“Uncle Ike, did you ever take many degrees in secret societies?” asked
the red-headed boy, as he saw the old gentleman reading an account of a
man who was killed during initiation into a lodge, by being spanked with
a clapboard on which cartridges had been placed.
“About a hundred degrees, I should think, without counting up,” said
Uncle Ike, as he thought over the different lodges he had belonged to in
the past fifty years. “What set you to thinking about secret societies?”
“Oh, I thought I would join a few, and have some fun. I read every
little while about some one being killed while being initiated, and it
seems to me the death rate is about as great as it is in Cuba or the
Philippines. Is there much fun in killing a man, Uncle Ike?”
“Well, not much for the man who is killed,” said the old man, as he gave
the grand hailing sign of distress for the boy to bring him his pipe
and tobacco. “Accidents will happen, you know. It isn't one man in ten
thousand that gets killed being initiated.”
“What do people join lodges for, anyway, when they are liable to croak?”
said the boy, as he passed the ingredients for a fumigation to the
uncle. “Don't you think there ought to be laws against initiating, the
same as clipping horses and cutting their tails off, or cutting off
clogs' tails and ears? What do the lodges have those funny ceremonies
for?”
“Well, a fool boy can ask more questions than the oldest man can
answer,” said Uncle Ike, as he hitched around in his chair, and looked
mysterious, as he thought of the grips and passwords he once knew. “No,
there is no occasion for laws against men going up against any game.
Most men join lodges because they think it is a good thing, and after
they have taken a few degrees they want all there are, and after awhile
the degrees keep getting harder, and they think of more to come, and by
and by they get enough. In most lodges all men are on an equal footing,
the prince and the pauper are all alike. Occasionally there is a man who
thinks because he is rich or prominent in some way, that he is smarter
than the ordinary man in a lodge. Then is the time that the rest try to
teach him humility, and show him that he is only a poor mortal. It
does some men good to have their diamonds removed, their good clothes
replaced by the tattered garments of the tramp, and then let them look
at themselves and see how little they amount to. In some lodges a man
is taught a useful lesson by stripping him to the buff and taking a
clapboard and letting a common laborer maul him until he finds out that
he is not the whole business. If that were done occasionally by society
you wouldn't find so many men looking over the common people. It would
take the starch out of some people to feel that if they put on too
many airs they would be liable to have a boot hit them any time. Lodges
sometimes make good men out of the worst material. In some lodges the
Prince of Wales would have to walk turkey right beside a well-digger,
and it would do the prince good and not hurt the well-digger. But if I
was in your place I would not join a lodge yet. Try the Salvation Army
first,” and Uncle Ike got up and went to the window, and listened to
the bugle and bass drum and tambourine of the army as it passed on its
nightly round.
“That Salvation army makes me tired,” said the red-headed boy, as he
reached for his putty blower. “Going around the streets palming that
noise off on the public for music, and scaring horses, and taking up a
collection, and singing out of tune. Say, I'll bet I can blow a chunk
of putty into that girl's bonnet and make her jump like a box car in
a collision,” and the boy opened the window and was taking aim at the
tambourine girl's bonnet when Uncle Ike reached out and took the putty
blower away from him and said:
[Illustration: It does not take opera music to get people to heaven 027]
“Don't ever worry those poor people, or let any other boy bother them
when you are around. They are entitled to the respect of all good
people. It does not take opera music to get people to heaven. Even that
wretched music they give so freely, may turn some poor wretch from
the wrong to the right way, and a poor devil who becomes a follower of
Christ from practicing following the Salvation army is just as welcome
in heaven as though he went to church with a four-in-hand and listened
to a heavenly choir that is paid a hundred dollars per. It does not seem
possible to some rich people that St. Peter is going to extend the glad
hand to a dockwolloper, and let the rich man stand out in the cold until
he tells how he used his money on earth, whether to oppress the poor or
to make them glad. Lots of men are going to be fooled thinking they are
going to get inside the pearly gates on the strength of their money, but
some of them may have to be vouched for by a Salvation army lassie. So,
boy, if you love your old uncle, always respect the religion of every
soul on earth, and don't fire putty at any girl's bonnet. You hear me?”
and the old man patted the boy on the back, and his old face looked
angelic, through the tobacco smoke cloud.
