e red-headed boy, as he saw the old gentleman reading an account of a
man who was killed during initiation into a lodge, by being spanked with
a clapboard on which cartridges had been placed.

"About a hundred degrees, I should think, without counting up," said
Uncle Ike, as he thought over the different lodges he had belonged to in
the past fifty years. "What set you to thinking about secret societies?"

"Oh, I thought I would join a few, and have some fun. I read every
little while about some one being killed while being initiated, and it
seems to me the death rate is about as great as it is in Cuba or the
Philippines. Is there much fun in killing a man, Uncle Ike?"

"Well, not much for the man who is killed," said the old man, as he gave
the grand hailing sign of distress for the boy to bring him his pipe
and tobacco. "Accidents will happen, you know. It isn't one man in ten
thousand that gets killed being initiated."

"What do people join lodges for, anyway, when they are liable to croak?"
said the boy, as he passed the ingredients for a fumigation to the
uncle. "Don't you think there ought to be laws against initiating, the
same as clipping horses and cutting their tails off, or cutting off
clogs' tails and ears? What do the lodges have those funny ceremonies
for?"

"Well, a fool boy can ask more questions than the oldest man can
answer," said Uncle Ike, as he hitched around in his chair, and looked
mysterious, as he thought of the grips and passwords he once knew. "No,
there is no occasion for laws against men going up against any game.
Most men join lodges because they think it is a good thing, and after
they have taken a few degrees they want all there are, and after awhile
the degrees keep getting harder, and they think of more to come, and by
and by they get enough. In most lodges all men are on an equal footing,
the prince and the pauper are all alike. Occasionally there is a man who
thinks because he is rich or prominent in some way, that he is smarter
than the ordinary man in a lodge. Then is the time that the rest try to
teach him humility, and show him that he is only a poor mortal. It
does some men good to have their diamonds removed, their good clothes
replaced by the tattered garments of the tramp, and then let them look
at themselves and see how little they amount to. In some lodges a man
is taught a useful lesson by stripping him to the buff and taking a
clapboard and letting a common laborer mau