“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.
CHAPTER XXIII.
It was Sunday afternoon, and Uncle Ike had been to church with the red-headed boy, and they had listened to a sermon on patriotism, and the minister had expressed himself on the subject of the Philippines, and the duty the President owed to civilization to keep on killing those negroes until they learned better than to kick at having a strange race of people boss them around, and Uncle Ike had walked home along the bank of the lake, and breathed the free air that was his because his ancestors had conquered it from England, and he couldn't help having a little sympathy for those Filipinos who had been bought from a country that didn't own them, by a country that had no use for them, and wished it could get rid of them honorably, without hurting the political party that was acting as overseer over them. He didn't want to seem disloyal to a country that he loved and had fought to preserve, but when he thought of those poor, ignorant people, trying to learn what freedom meant, and what there was in it for them, studying the constitution of the United States to find out how to be good and great, and dodging bullets, he felt as though he wished he knew just what the Savior of Man would do in the matter if He had been elected President. He had left the red-headed boy at Sunday-school, and now they were both back home, waiting for the dinner bell to ring. The boy was studying some pamphlet he had brought home, and looking mighty serious.
“Any great problem been presented to you at Sunday-school that you are unable to solve?” said Uncle Ike, as he walked by the boy and tried to stroke the corrugated lines out of his forehead, and patted him on the head. “For if there is anything you are in doubt about, all you got to do is to let your Uncle Ike be umpire, and he will straighten it out for you.”
“Thank you, awfully,” said the boy, as he dropped his book, walked up to the old man, and looked him squarely in the face. “You are the man I have been looking for. Uncle Ike, suppose a man should haul off, without provocation, and smash you on the side of the face, a regular stinger, that would jar your head until you could see stars, what would you do?”
“Oh, say, that is an easy one,” said the old man, as he filled the pipe and lighted it, and threw the match in the grate. “Do you know what I would do? I would give him one on the nose with my left hand, and when he was off his guard I would paste him one under the ear, or on the point of the jaw, and then I would stand over him and count ten, and if he came to, I would give him some more, and when he had got enough, I would say to him: 'Now, when you feel that way again, and want to enjoy yourself, you come right to me, for I don't have any too much exercise, anyway.' But why do you ask? You knew all the time what I would do if a man hit me,” and the old man walked around the room as though he would like to see someone hit him.
“That's what I feared,” said the boy, as the twinkles played around his eyes. “You see, among the verses in the Sunday-school lesson was this one, 'If they smite you on one cheek, turn the other cheek, also,' and I thought I would like to get the opinion of an expert as to how to go about it, to turn the other cheek the right way.”