Mark Twain's sketches, new and old now first published in complete form |
THE STORY OF THE GOOD
LITTLE BOY. |
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 | Mark Twain's sketches, new and old |  |
THE STORY OF THE GOOD
LITTLE BOY.
ONCE there was a good little
boy by the name of Jacob
Blivens. He always obeyed
his parents, no matter how absurd
and unreasonable their demands
were; and he always learned his
book, and never was late at Sabbath-school.
He would not play hookey,
even when his sober judgment told
him it was the most profitable thing
he could do. None of the other
boys could ever make that boy out,
he acted so strangely. He wouldn't
lie, no matter how convenient it was. He just said it was wrong to lie, and
that was sufficient for him. And he was so honest that he was simply
wouldn't play marbles on Sunday, he wouldn't rob birds' nests, he wouldn't give
hot pennies to organ-grinders' monkeys; he didn't seem to take any interest in
any kind of rational amusement. So the other boys used to try to reason it out
and come to an understanding of him, but they couldn't arrive at any satisfactory
conclusion. As I said before, they could only figure out a sort of vague idea that
he was “afflicted,” and so they took him under their protection, and never allowed
any harm to come to him.
This good little boy read all the Sunday-school books; they were his greatest
delight. This was the whole secret of it. He believed in the good little boys
they put in the Sunday-school books; he had every confidence in them. He
longed to come across one of them alive, once; but he never did. They all died
before his time, maybe. Whenever he read about a particularly good one he
turned over quickly to the end to see what became of him, because he wanted to
travel thousands of miles and gaze on him; but it wasn't any use; that good
little boy always died in the last chapter, and there was a picture of the funeral,
with all his relations and the Sunday-school children standing around the grave
in pantaloons that were too short, and bonnets that were too large, and everybody
crying into handkerchief's that had as much as a yard and a half of stuff in them.
He was always headed off in this way. He never could see one of those good
little boys on account of his always dying in the last chapter.
Jacob had a noble ambition to be put in a Sunday-school book. He wanted
to be put in, with pictures representing him gloriously declining to lie to his
mother, and her weeping for joy about it; and pictures representing him standing
on the doorstep giving a penny to a poor beggar-woman with six children, and
telling her to spend it freely, but not to be extravagant, because extravagance is
a sin; and pictures of him magnanimously refusing to tell on the bad boy who
always lay in wait for him around the corner as he came from school, and welted
him over the head with a lath, and then chased him home, saying, “Hi! hi!” as
he proceeded. That was the ambition of young Jacob Blivens. He wished to
be put in a Sunday-school book. It made him feel a little uncomfortable sometimes
when he reflected that the good little boys always died. He loved to live,
boy. He knew it was not healthy to be good. He knew it was more fatal
than consumption to be so supernaturally good as the boys in the books were;
he knew that none of them had ever been able to stand it long, and it pained him to
think that if they put him in a book he wouldn't ever see it, or even if they did
get the book out before he died it wouldn't be popular without any picture of
his funeral in the back part of it. It couldn't be much of a Sunday-school book
that couldn't tell about the advice he gave to the community when he was dying.
So at last, of course, he had to
make up his mind to do the best he
could under the circumstances—to
live right, and hang on as long as
he could, and have his dying speech
all ready when his time came.
But somehow nothing ever went
right with this good little boy;
nothing ever turned out with
him the way it turned out with
the good little boys in the books.
They always had a good time, and
the bad boys had the broken legs;
but in his case there was a screw
loose somewhere, and it all happened
just the other way. When
he found Jim Blake stealing apples, and went under the tree to read to him
about the bad little boy who fell out of a neighbor's apple-tree and broke his
arm, Jim fell out of the tree too, but he fell on him, and broke his arm, and Jim
wasn't hurt at all. Jacob couldn't understand that. There wasn't anything in
the books like it.
And once, when some bad boys pushed a blind man over in the mud, and
Jacob ran to help him up and receive his blessing, the blind man did not give
him any blessing at all, but whacked him over the head with his stick and said
up. This was not in accordance with any of the books. Jacob looked them all
over to see.
