h
you the first time I catch you with your girl. How would you like to be
flushed? The parks are the only places many young people have to talk
love to each other, and it is cruel to disturb them by bursting paper
bags in their vicinity. If I was mayor I would build a thousand little
summer houses in the parks, just big enough for a poor young couple to
sit in, and talk over the future, and I would set policemen to watch out
that nobody disturbed them, and if one of you ducks come along, I would
have you thrown in the lake. The idea of a boy who is in love the way
you pretend to be, having no charity for others, makes me sick, I'll bet
none of those you flushed last night had it so bad they had tintypes
of the girls glued on their hearts with a porous plaster. Bah! you
meddler!" and the old man stamped his foot on the floor, and the boy
looked ashamed.

"Well, that's the last time I will mix in another fellow's love affair,"
said the boy, as he climbed up on Uncle Ike's knee.

"Now, I want to talk to you seriously," said the boy, as he looked up
into Uncle Ike's round, smooth, red and smiling face. "Us boys have been
reading about the serious condition of our country, when its wealthy
citizens are leaving it and going abroad to live. Do you think, uncle,
that William Waldorf Astor's deserting this country, and joining
England, is going to cause this country to fail up in business? In case
of war with England, do you think he would fight this country?"

"Well, you kids can borrow more trouble about this poor old country of
ours than the men who own it can borrow. Astor! Why, boy, his deserting
his country will have about as much effect as it would for that man
working in the street to pack up his household goods and move to
Indiana. Do you suppose this state would tip up sideways if he should
quit running that scraper and move out of the state? Not much. The
Astors have been rich so long that they are un-American. It is not the
natural condition of an American to be rich. When a man gets too rich,
he is worried as to what to do with his money. There is no great
enjoyment that the very rich can have in this country that the poor
cannot have a little of. The first thing a very rich man acquires is a
bad stomach. He becomes too lazy to' take exercise, and lets a hired man
take exercise for him. He looks at his money, and thinks of his stomach.
In Astor's case there was nothing in this country that he could enjoy,
not eve