“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 scraped 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 knob 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 glasses. “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 associate 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.
[Illustration: 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.
“Take it away, take it away,” said a weak voice, coming from under a
pillow on the lounge. “Oh, Uncle Ike, I will never touch a pipe again.
You look so happy when you are smoking that I thought I would like to
learn, so I lit the pipe, and drew on it, and the smoke wouldn't come,
and I drew in my breath whole length, as I do when I dive off a spring
board, and the whole inside of the pipe came into my mouth, and I
swallowed the whole business, and pretty soon it felt as though a
pin-wheel had been touched off inside of me, and the sparks flew out of
my nose, and the smoke came out of my ears, and they turned on the water
in my eyes, and my mouth puckered up and acted salivated, like I had
eaten choke-cherries, and pretty soon the pin-wheel in my stomach began
to run down, and I thought I was going to stop celebrating, when the
pin-wheel seemed to touch off a nigger-chaser, and it went to fizzing
all around inside of me, up into my lungs, and down around my liver, and
it called at all my vital parts and registered its name, and when the
nigger-chaser seemed to be dying it touched off an internal skyrocket,
and s-i-z-boom--that was when I went in the bathroom, 'cause I was
afraid of the stick. Say, Uncle Ike, does anyone ever die from smoking
plug tobacco?”
“Oh, yes, about half of them die, when they smoke it the first time.
When their eyes roll up, like yours, and they cease to be hungry, and
feel as though they had rather lie clown than stand up, they don't last
very long,” and the old man looked serious, and reached for his pipe and
a match, and said: “Any last message you want to send to anybody; any
touching good-bye? If you do, whisper it to me, and I will write your
dying statement.”
“Don't light that dum pipe!” said the boy, rolling over and looking
like a seasick ghost, as Uncle Ike was about to scratch a match on his
trousers. “Here is the address of my girl. Write to her that I am dead.
That I died thinking of her, and smelling of plug tobacco. Put it in
that I died of appendicitis, or something fashionable, and say that
eight doctors performed eight operations on me, but peritonitis had set
in, and there was no use, but that they cut a swath in me big enough to
drive an automobile through. I had rather she would think of me as dying
a heroic death, than dying smoking plug tobacco. And, say, Uncle Ike,
after you have written her, don't make a mistake and send my resignation
to the syndicate to her. O, God! but it is hard to die so young,” and
the boy went to sleep on the lounge, and Uncle Ike went to taking the
kinks out of a fish line, knowing that when the boy woke up he wouldn't
be dead worth a cent. About half an hour later the boy rolled over,
opened his big eyes, sat up, and stared around, and Uncle Ike said:
“Now, you go in the bath-room and wash your face in cold water, and
you will be all right,” and the boy did so, and came back with almost a
smile on his face, and he looked at the papers on the table, and said:
“Uncle Ike, you didn't send that appendicitis story to my girl, did you?
Gosh, but I am all right now, and I am not going to die.”
“No, I didn't send it; but next time I will, by ginger,” and the old man
laughed. “Here, have a smoke on me,” but the boy went out in the open
air and kicked himself.