assemblage would like to hear a few casual remarks
from you, before breakfast, on this subject. Now, boys, hurrah for Uncle
Ike, the jolliest old scrapper in the business. Now, give the yell, 'Who
are we! who are we! we are the kids for old Dewe-e--siz! boom! yah!'"
and the boys yelled until Uncle Ike had to respond.

"Well, you condum heathen can settle more public questions here on this
porch than all the political parties," said the old man, as he fixed a
broken suspender with a nail, and came up to the boys with one rubber
boot in his hand, and reached for a new pipe on the window sill, loaded
it, and lit it for a talk. "You ought to have better sense than to think
of Dewey placing himself in the hands of the politicians, and going into
politics, where he will have to be cat-hauled by all the disreputable
critters in the country. Look at Grant! When he got out of the war he
was just like Dewey, and would be alive today if he had not got into the
hands of the politicians. Dewey can sit down in Washington as he is,
and have more power for good than any President, and he will be proud of
himself and his country. If he went into politics he would be betrayed,
and made responsible for all the stealing and mistakes of those under
him, and in a little while he would hate himself, and would like to get
all the politicians into a Spanish ship and turn the Olympia loose on
them."

"Yes, but nobody could say anything against Dewey," said the red-headed
boy, interrupting Uncle Ike. "All he would have to do would be to
appoint a cabinet of admirals, and give all the other offices to the
midshipmen and jackies, and send army officers abroad as ministers and
things. The people would lynch a man that said anything against Dewey."

"They couldn't say anything against, him, could they?" said Uncle Ike,
pulling on the rubber boot. "Well, you are an amateur in politics. Do
you know what they would do if Dewey were nominated? They would prove
that he murdered a man in Vermont in 1852, in cold blood, and produce
the corpse. They would swear that he was the inventor of the wooden
nutmeg, and that he had six wives living, and that he was in cahoots
with Aguinaldo, and that he didn't sink the Spanish fleet, but that it
got waterlogged and went down without a shot being fired. They would
claim that he was the originator of the process of boiling maple roots
and putting the juice into glucose, and selling it for pure Vermont
maple syrup. T