Uncle Ike stood with his pipe in his left hand, his thumb pressing the
tobacco down tight, and with a match in his right hand, just ready to
scratch it on his leg, when he froze stiff in that position, and never
moved for five minutes, as he watched the red-headed boy, who had walked
into the room listlessly, his eyes staring at a picture he held in his
hand, his face so pale that the freckles looked large and dark, his lips
white as chalk, his cheeks sunken, his fingers gripping the picture, a
faded and forlorn pansy in his buttonhole, and his short clipped hair
standing up straight in rows like red beet tops in a vegetable garden.
“Anybody very dead?” said Uncle Ike, as he drew the match across the
cloth, put it to his pipe, and began to swell out his cheeks and puff,
keeping his eye on the boy, through the smoke, who had taken his eyes
from the picture, drawn a deep sigh, and sat down on the lounge, as
though he never expected to get up again.
“No, nobody dead,” said the boy, as he laid his head on a sofa pillow,
closed his eyes, and placed the picture inside his vest. “But I wish
there was. I wish I was dead.”
“How many times have I told you to put oil on cucumbers, and they
wouldn't gripe you that way?” said Uncle Ike, as he drew a chair up
beside the lounge and felt of the boy's pulse, and took his handkerchief
and wiped the perspiration off his forehead, and finally took the
picture out of his bosom and looked at it.
[Illustration: She is a nice, warm-looking girl 085]
“She is a nice, warm-looking girl, but you might have the picture on
your stomach a week, and it wouldn't draw that colic out of you,” and
Uncle Ike gazed with some admiration on the picture of the beautiful
girl, whose high forehead, bright eyes, and beautiful chin, showed that
she had the making of a rare and radiant woman.
“'Tain't colic, and I haven't et no cucumbers,” said the boy, as he
rolled his eyes up toward the roof of his head. “It's love, that's what
it is, and I am miserable, and Aunt Almira said you had been in love
over six hundred times, and could tell me what to do.”
“Well, I like your Aunt Almira's nerve,” said Uncle Ike, as he looked
half pleased at the accusation. “Of course, I have had some encounters
with the fair sex, but I have never entirely collapsed, the way you
have. What's the symptoms? Don't the girl love you?”
“Yes! Gosh, she idolizes me,” said the boy, sitting up, and getting a
little color in his face.
“Oh, then you don't love her,” said Uncle Ike, probing into the wound.
“It's false,” said the boy, getting on his feet and standing before the
old man in indignation. “I love the very ground she walks on. Say, when
I walk a few blocks with her, and can't see her again for a week, I go
around the other six days and look at the boards she walked on, and it
makes me mad to see anybody else walking where she did. I want to get
rich enough to buy all the houses we have walked by, and the street
cars we have rode in. Love her? Say, you don't know anything about love,
Uncle Ike. The love you used to have was old style, and didn't strike
in.”
“Oh, I don't know,” said Uncle Ike, “its all about the same. Was the
same in Bible times, and will be the same hundreds of years hence,
when we conquer the Philippines. Same old thing. Nobody invents any new
symptoms in the love industry. There may be new languages to express
it in, but it is just plain, every-day love. But if you both love each
other, what is the use of all this colic?”
“Why, you see, she has to dissemble. That's what she says. She can't go
with me all the time, and when I see her with anybody else it seems as
though it would kill me. I know she does not smile at anybody else the
way she does at me, but the condum fools might think she did, and love
her. I know if one of those ducks should squeeze her hand, she would
be mad, and cuff him, but I could squeeze her hand till her fingers
cracked, and she would enjoy it.”
“I see,” said Uncle Ike, smoking right along. “You are like a man who
owns the most beautiful diamond in the world, and is not allowed for
some reason to be known as its owner, but is allowed to wear it only two
hours a week, and then other people are allowed to wear it. You know it
is yours, and yet when it is in the possession of others, you don't dare
go and claim it, and they wear it as though they own it, and people see
it in their possession and admire it, as it sparkles and throws rays of
sunshine, and think how lucky is the man who wears it. Isn't that about
your idea? She is yours, body and soul, but has not been delivered to
you, eh?”
“Sure! That's it, exactly. What shall I do, Uncle Ike?”
“Shut up!” said the old man; “that is what you want to do. Brace up;
you have no cause to worry. I can tell by that face of hers. When she is
going with other boys, as she must, she is thinking of you all the time,
and wishing your red head was in place of that of the kid who is buying
ice-cream soda for her. When she walks about the streets she is thinking
of when you were with her at the same place. And when you are permitted
to pass an hour with her she will convince you in a minute that you are
all the world to her, and that the other ducks are not in it. I can
tell by her eyes, boy, and her mouth, and her whole face, that she is a
thoroughbred.”
