Year: 1870

apple tree to steal apples, and the limb
did not break, and he didn't fall and break
his neck, and get torn by the farmers
great dog; and then languish on a sick
bed for weeks, and become good. Oh,
no; he stsle 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 rock when the dog
came to tear him.


It was very strange, nothing like it
ever happened in those mild little books
with marble backs and with pictures in
them of men with swallow-tailed coats
and bell-crowned hats, and pantatoons
that are short in the legs, and women
with the waists of their dresses under
their arm, and no hoops ON. Nothing
like it in any of the Sunday School books.


Once he stole the teachers pen-knife.
and when he was afraid that it would be
found out and he would be whipped, he
slipped it into George Wilson's cap,-poor
widow Wilson's SON, the moral boy, the
good little boy of the village, the boy who
always obeyed his mother, and never told
an untruth, and was fond of his lesson,
and infatuated with the Sunday School.
And when the knife dropped from his
cap, and poor George hung his head and
blushed as if conscious of guilt, and the
grieved teacher charged the theft upon
him, and was just in the act of bringing
the switch down upon his trembling
shoulders, white-haired, improbable JUS
tice of the peace didn't suddenly appear
in their midst and strike an attitude and
say: "Spare this noble boy; there stands
the covering culprit! l was passing the
school-room door at recess and unseen
myself, saw the theft committed" /"
And then Jim didn't get whaled
and the venerable justice didn't read the
fearful school homily, and take Gerge
by the hand, and say such boy deserved
to be exalted, and then tell him to come
and make his home with him and sweep
ont the office, and make fires, and run err
rands, and chop wood, study law and help
his wife do household labors, and have all
the rest of the time to play, and get forty
cents month and be happy. No, it did
not happen that way to Jim. No med
ding old clam of justice came in to make
trouble, and so the model boy George
got thrashed, and Jim was glad of it.
Jim said he twas down on milksops."
Cucn WAS tno lang uuSo VI euis odo, neg
lected boy.


This Jim bore charmed life-that
must have been the way of it. Nothing
could hurt him. He even gave the ele-
phant in the menagerie plug of tobacco,
and the elephant didn't knock the top of
his head off with his trunk. He browsed
around the sides of the cupboard after es-
sence of peppermint, and didn't make
mistake and drink aquafortis.


He stole his fathers gun and went
hunting and didn't shoot three or four of
his fingers off. He struck his sister on
the temple with his fist when he was an
CRY, and she didn't linger in pain through
the long summer days and die with sweet
words of forgiveness on her lips, that re-
doubled the anguish of his aching 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 a quiet
churchyard-snd the vine embowered
home Of boyhood tumbled down and gone
to decay. All, no-he came home drunk
as a piper, and got into the station house
the first thing. And he grew up and
married T; raised large family, and brain
ed them all with an taxe one night, and
got wealthytby all manner of cheating
and rascality, and now he is the Internal
est 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 sin
full Jim with the chained life.