, and
then run out his tongue and loll, and look at the fellows who are
sitting around waiting for the last act, in the shade, and say to them,
as plain as a dog can talk, 'You fellows make me tired. Why don't you
get some style about you, and come in on this game on the ground floor?'
and then he gets rested a little, and you say, 'dig him out,' and he
swallows a big sigh at their laziness, and goes down in the hole and
digs and growls so the lazy boys think he has forgotten that they are
deadheads in the enterprise, but the dog does not forget."

"Well, I swow, if your Uncle Ike ain't away up in G on woodchuck
hunting," said one of the neighbor boys as they all sat around the old
man, with their eyes wide open. "How about drowning out a gopher?"

"Same thing, exactly," said Uncle Ike, as he filled up the pipe again,
and lit it, and run a broom straw through the stem, to give it air. "The
dog watches the hole, and keeps tab on the boys who carry water. You
have got to keep the water going down the gopher hole, and you got to
work like sixty. Gophers know better than to have holes too near the
water, and the dog knows what boy flunks after he carries one pail of
water, and says, 'Oh, darn a gopher anyway; I hain't lost no gopher,'
and goes and sits down and lets the other boys carry water. The dog
knows that the boy who keeps carrying water and pouring it in the hole
is the thoroughbred, and that the quitter has got a streak of yellow in
him. When the hole is filled up with water, and the gopher comes to the
surface, and the dog grabs for it, and the boy who took off his clothes
and carried water also grabs, and either the dog or the boy gets bit,
usually the boy, the dog knows that the boy who worked with him on that
gopher hole has got the making of a good business man in him. A business
or professional career, boys, is just like digging out a woodchuck, or
drowning out a gopher, and the fellows who help the dog when they are
boys, are the ones who are mighty apt to get the business woodchuck when
they grow up. I will bet you ten dollars that if you pick out the most
successful business man in town, and go look at his left thumb nail, you
will find a scar on it where a half-drowned gopher bit him, because he
was at the hole at the right time. Now, go and have fun, and be sure and
play fair with the dog," and Uncle Ike took down a broom and shook it at
them as they scattered down the street, the dog barking joyously.