“The technique,” said Uncle Ike, looking wise, “is what we musicians call the—the—get there, Eli. You know when a girl is singing, and gets away up on a high note, and keeps getting it down finer all the time, until it is not much bigger than a cambric needle, and she draws in a whole lot of air, and just fools with that wee bit of a note, and draws it out fine like a silk thread, and keeps letting go of it a little at a time until it seems as though it was a mile long, and the audience stops talking and eating candy, and just holds its breath, and listens for her to bite it off, and she wiggles with it, and catches another breath when it is keeping right on, and it seems so sweet and smooth that you can almost see angels hovering around up in the roof, and she stands there with her beautiful eyes shining like stars, and her face wreathed in smiles, and that little note keeps paying out like a silk fish line with a four-pound bass running away with the bait, and the audience gets red in the face for not breathing, and when everybody thinks she is going to keep on all night, or bust and fill the house with little notes that smell of violets, she wakes up, raises her voice two or three degrees higher, and finds a note that is more beautiful still, but which is as rare as the bloom of a century plant, so rare and radiant that she can't keep it long without spoiling, and just as you feel like dying in your tracks and going, to heaven where they sing that way all the time, she shakes that note into little showers of crystal musical snowflakes, and then raises her voice one note higher just for a second, and backs away with a low bow and a sweet smile, and the audience is dumb for a minute, and when it comes to, and she has almost gone behind the scenes, everybody cheers, and waves handkerchiefs, and stands up and yells until she comes back and does it over again, that is technique.”
“Well, sir, my girl has got a technique just like that. She can sing the socks right off of——”
“Oh, hold on; don't work any of your slang into this musical discussion. When you want to know anything about music, or falling in love, or farming, come to your Uncle Ike. Office hours from 9 a. m. to 4 p. m. No cure no pay. If you are not satisfied your money will be cheerfully refunded,” and the old man got an oil can and begun to oil the old shotgun, while the boy started to sing “Killarney” in a bass voice, and Uncle Ike drew the gun on him and said: “If you are looking for trouble, sing in that buzz-saw voice in my presence. I could murder a person that sang like that.”
CHAPTER XIX.
Uncle Ike was leaning over the gate late in the afternoon, waiting for the red-headed boy and some of his chums to come back from the State fair. He had gone to the fair with them, and gone around to look at the stock with them, and had staked them for admission to all the side shows, and when they had come out of the last side show, and were hungry, he had bought a mess of hot wiener sausages for them, and while they were eating them somebody yelled that the balloon was going to go up, and the boys grabbed their wieners and run across the fair grounds, losing Uncle Ike; and being tired, and not caring to see a young girl go up a mile in the air, and come down with a parachute, with a good prospect of flattening herself on the hard ground, he had concluded to go home before the crowd rushed for the cars, and here he was at the gate waiting for the boys, saddened because a pickpocket had taken his watch and a big seal fob that had been in the family almost a hundred years. As he waited for the boys to come back he smoked hard, and wondered what a pickpocket wanted to fool an old man for, a man who would divide his money with any one out of luck, and he wondered what they could get on that poor old silver watch, that never kept time that could be relied on, and a tear came to his eye as he thought of some jeweler melting up that old fob that his father and grandfather used to wear before him, and he wondered if the boys would guy him for having his pocket picked, he, who had mixed up with the world for half a century and never been touched. It was almost dark when the red-headed boy and his partners in crime, came down the sidewalk, so tired their shoes interfered, and they stubbed their toes on the holes in the walk, even.
“Well, I s'pose you ducks spent every cent you had and had to walk five miles from the fair ground,” said Uncle Ike, as he opened the gate and let them fall inside and drop on the grass, their shoes covered with dust, and their clothes the same. He invited them in to supper, but the peanuts, the popcorn, the waffles, the lemonade, the cider and the wieners had been plenty for them, and it did not seem as though they ever wanted to eat a mouthful again.
“Where is your fob and watch?” said the redheaded boy, as he noticed that the big stomach of the old man carried no ornament.
“Well, I decided this afternoon that it did not become a man of my age to be wearing gaudy jewelry,” said Uncle Ike, “and hereafter you have got to take your uncle just as he is, without any ornaments. The watch never did keep time much, and I have had enough of guessing whether it was 1 o'clock or 3.”
“Never going to wear it any more?” asked the red-headed boy, with a twinkle in his eye.