Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy / 1899

by George W. Peck

The red-headed boy took Uncle Ike by the suspenders and pulled him off the boys, and then they all grabbed his legs and threw him down and sat on him, breaking his pipe, and pulling off his rubber boots and making him yell, “Enough!” before they would let him up, but he laughed and spanked them with a leg of a rubber boot, and finally they all sat down on the porch, panting, and Uncle Ike was the youngest boy in the gang, apparently.

“Come to order,” said the red-headed boy, and every boy took off his hat, and braced back against the side of the house, and Uncle Ike looked on, wondering what was coming next. “We have met, gentlemen,” said the red-headed boy, “to make arrangements to nominate Dewey for President. We have watched the manner in which the people have received him at New York and Washington; have noticed his modesty and level-headedness, and us boys, Uncle Ike, have decided that Dewey shall be the next President. If any person has got anything to say why he should not be President, let him speak now, or forever after hold his peace. It is up to you, Uncle Ike, and this assemblage would like to hear a few casual remarks from you, before breakfast, on this subject. Now, boys, hurrah for Uncle Ike, the jolliest old scrapper in the business. Now, give the yell, 'Who are we! who are we! we are the kids for old Dewe-e—siz! boom! yah!'” and the boys yelled until Uncle Ike had to respond.

“Well, you condum heathen can settle more public questions here on this porch than all the political parties,” said the old man, as he fixed a broken suspender with a nail, and came up to the boys with one rubber boot in his hand, and reached for a new pipe on the window sill, loaded it, and lit it for a talk. “You ought to have better sense than to think of Dewey placing himself in the hands of the politicians, and going into politics, where he will have to be cat-hauled by all the disreputable critters in the country. Look at Grant! When he got out of the war he was just like Dewey, and would be alive today if he had not got into the hands of the politicians. Dewey can sit down in Washington as he is, and have more power for good than any President, and he will be proud of himself and his country. If he went into politics he would be betrayed, and made responsible for all the stealing and mistakes of those under him, and in a little while he would hate himself, and would like to get all the politicians into a Spanish ship and turn the Olympia loose on them.”

“Yes, but nobody could say anything against Dewey,” said the red-headed boy, interrupting Uncle Ike. “All he would have to do would be to appoint a cabinet of admirals, and give all the other offices to the midshipmen and jackies, and send army officers abroad as ministers and things. The people would lynch a man that said anything against Dewey.”

“They couldn't say anything against, him, could they?” said Uncle Ike, pulling on the rubber boot. “Well, you are an amateur in politics. Do you know what they would do if Dewey were nominated? They would prove that he murdered a man in Vermont in 1852, in cold blood, and produce the corpse. They would swear that he was the inventor of the wooden nutmeg, and that he had six wives living, and that he was in cahoots with Aguinaldo, and that he didn't sink the Spanish fleet, but that it got waterlogged and went down without a shot being fired. They would claim that he was the originator of the process of boiling maple roots and putting the juice into glucose, and selling it for pure Vermont maple syrup. They would claim that the reception he received at the hands of the American people was a put-up job; that he paid all the expenses himself, out of money he stole from the government, and that all the cheering was done by hired claquers, who were all promised an office when he was elected. And then if he was elected, every man that knew him before he went to Manila would claim to have been the making of him, and want to be in the cabinet, and every man that has shook hands with him since, would expect the best office at his disposal, and if they didn't get the offices they would prove that he was responsible for the embalmed beef scandal, and that he was in partnership with Capt. Carter in robbing the government, and ought to be in jail. Oh, you can't tell me anything about politics, and if I could see Dewey I would tell him to say nothing but 'nixy' to every proposition to mix him up. Now, all you boys come in to breakfast,” and the old man tossed the boys toward the dining room door as though they were footballs.

“Well, Uncle Ike, you have punctured our tire again. Every time we get a scheme to save the country, you come in with your condumed talky-talk, and throw us in the air. Guess you will have to take the nomination yourself, and run on a platform of seven words, 'Here's to the boys, God bless 'em,'” and the red-headed boy got under Uncle Ike's arm, and the gang went in to breakfast, Uncle Ike trying to argue against being nominated, and having to go to the White House with a lot of tough boys making life a burden to him, when he would have to get married, for no President is a success as a bachelor, as Cleveland found out. As Uncle Ike got the boys all around the table, he bent his head and reverently asked a blessing—something he had never done before in the presence of the red-headed boy, and when the meal was over and the boys had all gone away, except the warm-haired one, and Uncle Ike had begun to smoke again, the boy said to him:

“Uncle Ike, I did not know that you belonged to any church.”

“Well, I don't,” said Uncle Ike, as he got up and looked out of the window, and blew smoke at a fly that was buzzing on the glass.

“Then how could you ask a blessing, and expect that it will be heard? I supposed a person had to be initiated in a church, and be sworn in, and given the password, and take the degrees, before he was ordained to ask a blessing,” said the boy.