the weak boys, and cause them to be afraid of nothing
that walks. The boy who pushes, and tackles, and runs through a
wilderness of other boys who are trying to down him, and get his pigskin
away, will become the pushing business man who will go through the line
of business progress, and make a touchdown in his enterprise, and he
will kick a commercial or professional goal, over the heads of all
competitors. Life is only a football game, after all. Every man in
business who is worth his salt is a pusher, a shover, a tackier, a
punter, or half-back, and the unsuccessful ones are the ones who carry
the water to bring the business players to, when they become overheated,
and do the yelling and hurrahing when the pushing business man in the
football game of life makes a touchdown. It is these rough players that
become the rough riders when war comes to the country, and they rush
the ball up San Juan hill in the face of the Spanish tacklers, and the
interference of barbed wire and other things. War is a football game
also, and the recruiting officers are not looking for the weak sisters
who can't push and shove, and fight, and fall over each other, and
when wounded laugh and say it is nothing serious. A country that has a
majority of its boys growing up to fight on the football field for fun,
has no cause to fear any war that may come to it, for if they will fight
like that in good nature, to uphold the colors of their college, what
will they do to uphold 'Old Glory,' which comprises the dearest colors
in all the world? Yes, boy, you can go on playing football, and if you
are injured your Uncle Ike will pay all the expenses, and sit up nights
with you, but you better not take me to any more games, for the first
thing you know I will be bringing home here more wives than that Utah
congressman has got. Now, go rest up, and next week I will take you to
see President McKinley, at the hotel here, and you will see him throw
his arms around me and say, 'Hello, Uncle Ike!' I used to know him when
he wasn't President," and Uncle Ike dismissed the boy, and sat by the
window till dark, looking out to see if anybody was coming to claim his
hand in marriage, and wondering if he did make as big a fool of himself
at the football game as the boys said he did.

CHAPTER XXIII.

It was Sunday afternoon, and Uncle Ike had been to church with the
red-headed boy, and they had listened to a sermon on patriotism, and the
minister had expres