one will be yellow, like saffron,
and another freckle seems pale, and little drops of perspiration appear
between the freckles; and then several small freckles will combine into
one, like a trust, and you are given completely away. So remember, as
long as you wear freckles, if you do anything crooked, there is a sign
right on your face that tells the tale.”
“Say, Uncle Ike, what is a trust?” asked the redheaded boy, anxious to
turn the subject away from wiener skins and freckles. “What good does a
trust do?”
“Well, a trust is one of these things,” said Uncle Ike, as he opened
a new paper of tobacco, and threw the old paper, that had been treated
with foreign substances, into the fire, “one of these things that are
for the benefit of the dear people. You have heard of selling a gold
brick, haven't you? The man who sells a gold brick has a brass brick
made with a hole in it, in which he puts some gold, and he lets the jay
who wants to invest in raw gold test it by putting acid on the place
where the gold is filled in, and the jay finds that the brick is solid
gold, and he buys it, after mortgaging his farm to raise the money. The
man sells the gold brick cheap, because the jay is his friend, and when
he has got out of the country the jay tries to sell his gold brick for
eight hundred dollars, and he gets two dollars and eighty cents for
it. That is one kind of a trust. The trust you mean is a combination of
several factories, for instance. The promoter gets all the factories in
one line of business to combine. They pay each factory proprietor more
than his business is worth, and he is tickled, but they only pay him
part money, and give him stock in the combine for the balance, and let
him run his old business, now owned by others, at a good salary, and he
gets the big head and buys a rubber-tired carriage, and sends his family
to Europe. Then the trust closes down his factory and throws his men out
of employment, lowers the price of goods to run out others who have not
entered the trust, and the people who get goods cheap say a trust is the
noblest work of God. After the outsiders have been ruined, and the man
who entered the trust in good faith has spent the money they gave him,
and tries to sell the stock he received, it has gone down to seven cents
on a dollar, and the trust buys it in, and he cables his family to come
home in the steerage of a cattle ship. His old employees have gone
to the poorhouse or to selling bananas with a cart, and the former
manufacturer who was happy and prosperous has become poor and shabby,
and he looks at his closed factory, with its broken windows, and he
tries to get a position pushing a scraper on the asphalt pavement, and
if he fails he either jumps off the pier into the lake, or takes a gun
and goes gunning for the trust promoter who ruined him. And after the
factory man is drowned, or sent to the penitentiary for murder, the
stock in the trust takes a bound and is away above par, and he hasn't
got any of it, and the poor competitors of the trust having been ruined
and closed up, prices of the goods go up kiting, and the dear people who
said a trust was the noblest work of God say it is the dumbdest work of
man, and they pass resolutions to down the trust, while the owners
of the good stock in the trust stick out their fat stomachs, full of
champagne and canvasback and terrapin, and laugh at the people till they
nearly die of apoplexy, and drive bob-tailed horses that live better
than the people, and carry blanketed dogs on velvet-cushioned carriages,
that would turn up their noses at good wiener skins worse than I did
when you loaded my tobacco, you little red-headed rascal,” and Uncle Ike
drew a long breath, and brought his fist down on the table in anger, as
he got worked up over the wrongs of the people at the hands of the gold
brick trusts.
“Gosh,” said the red-headed boy, as his eyes kept opening wider and
wider when he took in all Uncle Ike had said, “I should think the people
would have the trusts arrested for breach of promise.”
“What do you know about breach of promise?” said Uncle Ike, coloring up
and looking foolish. “Who has been telling you about my being arrested
once for breach of promise? If your mother has told you about that old
trouble I had, I'll leave this house and go board at a tavern.”
“I never heard anything about it, Uncle Ike, so help me. I never heard
that you was ever in love.”
“I never was in love,” said the old man, as he loaded up the pipe again,
“except with my pipe. That affair was a clear case of a dog getting
stuck on a man, and the owner of the dog thinking she was being loved.
You see I went to a summer resort years ago, and got acquainted with a
widow. She was a sweet creature, but I never said a word to her about
marriage. She had a pug dog, and I petted the dog, and called it to me,
and, do you know, that dog got so he would follow me, and set on my lap,
and come to my room, and whine, until I got scared. I talked with the
widow some, and once I took her and the dog out boat riding, but I never
gave her any cause to think that I was in love with her. But you ought
to have seen that dog. He just doted on me. I encouraged it till all the
guests at the hotel began to notice that I was very dear to the dog, and
the widow looked on smilingly and encouraged the intimacy. Then I tried
to drive the dog away from me, but he would curl up at my feet and look
up at me in such a loving manner that I weakened. Then the widow began
to hint at her desire to have someone that the dog could look up to and
love, and it was getting too warm, and I left the summer resort, and was
sued for breach of promise. Of course I didn't know what the woman or
the dog would swear to, so I settled for a thousand dollars. The next
year I called at the summer resort, and found the dog stuck on another
man, and I know just as well as can be that the widow paid her expenses
each summer by that dog getting in love with men, and I have never
looked at a woman twice since.”
“Served them right,” said the boy, who had an idea that Uncle Ike was
right about everything. “I don't take much stock in girls myself. I am
mighty glad I haven't got any sister. The boys that have got sisters are
in hot water all the time, and have to go home with them from parties,
and carry their rubbers to school when it rains, and fight for them
if the other boys call them tomboys. Sisters are no good,” and the
red-headed boy looked smart, as though he had said something Uncle Ike
would applaud.
“There, that will do,” said Uncle Ike, as he put his hand in the boy's
hair to warm it. “Don't let me ever hear you say a word against sisters
again. You don't know anything about sisters. They are great. Let me
tell you a story. I know a man who is away up in public affairs, at the
head of his profession in his county, and one the world will hear more
about some of these days. He was just such a little shrimp as you are,
when he was a boy. He got out of the high school, and was going to clerk
in a feed store, when his sister took him one side, one Sunday, and told
him she wanted him to go to college. He almost fainted away at the idea.
There wasn't much money in the family to burn on a boy's education, and
he knew it, and he asked where the money was to come from. This little
sister of the poor boy said she would furnish the money. She knew that
he would be one of the great men of the country, if he had a college
education, and it was arranged for him to go to college, this little
sister being his backer financially. She had a musical education, and
began to look for chances to make money. She took scholars in music, and
was so anxious to make money for this brother to blow in on an education
that she fairly forced music into all her pupils, working night and day,
often with her head ready to split open with pain, but every week she
rounded up money enough to send to that brother at college, and for four
years there never was a Monday morning that he did not get a postoffice
order from that sweet girl, and every day a letter of encouragement, and
advice, and when he graduated a pale girl stood below the platform with
bright eyes and a feverish cheek, and when he came down off the
platform with his diploma he grasped her in his arms and said, 'Sister,
darling,' and kissed her in the presence of five thousand people, and
she fainted. She had worked as no man works, for four years, and the
result was a brother, a lawyer, a grand man, who loves that sister as
though she was an angel from heaven. So, confound you, if I ever hear
you say a word against sisters again, I will take you across my knee
and you will think the millennium has come and struck you right on the
pants,” and Uncle Ike patted the boy on the cheek, and said they had
better go out and catch a mess of fish.