stomach was
clearly the seat of the disease, and suddenly the boy rushed out of the
room, into, the bathroom, and there was a noise such as is frequently
heard on steamboat excursions. The old man thought it was the chocolate
and gum that had made the boy sick, until he looked at his pipe on the
table, which was smoking, although he had been away an hour or more.

[Illustration: Been trying to smoke the old man's pipe, eh 129]

"Been trying to smoke the old man's pipe, eh?" said he, as the boy
staggered out of the bathroom so weak he could hardly stand, "Well, that
plug tobacco in the pipe is a little strong for a bunko-steerer, but I
suppose you thought if you were going to be a business man, and leave
me, you ought to take with you some of my bad habits. Let me fill the
pipe with some of this mild switchman's delight, and you try that," and
he brought the pipe near to the boy.

"Take it away, take it away," said a weak voice, coming from under a
pillow on the lounge. "Oh, Uncle Ike, I will never touch a pipe again.
You look so happy when you are smoking that I thought I would like to
learn, so I lit the pipe, and drew on it, and the smoke wouldn't come,
and I drew in my breath whole length, as I do when I dive off a spring
board, and the whole inside of the pipe came into my mouth, and I
swallowed the whole business, and pretty soon it felt as though a
pin-wheel had been touched off inside of me, and the sparks flew out of
my nose, and the smoke came out of my ears, and they turned on the water
in my eyes, and my mouth puckered up and acted salivated, like I had
eaten choke-cherries, and pretty soon the pin-wheel in my stomach began
to run down, and I thought I was going to stop celebrating, when the
pin-wheel seemed to touch off a nigger-chaser, and it went to fizzing
all around inside of me, up into my lungs, and down around my liver, and
it called at all my vital parts and registered its name, and when the
nigger-chaser seemed to be dying it touched off an internal skyrocket,
and s-i-z-boom--that was when I went in the bathroom, 'cause I was
afraid of the stick. Say, Uncle Ike, does anyone ever die from smoking
plug tobacco?"

"Oh, yes, about half of them die, when they smoke it the first time.
When their eyes roll up, like yours, and they cease to be hungry, and
feel as though they had rather lie clown than stand up, they don't last
very long," and the old man looked serious, and reached for his pipe and
a ma