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Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy, a fiction by George W. Peck |
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Chapter 17 |
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_ CHAPTER XVII Uncle Ike had been having twinges of rheumatism in one of his legs ever since he had the scrap with the Indians, and turned the hose on them and got wet himself, and he sat out on the porch one morning with a blanket over his leg trying to warm it up, smoking his pipe in silence, and wondering why the good Lord arranged things so a good man should grow old, and have pains. The red-headed boy and quite a flock of kids of about his age were sitting on the sidewalk, outside the fence, arguing something in loud voices, and finally he heard them agree to leave it to Uncle Ike, and then they piled over the fence and came up to the porch, and the red-headed boy was the spokesman. He said: "Say, Uncle Ike, us boys have got a bet and you are to decide it. Isn't it true that the people of Cuba, Porto Rico and the Philippines are gamblers, and hasn't our government fought them to a standstill to send people there to induce them to stop gambling and to attend to business? Isn't gambling a sin, and is it not our duty as a nation, to teach these ignorant people the wickedness of gambling, bull fighting, cock fighting, and all that?" and the boys sat all around Uncle Ike, waiting for a decision to be handed down, as they say in court. The old man rapped the bowl of his pipe on the arm of the rocking chair, blew through the stem, made up a face when he got some of the nicotine on his tongue, took a piece off the broom and run through it, blew again, reached for the tobacco bag, filled it up, lighted it, smoked a minute or two in silence, while five pairs of big boys' eyes watched him as though he was a chief justice. He wiggled around a little, to ease his leg, knitted his brow as the pain shot through his leg, almost said damn; then the pain let up, his face cleared off, a smile came over it, he looked at the little statesmen around him, and finally said: "Well, boys, you must not grow up with the idea that our own beloved country has no faults. Just love it, with all its faults; fight for it, if necessary, but don't get daffy over it. In the countries you speak of, everybody gambles more or less. In this country only a small proportion gamble, and yet the element of chance is something that is very attractive to most people here at home. The other evening your Aunt Almira brought home a beautiful goblet she won at a progressive euchre party of neighbors. How much more of a sin is it for the Cuban woman to win five dollars at monte, and buy a goblet? It is scarcely three years since tickets in Havana lotteries were publicly sold in this country. There is more money lost and won on draw poker in one day in New York than is lost and won in Havana on monte and roulette. You can find almost any gambling game in Chicago or Milwaukee that you can find in the Philippines; and while we do not have bull fighting, we have prize fighting every night in the week, far more brutal. It is the gambling instinct in men and women that keeps the stock exchanges going, and industrial stocks, manipulated by those who control the prices, is tinhorn gambling, as much as pulling faro cards from a silver box in a brace game, where the dealer gets a rake-off, the same as the commission man, who deals the cards in stock or wheat. I don't know whether it is the object of our government to attempt to show the people of these new possessions the wickedness of gambling, and cock fighting, and all that; but if it is, thousands of men who have become bankrupt from gambling here at home could be sent there as object lessons; but the chances are they would put up a job to skin the natives out of their last dollar on some game they did not understand. If gambling is a sin, let he who is without sin throw the first stone into a Porto Rican cock fight. Let the senator who never played draw poker be the first to introduce a resolution to stop gambling in Manila. Let the army general that never sat up all night at a faro bank issue the first order against monte and roulette in Havana. Let the men who furnished embalmed beef for widows' sons, issue edicts against making fresh meat out of live bulls. I can't decide your bet. You better call it a draw," and the old man looked at the boys as though he wanted to change the subject. [Illustration: You better call it a draw 147] "Say, boys, Uncle Ike knows more than any man in the world," said the red-headed boy, "but he argues too much. Let's go and play shinny and call it golf," and they went off on a gallop, leaving Uncle Ike with his lame leg and his pipe. Uncle Ike sat and thought for an hour or more, on the porch, occasionally moving his rheumatic leg so it hurt him worse than it did before he moved it, and then he wondered what in the deuce he had moved it for. He thought of his experience as a gambler, since the boys had talked about gambling. He thought of the time he went to a State fair, when he was a boy, right fresh off the farm, with his white shirt his mother had sat up the night before to iron for him, his ready-made black frock-coat that the sun had faded out on the shoulders, the old brown slouch hat he had traded another one for with a lightning rod peddler, his shoes blacked with stove blacking, instead of being greased, as usual. He thought how a gambler at the State fair picked him out for a greeny before he had fairly got through the gate, and wondered how the gambler could have known he was so green without being told, and yet he carried a sign of greenness, from the faded and sunburned hair of his head to the sole of his stove-blacking shoes. He thought how the gambler got him to bet that he could find the pea in the shell, and how he had been so confident that he could find it that he had bet his whole month's wages, and when the gambler had taken it, and wound it around a wad he had, and put it in his vest pocket, he remembered, here sitting on the porch with his rheumatic leg, how mad he was when the gambler who had ruined him, shouted, "Next gentleman, now! Roll up, tumble up, any way to get up!" As he sat there waiting for the boys to come back and be company for him, he thought how destitute he was when the gambler had taken his money, how he was twenty miles from home, with only 20 cents in his pocket, and he sat down on a chicken coop, and ate 10 cents' worth of the hardest-hearted pie that ever was, and the tears came to his eyes, and the great crowd at the fair all mixed up with the horses and cattle, and