Once there
was a bad little boy whose name was Jim - though, if you will notice, you will
find that bad little boys are nearly always called James in your Sunday-school
books. It was strange, but still it was true that this one was called Jim.
He didn't have
any sick mother either - a sick mother who was pious and had the consumption,
and would be glad to lie down in the grave and be at rest but for the strong
love she bore her boy, and the anxiety she felt that the world might be harsh
and cold towards him when she was gone. Most bad boys in the Sunday-books are
named James, and have sick mothers, who teach them to say, "Now, I lay me
down," etc. and sing them to sleep with sweet, plaintive1 voices, and then kiss them good-night, and
kneel down by the bedside and weep. But it was different with this fellow. He
was named Jim, and there wasn't anything the matter with his mother - no
consumption, or anything of that kind. She was rather stout than otherwise, and
she was not pious; moreover, she was not anxious on Jim's account. She said if
he were to break his neck it wouldn't be much loss. She always spanked2 Jim to sleep, and
she never kissed him good-night; on the contrary, she boxed his ears when she
was ready to leave him.
Once this
little bad boy stole the key of the pantry3,
and slipped in there and helped himself to some jam, and filled up the vessel
with tar, so that his mother would never know the difference; but all at once a
terrible feeling didn't come over him, and something didn't seem to whisper to
him, "Is it right to disobey my mother? Isn't it sinful to do this? Where
do bad little boys go who gobble up their good kind mother's jam?" and
then he didn't kneel down all alone and promise never to be wicked any more,
and rise up with a light, happy heart, and go and tell his mother all about it,
and beg her forgiveness, and be blessed by her with tears of pride and
thankfulness in her eyes. No; that is the way with all other bad boys in the
books; but it happened otherwise with this Jim, strangely enough. He ate that
jam, and said it was bully, in his sinful, vulgar way; and he put in the tar,
and said that was bully also, and laughed, and observed "that the old
woman would get up and snort" when she found it out; and when she did find
it out, he denied knowing anything about it, and she whipped him severely, and
he did the crying himself. Everything about this boy was curious - everything
turned out differently with him from the way it does to the bad James in the
books.
Once he
climbed up in Farmer Acorn's apple-tree to steal apples, and the limb didn't
break, and he didn't fall and break his arm, and get torn by the farmer's great
dog and then languish4 on
a sick bed for weeks, and repent and become good. Oh! No; he stole as many
apples as he wanted and came down all right; and he was all ready for the dog
too, and knocked him endways with a brick when he came to tear him. It was very
strange - nothing like it ever happened in those mild little books with marbled
backs, and with pictures in them of men with swallow-tailed coats and
bell-crowned hats, and pantaloons that are short in the legs, and women with
the waists of their dresses under their arms, and no hoops on. Nothing like it
in any of the Sunday-school books.
Once he
stole the teacher's pen-knife, and, when he was afraid it would be found out
and he would get whipped, he slipped it into George Wilson's cap - poor Widow
Wilson's son, the moral boy, the good little boy of the village, who always
obeyed his mother, and never told an untruth, and was fond of his lessons, and infatuated5 with
Sunday-school. And when the knife dropped from the cap, and poor George hung
his head and blushed, as if in conscious guilt, and the grieved teacher charged
the theft upon him, and was just in the very act of bringing the switch down
upon his trembling shoulders, a white-haired improbable justice of the peace
did not suddenly appear in their midst, and strike an attitude and say,
"Spare this noble boy - there stands the cowering6 culprit7!
I was passing the school-door at recess, and unseen myself, I saw the theft
committed!" And then Jim didn't get whaled, and the venerable justice
didn't read the tearful school a homily and take George by the hand and say
such a boy deserved to be exalted, and then tell him to come and make his home
with him, and sweep out the office, and make fires, and run errands, and chop
wood, and study law, and help his wife to do household labors, and have all the
balance of the time to play, and get forty cents a month, and be happy. No; it
would have happened that way in the books, but it didn't happen that way to
Jim. No meddling old clam of a justice dropped in to make trouble, and so the
model boy George got thrashed, and Jim was glad of it because, you know, Jim
hated moral boys. Jim said he was "down on them milk-sops." Such was
the coarse language of this bad, neglected boy.
But the
strangest thing that ever happened to Jim was the time he went boating on
Sunday, and didn't get drowned, and that other time that he got caught out in
the storm when he was fishing on Sunday, and didn't get struck by lighting.
Why, you might look, and look, all through the Sunday-school books from now
till next Christmas, and you would never come across anything like this. Oh no;
you would find that all the bad boys who go boating on Sunday invariably get
drowned; and all the bad boys who get caught out in storms when they are
fishing on Sunday infallibly get struck by lightning. Boats with bad boys in
them always upset on Sunday, and it always storms when bad boys go fishing on
the Sabbath. How this Jim ever escaped is a mystery to me.
This Jim
bore a charmed life - that must have been the way of it. Nothing could hurt
him. He even gave the elephant in the menagerie a plug of tobacco, and the
elephant didn't knock the top of his head off with his trunk. He browsed around
the cupboard after essence of peppermint, and didn't make a mistake and drink
aqua fortis. He stole his father's gun and went hunting on the Sabbath, and
didn't shoot three or four of his fingers off. He struck his little sister on
the temple with his fist when he was angry, and she didn't linger in pain
through long summer days, and die with sweet words of forgiveness upon her lips
that redoubled the anguish of his breaking heart. No; she got over it. He ran
off and went to sea at last, and didn't come back and find himself sad and
alone in the world, his loved ones sleeping in the quiet churchyard, and the
vine-embowered home of his boyhood tumbled down and gone to decay. Ah! No; he
came home as drunk as a piper, and got into the station-house the first thing.
And he grew
up and married, and raised a large family, and brained them all with an axe one
night, and got wealthy by all manner of cheating and rascality; and now he is
the infernalist wickedest scoundrel in his native village, and is universally
respected, and belongs to the Legislature.
So you see
there never was a bad James in the Sunday-school books that had such a streak
of luck as this sinful Jim with the charmed life.
Notes:
1. plaintive sad, mournful
2. spank slap with the open hand, esp. on the
buttocks
3. pantry room or cupboard for storing food or
cooking utensils
4. languish lose or diminish in strength
5. infatuate inspire with intense unreasonable
passion
6. cowering cringe or shrink in fear
7. culprit person guilty of an offence or
misdeed
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