ite a neighbor
to dinner, who is always joking you about never catching any fish, and
then you get him up near you, and he is tired out, and you think you
never saw such a nice bass, and that it weighs at least six pounds, and
just as you are reaching out with the landing net, to take him in, he
gives one kick, chews off the line, you fall over backwards, and the
bass disappears with a parting flop of the tail, and a man who is
fishing a little ways off asks you what you had on your hook, and you
say that it was nothing but a confounded dogfish, anyway, and you wind
up your reel and go home, and you are so mad and hot that the leaves on
the trees curl up and turn yellow like late in the fall. Many a girl has
acted just that way, and finally chewed off the line, and let the man
fall with a dull thud, and after he has got over it he says to those who
have watched the angling that she was not much account, anyway, but all
the time he knows by the feeling of goneness inside of him that he lies
like a Spaniard," and Uncle Ike tied a handkerchief over the tomato can
to keep the worms in, and said to the boy, "Now, if you can get up at
four o'clock in the morning we will go and get a fine mess."

"Mess of bass or girls?".said the boy, as he looked up at the old man
with a twinkle in his eye. "Bass, by gosh!" said Uncle Ike.

CHAPTER V.

"Here, what you up to, you young heathen?" said Uncle Ike, as a pair of
small boxing gloves, about as big as goslings, struck him in the solar
plexus and all the way down his stomach, and he noticed a red streak
rushing about the room, side-stepping and clucking. "You are a nice
looking Sunday-school scholar, you are, dancing around as though you
were in the prize ring. Who taught you that foolishness, and what are
you trying to do?" and the old man cornered the red-headed boy between
the bookcase and the center-table, and took him across his knee, and
fanned his trousers with a hand as big as a canvas ham, until he said he
threw up the sponge.

"Well, I'll tell you," said the red-headed boy, as the old man let him
up and he felt of his trousers to see if they were warm, "I am going
into the prize-fighting business, and Aunt Almira, who is studying for
the stage, is teaching me to box. Gee, but she can give you a blow with
her left across the ear that will make you think Jeffries has put on
a shirt-waist, and a turquoise ring, and she and I are going to form a
combination and make a b