sed himself on the subject of the Philippines, and
the duty the President owed to civilization to keep on killing those
negroes until they learned better than to kick at having a strange race
of people boss them around, and Uncle Ike had walked home along the
bank of the lake, and breathed the free air that was his because his
ancestors had conquered it from England, and he couldn't help having a
little sympathy for those Filipinos who had been bought from a country
that didn't own them, by a country that had no use for them, and wished
it could get rid of them honorably, without hurting the political party
that was acting as overseer over them. He didn't want to seem disloyal
to a country that he loved and had fought to preserve, but when he
thought of those poor, ignorant people, trying to learn what freedom
meant, and what there was in it for them, studying the constitution
of the United States to find out how to be good and great, and dodging
bullets, he felt as though he wished he knew just what the Savior of Man
would do in the matter if He had been elected President. He had left
the red-headed boy at Sunday-school, and now they were both back home,
waiting for the dinner bell to ring. The boy was studying some pamphlet
he had brought home, and looking mighty serious.

"Any great problem been presented to you at Sunday-school that you are
unable to solve?" said Uncle Ike, as he walked by the boy and tried to
stroke the corrugated lines out of his forehead, and patted him on the
head. "For if there is anything you are in doubt about, all you got to
do is to let your Uncle Ike be umpire, and he will straighten it out for
you."

"Thank you, awfully," said the boy, as he dropped his book, walked up
to the old man, and looked him squarely in the face. "You are the man I
have been looking for. Uncle Ike, suppose a man should haul off, without
provocation, and smash you on the side of the face, a regular stinger,
that would jar your head until you could see stars, what would you do?"

[Illustration: I would give him one on the nose with my left hand 203]

"Oh, say, that is an easy one," said the old man, as he filled the pipe
and lighted it, and threw the match in the grate. "Do you know what I
would do? I would give him one on the nose with my left hand, and when
he was off his guard I would paste him one under the ear, or on the
point of the jaw, and then I would stand over him and count ten, and if
he came to, I wo