“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.
“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: