school when it rains, and fight for them if the other boys call them tomboys. Sisters are no good," and the red-headed boy looked smart, as though he had said something Uncle Ike would applaud.

"There, that will do," said Uncle Ike, as he put his hand in the boy's hair to warm it. "Don't let me ever hear you say a word against sisters again. You don't know anything about sisters. They are great. Let me tell you a story. I know a man who is away up in public affairs, at the head of his profession in his county, and one the world will hear more about some of these days. He was just such a little shrimp as you are, when he was a boy. He got out of the high school, and was going to clerk in a feed store, when his sister took him one side, one Sunday, and told him she wanted him to go to college. He almost fainted away at the idea. There wasn't much money in the family to burn on a boy's education, and he knew it, and he asked where the money was to come from. This little sister of the poor boy said she would furnish the money. She knew that he would be one of the great men of the country, if he had a college education, and it was arranged for him to go to college, this little sister being his backer financially. She had a musical education, and began to look for chances to make money. She took scholars in music, and was so anxious to make money for this brother to blow in on an education that she fairly forced music into all her pupils, working night and day, often with her head ready to split open with pain, but every week she rounded up money enough to send to that brother at college, and for four years there never was a Monday morning that he did not get a postoffice order from that sweet girl, and every day a letter of encouragement, and advice, and when he graduated a pale girl stood below the platform with bright eyes and a feverish cheek, and when he came down off the platform with his diploma he grasped her in his arms and said, 'Sister, darling,' and kissed her in the presence of five thousand people, and she fainted. She had worked as no man works, for four years, and the result was a brother, a lawyer, a grand man, who loves that sister as though she was an angel from heaven. So, confound you, if I ever hear you say a word against sisters again, I will take you across my knee and you will think the millennium has come and struck you right on the pants," and Uncle Ike patted the boy on the cheek, and said they had better go out and catch a mess of fish.

CHAPTER III.

"Uncle Ike, did you ever take many degrees in secret societies?" asked the 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 maul him until he finds out that he is not the whole business. If that were done occasionally by society you wouldn't find so many men looking over the common people. It would take the starch out of some people to feel that if they put on too many airs they would be liable to have a boot hit them any time. Lodges sometimes make good men out of the worst material. In some lodges the Prince of Wales would have to walk turkey right beside a well-digger, and it would do the prince good and not hurt the well-digger. But if I was in your place I would not join a lodge yet. Try the Salvation Army first," and Uncle Ike got up and went to the window, and listened to the bugle and bass drum and tambourine of the army as it passed on its nightly round.

"That Salvation army makes me tired," said the red-headed boy, as he reached for his putty blower. "Going around the streets palming that noise off on the public for music, and scaring horses, and taking up a collection, and singing out of tune. Say, I'll bet I can blow a chunk of putty into that girl's bonnet and make her jump like a box car in a collision," and the boy opened the window and was taking aim at the tambourine girl's bonnet when Uncle Ike reached out and took the putty blower away from him and said:

"Don't ever worry those poor people, or let any other boy bother them when you are around. They are entitled to the respect of all good people. It does not take opera music to get people to heaven. Even that wretched music they give so freely, may turn some poor wretch from the wrong to the right way, and a poor devil who becomes a follower of Christ from practicing following the Salvation army is just as welcome in heaven as though he went to church with a four-in-hand and listened to a heavenly choir that is paid a hundred dollars per. It does not seem possible to some rich people that St. Peter is going to extend the glad hand to a dockwolloper, and let the rich man stand out in the cold until he tells how he used his money on earth, whether to oppress the poor or to make them glad. Lots of men are going to be fooled thinking they are going to get inside the pearly gates on the strength of their money, but some of them may have to be vouched for by a Salvation army lassie. So, boy, if you love your old uncle, always respect the religion of every soul on earth, and don't fire putty at any girl's bonnet. You hear me?" and the old man patted the boy on the back, and his old face looked angelic, through the tobacco smoke cloud.

"Well, Uncle Ike, you are the queerest man I ever saw," said the red-headed boy, as he wiped a tear out of his eye with his shirt sleeve. "There is nothing I can