58 



MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. 



you know, and this was the most unpleasant feature about being a Sunday-school- 

 book 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 i riTy^ 1 course, he had to 



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 



