ill do it. When she looks at you the perspiration will start out all
over you, and you will think there is only one pair of eyes in the
world, that all beautiful eyes have been consolidated into one pair of
blue ones, and that they are as big as moons. If you touch her hand you
will feel a thrill go up your arm and down your spine, as you do when
a four-pound bass strikes your frog when you are fishing. She will see
that your necktie is on sideways, and she will take hold of it to fix
it, and you will not breathe for fear she will go away, and when she
gets you fixed so you will pass in a crowd, you will be paralyzed all
over, and unable to move, until she beckons you to come along, and
when you start to walk you will feel all over like your foot is asleep.
Walking a block or two beside this girl will be to you better than a
trip to Europe, and a look at her face will seem to you a glimpse
of heaven, and angels, and you will leave her after the too short
interview, and you will be glad you are alive, and then you may see her
riding in a street car with another, and you will want to commit murder.
When these things occur, boy, you are in love, and you have got it bad.
You think you don't love anybody, but you will. I have been there, boy,
and there is no escape without taking to the woods, and love will make a
trail through the forest, and over glaciers, and catch you if you don't
watch out. So when love gets into your system, that way, just hold up
your hands as though a hold-up man had the drop on you with a revolver,
and let the girl go through you. The only way I escaped was that the
girl married. Now go away and let me alone, boy, or I shall have to take
you across my knee," and the red-headed boy backed out of the room
and left Uncle Ike, his trembling fingers rattling the yellow paper of
tobacco, trying to fill his pipe, and as the boy got outdoors and blew
a charge of putty from his blower at the washwoman bending over the
wash-tub, he said:

"Well, Uncle Ike hasn't had a picnic all his life."

CHAPTER IV.

"What is the matter with your Aunt Almira this morning?" asked Uncle Ike
of the red-headed boy, as he came out into the garden with a sling-shot,
and began to shoot birdshot at the little cucumbers that were beginning
to grow away from the pickle vine, as the boy called the cucumber tree.

"She's turned nigger," said the boy, turning his sling-shot at an
Italian yelling strawberries. "Wait till I hit