other thing, you know, Uncle Ike."

"Yes, I think I do," said the old man as he turned his head away to
keep from laughing. "You want to learn to be a he Patti, in four easy
lessons. Why, you couldn't learn enough about music to be in her class
in fourteen years. What you want to do is to look wise, and applaud
when anybody gets through singing, and say bravo, and beautiful, and all
that, but not give yourself away by commenting on the technique, see?"

"Stopper! Backerup! What is technique on a girl, Uncle Ike?" asked the
red-headed boy, as his eyes stuck out like peeled onions. "I have been
around girls ever since I was big enough to go home alone after seeing
them home, without being afraid of spooks, but I hope to die if I ever
saw a technique."

"The technique," said Uncle Ike, looking wise, "is what we musicians
call the--the--get there, Eli. You know when a girl is singing, and gets
away up on a high note, and keeps getting it down finer all the time,
until it is not much bigger than a cambric needle, and she draws in a
whole lot of air, and just fools with that wee bit of a note, and draws
it out fine like a silk thread, and keeps letting go of it a little at a
time until it seems as though it was a mile long, and the audience stops
talking and eating candy, and just holds its breath, and listens for her
to bite it off, and she wiggles with it, and catches another breath when
it is keeping right on, and it seems so sweet and smooth that you can
almost see angels hovering around up in the roof, and she stands there
with her beautiful eyes shining like stars, and her face wreathed in
smiles, and that little note keeps paying out like a silk fish line with
a four-pound bass running away with the bait, and the audience gets red
in the face for not breathing, and when everybody thinks she is going
to keep on all night, or bust and fill the house with little notes that
smell of violets, she wakes up, raises her voice two or three degrees
higher, and finds a note that is more beautiful still, but which is as
rare as the bloom of a century plant, so rare and radiant that she can't
keep it long without spoiling, and just as you feel like dying in your
tracks and going, to heaven where they sing that way all the time, she
shakes that note into little showers of crystal musical snowflakes, and
then raises her voice one note higher just for a second, and backs away
with a low bow and a sweet smile, and the audience is dum