Uncle Ike had been reading the morning paper, as he sat before the grate
fire, in the sitting room, while the red-headed boy was using a slate
and pencil trying to figure out something to make it match the answer
as given in the arithmetic, and having guessed the answer right he was
drawing a picture of Uncle Ike and his pipe, and occasionally wetting
his finger in his mouth and rubbing out some feature of the old man that
didn't suit. He had the old man pictured in a football costume of padded
trousers, nose guard, ear guard, knee pads, and all the different things
used in football, and when he showed the picture to Uncle Ike, that old
citizen sighed, though he looked a bit pleased that he should be the
study of so eminent an artist. Uncle Ike had been reading that there was
to be a football game that afternoon, between the State university
and Beloit college, and he wanted to go like a dog, but he had abused
football so much that he was ashamed to speak of going.
“I hope you are not interested in that disreputable game,” said
Uncle Ike, knocking the ashes out of his pipe on the andirons of the
fireplace. “I hope you don't want to go and see respectable boys maimed
and killed, and knocked down and dragged out, and sandbagged, and
brained. I have seen a bull fight in Mexico, but I never want to see
anything as bloody as a football game,” and the old man winked to
himself, and filled the pipe.
“Oh, what you giving me?” said the boy, jumping up in indignation.
“Football is no worse than the old-fashioned pullaway you used to play.
I am going to see this game through a knothole in the fence I rented
from a boy who has the knothole concession at the baseball park.”
“No, you don't,” said Uncle Ike, “you will go in the gate like a
gentleman. No nephew of mine is going to grow up and be a knothole
audience. You get two or three of your chums and come around here
about 2 o'clock, and I will go with you, and stand between you and the
sluggers, and see this game out. I don't want to go, and detest the
game, but I will go to please you,” and the old man looked wise and
fatherly.
“Oh, you don't want to go, like the way the woman kept tavern in
Michigan,” said the boy, as he edged toward the door.
“How was it that the woman kept the hotel in Michigan?” he asked,
looking mad.
“Like hades,” said the boy, “only the man who told me about it said she
kept tavern like h----l, but I wouldn't say that in the presence of my
dear old uncle,”, and the boy slipped out ahead of a slipper that was
kicked at him by the laughing old man.
So in the afternoon Uncle Ike, the red-headed boy and two chums appeared
at the gate, the old man plunked down two dollars with a chuckle, asked
if he could smoke his pipe in there, and was told that he could smoke a
factory chimney if he wanted to, and they went in and got seats on the
bleachers, and as they sat down the old man said it was almost exactly
like the bull ring in Mexico. The boys explained to him that the red
ribbons were university colors and the yellow belonged to Beloit, and he
must choose which side he would root for. As the red matched his flannel
underwear and his flushed face, he said he was for the university,
and then the boys explained the game, about carrying the ball, getting
touchdowns, kicking goal, and half-back and quarter-back, and when the
teams came in and the crowd yelled, Uncle Ike felt hurt, because it
made so much noise, and people acted crazy. Uncle Ike looked the players
over, and he said that big fellow from Beloit was John L. Sullivan in
disguise, and wanted him ruled off. The play began, the ball shot out
behind the crowd, a man grabbed it and started to run, when someone
grabbed him by the legs and he went down, with the whole crowd on top of
him. Uncle Ike raised up on his feet and waved his pipe, and when one
of the men did not get up and they brought water and tried to bring him
back to life, he shouted: “That is murder. I saw that fellow with the
black socks strike him with a hatchet. Police!” but someone behind him
yelled to him to sit down, and the red-headed boy pulled his coat tail,
he sat down, and the game went on, but Uncle Ike was mad, because the
dead boy was playing as lively as anybody.
Then a man got the ball and started on a run down the field, with the
whole crowd after him, and finally they got him down and Uncle Ike stood
up again and said: “Stop the game. I saw a fellow trip him up, and pound
him with a billy, and stab him. Say, boys, he's dead, sure. Where's the
police? Ain't there no ambulance here? Kill the umpire!” he shouted,
remembering that he was an old baseball fan.
[Illustration: Where's the police 195]
“Oh, don't worry, Uncle Ike, they are all right,” said the boy, waving
a long piece of red ribbon, as the two bands tried to play a “Hot Time”
and a waltz at the same time. “Now watch the kangaroo kick off,” and as
he kicked the ball the whole length of the field the old man simply sat
still and said:
“Gee whiz, but that was a corker. U-rah-u-rah!” and the only way to stop
him was to feed him peanuts.
From an enemy of football the old man was rapidly becoming its friend.
