STORY OF A GOOD LITTLE BOY. 57 



ridiculous. The curious ways that that Jacob had, surpassed everything. He 

 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 some- 

 times when he reflected that the good little boys always died. He loved to live. 



