Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0148/01485.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 8KB | 143 lines

$Unique_ID{bob01485}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Sketches, Old And New
Story Of The Bad Little Boy}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{bad
didn't
jim
boy
get
little
boys
books
mother
never
see
pictures
see
figures
}
$Date{1893}
$Log{See Jim*0148501.scf
}
Title:       Sketches, Old And New
Book:        Story Of The Bad Little Boy
Author:      Twain, Mark
Date:        1893

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.

[See Jim: Once there was a bad little boy whose name was 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, 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.  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 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 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.