One thing that Jacob wanted to do was to find a lame dog that hadn't any
place to stay, and was hungry and persecuted, and bring him home and pet him
and have that dog's imperishable gratitude. And at last he found one and was
happy; and he brought him home and fed him, but when he was going to pet
him the dog flew at him and tore all the clothes off him except those that were
in front, and made a spectacle of him that was astonishing. He examined
authorities, but he could not understand the matter. It was of the same breed
of dogs that was in the books, but it acted very differently. Whatever this boy
did he got into trouble. The very things the boys in the books got rewarded
for turned out to be about the most unprofitable things he could invest in.
Once, when he was on his way to Sunday-school, he saw some bad boys
starting off pleasuring in a sail-boat. He was filled with consternation, because
he knew from his reading that boys who went sailing on Sunday invariably got
drowned. So he ran out on a raft to warn them, but a log turned with him and
slid him into the river. A man got him out pretty soon, and the doctor pumped
the water out of him, and gave him a fresh start with his bellows, but he caught
cold and lay sick a-bed nine weeks. But the most unaccountable thing about it
was that the bad boys in the boat had a good time all day, and then reached
home alive and well in the most surprising manner. Jacob Blivens said there
was nothing like these things in the books. He was perfectly dumbfounded.
When he got well he was a little discouraged, but he resolved to keep on
trying anyhow. He knew that so far his experiences wouldn't do to go in a
book, but he hadn't yet reached the allotted term of life for good little boys, and
he hoped to be able to make a record yet if he could hold on till his time was
fully up. If everything else failed he had his dying speech to fall back on.
He examined his authorities, and found that it was now time for him to go to
sea as a cabin-boy. He called on a ship captain and made his application, and
when the captain asked for his recommendations he proudly drew out a tract
and pointed to the words, “To Jacob Blivens, from his affectionate teacher.” But
wasn't any proof that he knew how to wash dishes or handle a slush-backet, and
he guessed he didn't want him.” This was altogether the most extraordinary
thing that ever happened to Jacob in all his life. A compliment from a teacher,
on a tract, had never failed to move the tenderest emotions of ship captains, and
open the way to all offices of honor and profit in their gift—it never had in any
book that ever he had read. He could hardly believe his senses.
This boy always had a hard time of it. Nothing ever came out according to
the authorities with him. At last,
one day, when he was around hunting
up bad little boys to admonish,
he found a lot of them in the old
iron foundry fixing up a little
joke on fourteen or fifteen dogs,
which they had tied together in
long procession, and were going
to ornament with empty nitro-glycerine
cans made fast to their tails.
Jacob's heart was touched. He sat
down on one of those cans (for he
never minded grease when duty
was before him), and he took hold
of the foremost dog by the collar,
and turned his reproving eye
upon wicked Tom Jones. But just
at that moment Alderman McWelter, full of wrath, stepped in. All the bad
boys ran away, but Jacob Blivens rose in conscious innocence and began one of
those stately little Sunday-school-book speeches which always commence with
“Oh, sir!” in dead opposition to the fact that no boy, good or bad, ever starts
a remark with “Oh, sir.” But the alderman never waited to hear the rest. He
took Jacob Blivens by the ear and turned him around, and hit him a whack in
the rear with the flat of his hand; and in an instant that good little boy shot out
fifteen dogs stringing after him like the tail of a kite. And there wasn't a
sign of that alderman or that old iron foundry left on the face of the earth; and,
as for young Jacob Blivens, he never got a chance to make his last dying speech
after all his trouble fixing it up, unless he made it to the birds; because, although
the bulk of him came down all right in a tree-top in an adjoining county, the
rest of him was apportioned around among four townships, and so they had to
hold five inquests on him to find out whether he was dead or not, and how it
occurred. You never saw a boy scattered so.[1]
Thus perished the good little boy who did the best he could, but didn't come
out according to the books. Every boy who ever did as he did prospered except
him. His case is truly remarkable. It will probably never be accounted for.
| Mark Twain's sketches, new and old | |