When the men came together at first, and went down in a heap, legs
flying in all directions, and noises like heavy blows coming to him, he
would swear he saw a man strike another with a mallet, but later in the
game he said it served the man right, and he ought to have been hit with
an ax, and before the game was over he was so interested that he got
down off the bleachers, leaned over the railing and yelled at the''
combatants to eat 'em up, and when the game was over he rushed into the
field, hugging the players, and saying that it was the greatest thing
that ever was, and offering to act as one of the bearers to the funeral,
if anybody had been killed, and when the boys got him out of the grounds
he took up the whole sidewalk, waving his ribbons, tied on his cane,
shouting the university yell till he frothed at the mouth, and on the
way home he took the boys into a store and bought them a new football,
and insisted that they come into the front yard and play a game every
morning, and offered to have the shrubbery cut down to give them room.
As they got home, and the other boys had gone away, the red-headed boy
said:
“Uncle Ike, you have disgraced the whole family. You went to the
football game under protest, a quiet, inoffensive citizen, ostensibly to
take care of us boys, and the first jump out of the box you got crazy,
and we had a terrible time to get you home. I don't suppose you remember
what you did do out there. Do you remember of putting your arm around a
strange lady, and hugging her, and telling her to yell? Her husband is
looking for you with a gun. Do you remember of grabbing a young woman
sitting in front of you, just as they made a touchdown, pulling her head
over into your lap, and patting her cheeks with your great big hands,
and telling her she ought to marry a football player? Her brother
is coming up street now with a baseball club. I suppose you have no
recollection of jumping up and sitting down in the lap of a woman in the
seat behind you, throwing your arms around her, and telling her she was
a darling, and squeezing her till you broke her corset. She says you
offered her marriage, and her lawyer will be here in the morning to find
out what you are going to do about it. I think you better be examined by
doctors to see if you are not getting nutty, and let them send you to a
sanitarium,” and the boy sighed, and looked at the old man as though his
heart was broken.
“Say, did I do any of those things?” asked Uncle Ike, as he got up
and looked out of the window, and then locked the door, and acted
frightened. “Well, I'll be dumbed! I recollect the woman in front of me,
and the one behind, but I pledge you my word that I did not know that
I hugged anybody. I am willing to apologize, but I'll be condemned if
I marry any of 'em, and I'm not crazy. That confounded game got me all
mixed up, and I may have acted different from what I would ordinarily,
but it was not my intention to propose to any female.”
“But say, Uncle Ike, what did you think of the game as a means of
building up muscle, pluck, push, get there, and general usefulness?”
asked the boy.
“Greatest thing I ever saw,” said Uncle Ike, as he looked out of the
window, to see if any females he might have hugged in his excitement
were out there waiting for him. “Say, I saw young fellows in that game
that I used to know, who would cry if taken across their father's knee,
and beg for mercy, and they would rush into the most dangerous position,
and if knocked silly they would smile, never groan, and suck a swallow
of water out of a sponge, and go in for another knockdown. That game
will make men of the weak boys, and cause them to be afraid of nothing
that walks. The boy who pushes, and tackles, and runs through a
wilderness of other boys who are trying to down him, and get his pigskin
away, will become the pushing business man who will go through the line
of business progress, and make a touchdown in his enterprise, and he
will kick a commercial or professional goal, over the heads of all
competitors. Life is only a football game, after all. Every man in
business who is worth his salt is a pusher, a shover, a tackier, a
punter, or half-back, and the unsuccessful ones are the ones who carry
the water to bring the business players to, when they become overheated,
and do the yelling and hurrahing when the pushing business man in the
football game of life makes a touchdown. It is these rough players that
become the rough riders when war comes to the country, and they rush
the ball up San Juan hill in the face of the Spanish tacklers, and the
interference of barbed wire and other things. War is a football game
also, and the recruiting officers are not looking for the weak sisters
who can't push and shove, and fight, and fall over each other, and
when wounded laugh and say it is nothing serious. A country that has a
majority of its boys growing up to fight on the football field for fun,
has no cause to fear any war that may come to it, for if they will fight
like that in good nature, to uphold the colors of their college, what
will they do to uphold 'Old Glory,' which comprises the dearest colors
in all the world? Yes, boy, you can go on playing football, and if you
are injured your Uncle Ike will pay all the expenses, and sit up nights
with you, but you better not take me to any more games, for the first
thing you know I will be bringing home here more wives than that Utah
congressman has got. Now, go rest up, and next week I will take you to
see President McKinley, at the hotel here, and you will see him throw
his arms around me and say, 'Hello, Uncle Ike!' I used to know him when
he wasn't President,” and Uncle Ike dismissed the boy, and sat by the
window till dark, looking out to see if anybody was coming to claim his
hand in marriage, and wondering if he did make as big a fool of himself
at the football game as the boys said he did.