“Well, Uncle Ike, you are the queerest man I ever saw,” said the
red-headed boy, as he wiped a tear out of his eye with his shirt sleeve.
“There is nothing I can do to agree with you, until you have talked to
me a little. When I feel funny, and want to laugh, you make me cry; and
when I get serious about something, and get you to talking, you get me
to laughing. I never agree with you until you have had your say. But
I agree with you on one thing; you said the other day, when we were
talking about breach of promise, that you were never in love. That's
where you and I are alike. It makes me weary to see some boys in love
with girls, and run around after them, and make themselves laughing
stock of everybody. If a girl should get in love with me, I would tell
her to go to thunder, and I would laugh at her, and tell all the boys
she was silly. There is no good in love. I thought I liked a girl once,
and gave her a German silver ring that I got off an old china pipe stem;
and she loved me just a week, and then she shook me because the German
silver ring corroded on her finger and gave her blood poison. It wasn't
true love, or she would have stuck to me if she had been obliged to have
her finger amputated. Bah! I was so discouraged that I will never have
anything to say to a girl again, and I will grow up to be an old bach
like you, who never did love anybody but a dog. Isn't that so, Uncle
Ike?” “Did I say I never loved any woman?” said Uncle Ike, as he looked
away off, apparently his eyes penetrating the dim past, and a wet spot
on his cheek that kept getting wetter, and spreading around his face,
until he wiped it off with one end of his necktie. “Why, boy, don't you
ever tell your ma, but I have been in love enough to send a man to the
insane asylum. You think you will never love any girl again, on account
of that blood poisoning. Why, blood poison is nowhere beside love. Some
day you will have a girl pass to windward of you, and when cool air of
heaven blows a breath of her presence toward you, the love microbe will
enter your system with the odor of violets that comes from her, and
there is no medicine on earth that will cure you. The first thing you
know you will follow that girl like a poodle, and if she wants you to
walk on your hands and knees, and carry her parasol in your mouth, you
will do it. When she looks at you the perspiration will start out all
over you, and you will think there is only one pair of eyes in the
world, that all beautiful eyes have been consolidated into one pair of
blue ones, and that they are as big as moons. If you touch her hand you
will feel a thrill go up your arm and down your spine, as you do when
a four-pound bass strikes your frog when you are fishing. She will see
that your necktie is on sideways, and she will take hold of it to fix
it, and you will not breathe for fear she will go away, and when she
gets you fixed so you will pass in a crowd, you will be paralyzed all
over, and unable to move, until she beckons you to come along, and
when you start to walk you will feel all over like your foot is asleep.
Walking a block or two beside this girl will be to you better than a
trip to Europe, and a look at her face will seem to you a glimpse
of heaven, and angels, and you will leave her after the too short
interview, and you will be glad you are alive, and then you may see her
riding in a street car with another, and you will want to commit murder.
When these things occur, boy, you are in love, and you have got it bad.
You think you don't love anybody, but you will. I have been there, boy,
and there is no escape without taking to the woods, and love will make a
trail through the forest, and over glaciers, and catch you if you don't
watch out. So when love gets into your system, that way, just hold up
your hands as though a hold-up man had the drop on you with a revolver,
and let the girl go through you. The only way I escaped was that the
girl married. Now go away and let me alone, boy, or I shall have to take
you across my knee,” and the red-headed boy backed out of the room
and left Uncle Ike, his trembling fingers rattling the yellow paper of
tobacco, trying to fill his pipe, and as the boy got outdoors and blew
a charge of putty from his blower at the washwoman bending over the
wash-tub, he said:
“Well, Uncle Ike hasn't had a picnic all his life.”