s the kind of
business you have selected for a career, it will not be long before you
will be in demand as a bunko-steerer. You would be invaluable, with
that innocent face of yours, in roping in strangers to a robbers' roost,
where they would be fleeced and thrown down stairs on their necks.
With about two days more experience on a slot machine, some gold-brick
swindler will come along and raise the syndicate out on your salary,
and put you on the road selling gold bricks. Starting in business as a
fakir, you will rise to become a barker for a sideshow, graduate into
bunko and gold bricks, and if you are not sent to the penitentiary,
there is a great opening for you as a promoter of a trust in the air we
breathe. We shall have to part company. My reputation is dear to me.
I have never turned a jack from the bottom when I had one to go in
seven-up, and to associate with a boy who will rope people to buy
mouldy gum, and be an advance agent of prosperity as recorded on a slot
machine, is too much, and I bid you good-bye. I have loved you, but
it was because you were innocent and tried to do the fair thing,
but--good-bye," and the old man laid down his pipe, picked up his hat
and started for the door.

"Hold on, Uncle Ike," said the boy, taking the handful of pennies out of
his pocket and laying them on the table, "I didn't know it was so bad. I
won't do it any more. Come back, please."

"Well, I got to go downtown," said the old man, "and I will be back in
an hour. In the meantime you write out a letter of resignation to the
syndicate. Say that you find a diet of decayed chocolate and glucose
candy is sapping the foundation of your manhood, and that your Uncle Ike
has offered you a position on the staff of a gold-brick syndicate," and
the old man went out, leaving the boy to write his resignation.

"Well, how is my decoy duck, and has he sent in his resignation?" said
the old man, as he came in a little later and found writing material and
pennies on the table, and the boy lying on the lounge looking pale and
sick. "What is this? Sick the first time you have to resign an office?
That won't do. You never will make a politician if you can't write out a
resignation without having it go to your head," and the old man sat down
by the boy and found that he was as sick as a horse, his face white, and
cold perspiration on his upper lip among the red hairs, and on his brow
among the freckles. The boy's bosom was heaving, and his