University of Virginia Library

THE STORY OF THE BAD LITTLE BOY WHO
DIDN'T COME TO GRIEF.

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 very 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 would 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 plaintive voices, and then kiss them goodnight,

and kneel down by the bedside and
weep. But it was different with this fellow.
He was named Jim, and there wasn't any thing
the matter with his mother—no consumption,
or any thing 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 goodnight;
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 any thing about it,
and she whipped him severely, and he did the
crying himself. Every thing about this boy
was curious—every thing turned out differently
with 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 rock 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 penknife, 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 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 threshed, and Jim was glad of it; because,
you know, Jim hated moral boys. Jim said
he was “down on them milksops.” Such was
the coarse language of this bad, neglected boy.

But the strangest things 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,
and look through the Sunday-school books,
from now till next Christmas, and you would

never come across any thing 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
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 ax
one night, and got wealthy by all manner of
cheating and rascality, 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.