per pods, but----"

"Here, hold on!" said Uncle Ike. "The butcher has got you mixed up. He
was giving you a recipe for a Mexican pudding. But don't you ever try
any experiments on your Uncle Ike any more. I don't want to be made
strong any more on sausage skins. A gymnasium is good enough for me, and
it don't smell like burning a negro at the stake. I know anything would
help the flavor of this terbacker, but I have got used to it, after
about sixty years burning it under my nose, and, if the trust will
not water the stock with baled hay or cut cabbage, I will try and pull
through as it is. So you experiment on yourself, condemn you! I knew it
was you that had disturbed my terbacker. I can tell by the freckles on
your face when you have done anything wrong. A boy that is freckled
has got to be square, or I am right on to him. When you are guilty, the
freckles on your nose are changeable; one will be yellow, like saffron,
and another freckle seems pale, and little drops of perspiration appear
between the freckles; and then several small freckles will combine into
one, like a trust, and you are given completely away. So remember, as
long as you wear freckles, if you do anything crooked, there is a sign
right on your face that tells the tale."

"Say, Uncle Ike, what is a trust?" asked the redheaded boy, anxious to
turn the subject away from wiener skins and freckles. "What good does a
trust do?"

"Well, a trust is one of these things," said Uncle Ike, as he opened
a new paper of tobacco, and threw the old paper, that had been treated
with foreign substances, into the fire, "one of these things that are
for the benefit of the dear people. You have heard of selling a gold
brick, haven't you? The man who sells a gold brick has a brass brick
made with a hole in it, in which he puts some gold, and he lets the jay
who wants to invest in raw gold test it by putting acid on the place
where the gold is filled in, and the jay finds that the brick is solid
gold, and he buys it, after mortgaging his farm to raise the money. The
man sells the gold brick cheap, because the jay is his friend, and when
he has got out of the country the jay tries to sell his gold brick for
eight hundred dollars, and he gets two dollars and eighty cents for
it. That is one kind of a trust. The trust you mean is a combination of
several factories, for instance. The promoter gets all the factories in
one line of business to combine. They pay each factory pr