“Well, I swan, Uncle Ike, you are better than a doctor,” and the
red-headed boy began to hug the old man, and dance around, and kick
high, and he took the picture and looked at it, and said: “Nobody but a
chump would doubt that girl,” and the boy suddenly became himself again,
reassured as to the position he held in the mind of his girl, by a few
words of kindly advice at the right time, when the boy was on the verge
of suicide. He laughed and pinched himself to be sure he was awake, and
then took on a serious look and said: “Uncle Ike, do you think it will
take two hundred years, honestly, to subjugate the Filipinos, and tame
them, so that they will eat out of our hands?”
“Well, we ought to do it in half the time the Spaniards have been trying
and failed,” said the old man, as he slapped a mosquito that was eating
him. “There, you see that mosquito is dead. No doubt about that, is
there? But what effect does the death of that mosquito have on the nine
or ten million of his race that are out here in the woods? This one
simply got through the screen, and bucked up against a sure thing,
and his bravery, or gall, got him killed, and I may think I am a hero
because I killed him. But let me take my gun and go out in the woods, or
on the marsh, where there are a million mosquitos to one of me, and what
kind of a life will they let me lead? I should have to be slapping and
kicking all the time, and couldn't attend to my shooting. It is just so
with those Filipinos. They will stay in the jungles and breed, and enjoy
the malaria and the rainy season, and a few will go around the camps and
sing their songs, and keep the soldiers awake, and bite and poison
them, and shoot and stab, and when the soldiers chase them they will
go farther into the jungle, harass the flanks of the boys that are
discouraged, and when another year is gone there will be more Filipinos
than there are now, better armed, and hating the Americans worse than
ever.. We may take towns, hold them if we have troops enough, and start
a new graveyard at every place we try to hold, and when we give it up
and go away, the human mosquitos will return buzzing and biting, and
they will dig up the remains of some mother's boy, just to get the
gold filling out of his teeth. If the war keeps on a few hundred years,
instead of one large cemetery at Manila, that can be watched and kept
a sacred spot, we shall have hundreds of small graveyards all over the
archipelago, where the boys in blue that are buried will find it mighty
lonesome when we take the living soldiers away. No, boy, it will not
take two hundred years to subdue the Filipinos. That is, we will not be
working at the job that long, because we are not built that way. If we
find we have got into a hornet's nest, and that the hornets don't
have any honey, anyway, and that we don't need hornets in our regular
business, somebody in authority will be apt to know when we have got
enough, and we will probably shake the dice with some nation that is
so addicted to gambling that it had as soon shake dice for hornets as
anything, and we will let them play loaded dice on us, and shake sixes,
and we will turn up deuces and trays, and let them win the condemned
mess of hornets that didn't give honey, and that have nothing but
stings, and wish whoever wins the hornets much joy. Understand me, boy,
I am not saying anything against the policy of our administration, if it
has got one, and I will hold up my hands and root for the army as long
as it is in the game, and will encourage the President all I can to do
what he thinks is right, but I shall always feel that Spain sold him a
gold brick for 20,000,000 plunks, and that he has not yet found out that
it is made of brass. I know the tobacco trust, and the cordage trust,
and lots of other trusts that are interested, are trying to make him
believe that the gold brick he bought is good stuff, and that he must
protect it, or some other nation will get it away from him, but you wait
until that Scotch-Irish blood of the President begins to boil, when he
finds out that he has been bunkoed, and he will get those trust magnates
together some day, and he will get pale around the gills, and mad as a
wet hen, and he will say that he has heard about all the funeral dirges
on the longdistance telephone from Manila that he wants to hear, and
that the wails of the mourning mothers of the dying boys are keeping him
awake nights, and that he has got about enough, trying to put bells
on the Filipino wildcats, and that they can take the whole Philippine
archipelago and go plum to hades with it, for he is going to stop the
death rate, and get those boys home and set them to plowing corn.”
“Oh, Uncle Ike, don't get excited. I only wanted to change the subject
from my own troubles to the troubles of our country,” and he went out
singing, “There's Only One Girl in All This World for Me,” while Uncle
Ike took off his collar and wiped the perspiration off his neck, and
fanned himself awhile, and then lit his pipe, smoked a spell, and
finally said: “Well, it is none of my condum business, anyway, I
s'pose.”