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STORY OF THE BAD LITTLE
BOY.
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,
with sweet, plaintive 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,
nor 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 spanked 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 pantry, 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.
him from the way it does to the bad Jameses 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 languish 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 infatuated 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 cowering culprit!
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 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
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 lightning.
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 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 raseality;
and now he is the infernalest 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.
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