he wandered about like a crazy person, all the afternoon, and at night started to walk home, with the balance of his wealth invested in gingerbread that stuck in his throat as he walked along the road in the dust, and he drank at all the wells he passed, until before he got home the peaches he had eaten before he gambled, combined with the corrugated iron pie, and the gingerbread and the various waters, gave him a case of cholera morbus big enough for a grown person, and when he got home along toward morning he wanted to die, and rather thought he would. Then he began to wonder if that gambler ever prospered, and whether he wound up his career in the penitentiary, or in politics, when he saw a big dust down the road, where the boys had gone, and presently the whole crowd came on a run, barefooted, and the first to arrive hit Uncle Ike on the arm and said, "Tag; you're it," and they all laid down on the grass and panted, and accused each other of shoving, and not running fair. After they had got so they could breathe easy, and each had taken a lot of green apples out of his shirt, and were biting into them and looking sorry they did so, the red-headed boy said: "Uncle Ike, we have been talking it over, and have decided that some day you are to take us down to Pullman, the town founded by George Pullman. We have read a book about the town, and all about the philanthropist who laid it out, and made a little Utopia--I think that's the word--for the laboring men in his employ, where they have little brick houses made to fit a family, with gas and water. The book says he was a regular father to them, and we want to see a place where everybody is happy and contented. Will you take us there some time, Uncle Ike? Isn't Pullman the greatest and happiest man in the world?" "Look a here," said Uncle Ike, as he got up and tried his lame leg, and found the pain was gone, and walked down on the lawn where the boys were rolling in the grass, and sat down on a lawn chair; "when you read a book of fairy stories, you want to look at the date. That book was written a dozen years ago to advertise Pullman cars. It is out of date." "Well, isn't the town there, and are not the laboring people happy, and singing praises to the great and good Mr. Pullman, and showering blessings on his family, and helping to make a heaven upon earth of the town he built for them?" "I thought you boys were up to the times," said the old man, as he lighted up his pipe, and crossed his legs so the lame one was on top, "but you are back numbers. You read too much algebra, English history and fables. Why, Pullman has been dead for years, both the man and the town. I guess I'll have to educate you a little in American history, that you don't get in the ward school. Pullman was a carpenter who worked with a jack plane, and a saw, and things. It is said he took advantage of some ideas another man forgot to patent, got the ideas patented, and the result was the sleeping car. He made money by the barrel, and when the callouses and blood blisters were off his hands, and they became soft, he began to blow in money, and made people acquainted with the fact that he was too rich for words. He still looked like a carpenter, but smelled like a rose garden, for he learned to take a bath every few minutes and perfume himself, so the old-fashioned perspiration that had been so healthy for him would not be noticed. He hunted dollars as a pointer dog hunts chickens, and finally he got so much money he could not count it, and he hired men who were good at figures to count it for him. Then his brain took a day off and studied out Pullman, and he built it on the prairie. His idea was all right, only that he couldn't get over the idea that he must have a big percentage on his outlay, in rents. He wanted his men to be happy, but he wanted them to pay big prices. Another thing he wanted was for them not to think, but to let him do all the thinking. For a few years they were happy, but they kept getting in debt; he cut down on wages, but kept rents up, and the price of gas and water never went down. If they did not like it they could go somewhere else, and leave some of the furniture to square up, if they were behind in rent, but usually the bookkeeper took it out of the wages. Then they traded at his stores, attended his theater, and he got most all the velvet. They stood it as long as possible, and asked for more wages, and more work, and his agents--Pullman was never there himself, he had an island in the St. Lawrence, and residences everywhere except at his Utopia--told them to hush up and go to work, and be mighty quick about it, or he would fire them bodily out of the town. Then they struck, and wanted to arbitrate, but Pullman telegraphed that there was nothing to arbitrate, and then the Utopia became a Tophet, which it had resembled for some time. Everything was closed up, men saw their children hungry, and they were moved away by charity to new places, where they might get some work. The cold-blooded proposition that is not popular with American citizens was that if men would get on their knees, apologize, and beg, the authorities would see what could be done for them. Men became desperate, troops were sent to guard the premises and to jab with bayonets these happy workmen that did not move along fast enough. Pullman himself stayed at his island, or at the seashore, and the men who had dared to think without a dog license were growing thinner, and by and by nearly all were gone; others took their places, but the old town was not what it used to be. Workmen preferred to live miles away, in attics, or anywhere, in preference to the Pullman cottages. Then, one morning Pullman died, quick action, at his house and millionaire neighbors buried him. Few flowers were sent by the old laborers. His boys, twins, had developed a partiality for jags, and having been cut off with little money in his will, they have wandered around, from one drunk cure to another, marrying occasionally, and otherwise enjoying themselves, until their poor mother was almost crazy, and the Pullman works are run by men who happened to be in on the ground floor, but who don't care much about the laboring man. No, sir," said the old man, warming up to the subject, "I will not take you kids to Pullman. I had rather take you to a cemetery, or visit the homes of the cliff dwellers of Mexico. Now, go wash up for dinner. You get me to talking, and I forget all about, my rheumatism, and my dinner, and everything," and the old man started for the house, and the boys looked at each other as though they had learned something not in the school books. _ |
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