family. You went to the
football game under protest, a quiet, inoffensive citizen, ostensibly to
take care of us boys, and the first jump out of the box you got crazy,
and we had a terrible time to get you home. I don't suppose you remember
what you did do out there. Do you remember of putting your arm around a
strange lady, and hugging her, and telling her to yell? Her husband is
looking for you with a gun. Do you remember of grabbing a young woman
sitting in front of you, just as they made a touchdown, pulling her head
over into your lap, and patting her cheeks with your great big hands,
and telling her she ought to marry a football player? Her brother
is coming up street now with a baseball club. I suppose you have no
recollection of jumping up and sitting down in the lap of a woman in the
seat behind you, throwing your arms around her, and telling her she was
a darling, and squeezing her till you broke her corset. She says you
offered her marriage, and her lawyer will be here in the morning to find
out what you are going to do about it. I think you better be examined by
doctors to see if you are not getting nutty, and let them send you to a
sanitarium," and the boy sighed, and looked at the old man as though his
heart was broken.

"Say, did I do any of those things?" asked Uncle Ike, as he got up
and looked out of the window, and then locked the door, and acted
frightened. "Well, I'll be dumbed! I recollect the woman in front of me,
and the one behind, but I pledge you my word that I did not know that
I hugged anybody. I am willing to apologize, but I'll be condemned if
I marry any of 'em, and I'm not crazy. That confounded game got me all
mixed up, and I may have acted different from what I would ordinarily,
but it was not my intention to propose to any female."

"But say, Uncle Ike, what did you think of the game as a means of
building up muscle, pluck, push, get there, and general usefulness?"
asked the boy.

"Greatest thing I ever saw," said Uncle Ike, as he looked out of the
window, to see if any females he might have hugged in his excitement
were out there waiting for him. "Say, I saw young fellows in that game
that I used to know, who would cry if taken across their father's knee,
and beg for mercy, and they would rush into the most dangerous position,
and if knocked silly they would smile, never groan, and suck a swallow
of water out of a sponge, and go in for another knockdown. That game
will make men of